A Birding Injury!

Ah, Saturday started out so promising!  We had spring bird banding planned at Mr. Neil's, I found out that my nephew has an exhibit at the Louvre (yeah, baby, that Louvre and it's part of an app that's really cool called Augmented Reality Wallpaper), Non Birding Bill was frying up some maple bacon to get the banding started off right--it was all so innocent then. We had the usual Minnesota back hand weather-wise.  A snow free March and April meant that the first weekend in May was going to be cold, cloudy and involve snow and sleet.  Because of the wet and an mud on the trails, I put on a pair of spare Wellingtons at the house--the boots were a couple sizes too big but I compensated with really thick socks.  However, at one point during a net check, my foot went one way, my right knee the other which was followed by my collapse and intense pain.  It felt very similar to when I dislocated my knee as a teenager.  But I was able to stand up and limp--which I was not able to do when I dislocated my knee.

NBB drove me to Urgent Care where ironically I was banded, weighed and measured (and had a few unpleasant things done to my knee).  NBB said, "Ha!  Now you know what it's like for the birds when you band them."  They made a note of higher blood pressure and assured me that was normal for a painful knee injury.  The spike in pressure wasn't about the pain but more like, "Holy Crap, I fly to Utah on Thursday for the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival on top of how much I love gallavanting in the woods for warblers in spring on top of my national park service duties.  I can't be injured now!"

Fortunately, it appears to only be a sprain and not too severe of an injury and I'm supposed to stay off it and ice it for as long as possible.  NBB is doing a great job of forcing me to take it easy.  I was actually back to the banding in about an hour and didn't miss too much.  Lorraine got the above photo of me taking photos of Amber and Roger removing a rose-breasted grosbeak and downy woodpecker from the nets.

Here is a none too pleased rose-breasted grosbeak.

The great thing about the modern age is that I put in a call to my hotel in Utah securing a ground floor room, made arrangements to get some mobility assistance in the airport and gave the festival a heads up to my limited mobility.  But on the upside, I'm doing a digiscoping workshop, Birds and Beers and I'm Friday night's guest speaker--all of those aren't too strenuous.

I'm excited about speaking.  The festival keynote had to step down at the last minute for health reasons, so Bill Fennimore who was Friday's speaker is filling in for her on Saturday and I'm filling in for him on Friday night.  I'm going to do my Kazakhstan Program: An Adventure in Birds and Bathrooms.  Utah is one of my favorite birding states, I'm so grateful that my injury may slow me down but not stop me from enjoying this beautiful area.

In the meantime, this business of being forced to sit in one spot for several hours will be a good opportunity to type up some birding app reviews and a book review.  I'm reading an AMAZING feather book--best bird book to come out this year.

Cornell Bird Behavior Course

If I weren't so swamped with birding and work this May, I would totally sign up for this online course on bird courtship and rivalry through Cornell Lab of Ornithology--you'd learn the down and dirty details behind some of those beautiful songs.

Ticks Play Dirty This Spring

After doing a bit of birding this spring, I was heading home when what looked like a distant sandhill crane caught my attention.  I pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed my Swarovskis...only to find a wood tick waiting for me right on the eye cup...ewwww! Ticks, the down side of the outdoors.

As I tried to get my  binos in a better position for a photo, the tick obligingly posed.  It put its little feelers out as if it were on a blade of grass, waiting for an unsuspecting mammal like myself to brush past so it could latch on and crawl around and find purchase on a tender fleshy area.  After I took the above pic, I gave the little tick a flick and away it went.  My skin will not be impaled by your hypostome this day, you crazy little arachnid.

Old Lady Tree Swallow Says...

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks Are Back

We had a small flock of rose-breasted grosbeaks arrive yesterday.  They are loading up on food until the insects are out.  Just the males are here now, with the cold and the wind, they weren't singing too loud today but I'm sure they will set up terretories soon and if they squabbling at the feeders is to be believed, they'll be duking it out for the best nesting tree too.

Franklin Red-tailed Hawk Cam

I've been checking in on the Franklin Institute live red-tailed hawk cam which is fun now that the babies are about and the adults are doing more than just incubation.  I watched some cool behavior that I've read about but not actually observed.  I took some screen captures:

Here an adult is feeding the tiny fierce puffballs.

Then the hawk flew off for a moment and returned with a leafy branch.  Some speculate that the leaves of certain plants have natural insect repellent properties and help keep nest parasites to a minimum.

I have no idea what type of plant the red-tailed hawk brought in--looks like it either has some green berries or some green buds on it.  Just some of the cool things one can observe in this day and age of online birdwatching.

Canada Geese Chicks Are Hatching

I saw some Canada goose goslings yesterday as well as a few mallard ducklings.  Another serious spring sign was hearing an oriole sing--do you have your grape jelly and nectar feeders out?

Crosby Park Ranger Work

One of the things we get to do at my park as a ranger is "roving." Essentially, we pick a part of the park and rove around to answer questions or interpret wildlife.  It reminds me a bit of doing improv work-- you rely on the audience to guide where the sketch will go.  In this case, you walk into to a park and use whatever is on hand as your method of interacting with the public.

On Sunday it was my turn to rove and I chose Crosby Park which is great during warbler migration as it's right on the Mississippi River and anything is possible.  There were some great birds there and while I was taking a photo of this song sparrow, I heard a sora.  Tons of birds were recent arrivals like great-crested flycatchers and yellow warblers.  I also noted a pair of broad-winged hawks setting up territory, which is fun because when we do Big River Journey, I always see broad-wings soaring over the park from the boat on the river.

The best part of my morning was when I hung out at this shelter--a great interpretive prop presented itself.  It's at a busy intersection of the trails in Crosby--it's actually not a bad spot to sit and listen for warblers.  But as soon as I approached, movement caught my attention...and it wasn't a bird.  Can you make out an animal in the above photo?  If you can't, don't worry, it's hard to see.  But check out that big hole in the trunk of the tree, just above the shelter roof.  It's a raccoon.  When I arrived, all you could see was the body rising up moving around, I think the raccoon was grooming itself.  When people would stop and ask what I was looking at, I'd set my scope on the hole and pish very loudly like I was targeting a huge bird.

The large raccoon leaned its head back as if to say, "Yeah, lady, what do you want, I've got things going on in here." It was the perfect place to camp out and interpret.  And a perfect place for a raccoon.  Nice secluded tree with a big comfy hole.  Enough natural food and litter to keep a raccoon fat and sassy.

As with birds, the raccoon soon grew tired of my pishing sounds and eventually ignored them, but it was fun while it lasted.  I showed Non Birding Bill the photos and he agreed they were cute but liked this raccoon hole photo series better.  In particular, this photo.

As I continued on, I heard a pair of robins raising a HUGE fuss.  Something was in their territory and they weren't happy.  It was a serious alarm sound but not the aerial predator sound.  There was a clump of leaves and I did my best to scan, as best as I could make out, a red squirrel (see the eye and the whiskers in the center of the photo) had found their nest and was eating their eggs.  They did not make it easy for the squirrel, and smacked into it several times with their body.  Fortunately, it's very early in the nesting season, they will find a better nest location and rebuild.  What was interesting was that I heard a new sound made by robins in alarm--bill snapping!  I always though only owls did that, but robins do it too. As the robins were calling in agitation, it spurred the local house wren pair to sing on their territory below their nest.  Here's a sample:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs7Pn3mMa5M[/youtube]

I was missing a piece of one of my digiscoping adaptors so I had to hand hold my video camera up to my scope, but you can hear the wren and the robins in the background.

I love watching wrens sing, they do it with such gusto!

For such an urban St. Paul park, Crosby is great, we did the Bioblitz there last year and not only does it have nesting indigo buntings, but also prothonotary warblers.  I'm a bit concerned about the warbler season.  The leaves are out in full force now and warblers love to hide in the tops of trees, they are going to be hard to find this spring!  Ah well, it will be a good chance to practice birding by ear.

May Morel Madness 2010!

We have had the pleasure of finding some of the tastiest (and easiest as well as "safest") edible fungus on Mr. Neil's property in warm weather including Hen of the Woods, Chicken of the Woods and Giant Puffball.  We've seen morels here and there but because they tend to come out during spring bird migration, my mind is otherwise occupied and I've never made the effort for an all out morel hunt.  I had done it a few times in Indiana but not much more.  Also, nearby neighbors usually hunt morels and in good years they are very generous with their harvest (and I'm not opposed to a honey/morel exchange)  so I haven't had huge incentive to look.

This year, Lorraine and I decided that we would give it a go.  We researched morel sites on the interwebs--our favorite site is The Great Morel (great information for beginners and a map that shows when people are finding them).  It seemed to us that the time was right and all we needed was a night of rain, some 60 degree-ish temps and some dead elms.  We noted that it was going to rain Friday and felt Saturday morning would be great for a meet up.  We boned up on morel hunting and used Google Image search to see what elm tree bark looked like so we would know what to look for.  Isn't it great what we can to with the internet these days?

As Non Birding Bill and I were driving out to meet Lorraine at Mr. Neil's we got a call.  It was a frantic Lorraine.  She was already there and had decided to test her dead elm id skills.  She looked under a tree that looked like a dead elm according to the Internet and was surrounded by morels.  As I heard NBB's end of the conversation, I was screaming, "I can't believe she started without me!!!"  NBB was laughing, she didn't mean to, she just checked a tree in the yard to see if it was an elm and there they were.

Lorraine kindly left a cluster for me to find and pick when I arrived--what a gal!  It was a great way to start and we searched the surrounding dead trees.  Morel mushrooms are not only tasty but part of the Foolproof Four category of wild mushrooms--you can't mistake them for any other mushroom.  Now, before anyone takes me to task in the comments about false morels--true morels are hollow in the middle, false morels are solid in the middle.  All of our findings were very hollow in the middle.

We did find a few more morels in the general vicinity of Lorraine's first harvest but not like the grouping she had initially found.  Of course, we were sticking pretty darn close to the house, we still had acres of woods to check--who knows how many more we would find?

There were white-throated sparrows serenading us as we searched.  I made the choice to leave my digiscoping equipment back at the house while we went into the woods.  As I said earlier, my birding distracts me from morel hunting.  I needed to make sure to focus on the ground, not getting photos of warbles flitting in the leaves overhead.  I took my binoculars--I wasn't crazy, if a cool bird was around I was going to look, just not focus on getting photos of them.  As we went through the woods, we were not finding any more mushrooms--at least not edible ones.  We thought about what was different from the yard vs the woods--shade.  We found another spot that should have had morning sun and began to search.  Lorraine and I wandered from each other and after about fifteen minutes I heard a scream, "MUUUUUUUUUUUSHROOOOOOOOOM!"

Lorraine found more!  She collected her bounty and we were re-energized in our search efforts.  It wasn't long before we found another patch--this one however was surrounded by some young stinging nettle.  We didn't let it deter us but our hands felt the sting for several minutes afterwards.

This patch was so large (and fortunately not all in the nettle)  and so spread out that when we realized it, we were surrounded.  We were afraid to take a step for fear of crushing the tasty, tasty shrooms.  I got on all fours to get ground level and a better view of the morels that were all over.  We filled our bags and they were heavy!  I attached my laundry bag to a stick to make it easier to tote.  The woody/nutty/salty smell of the fungus made my stomach growl.  I've run across a few morel hunters in the woods before and always felt a slight pang of envy seeing those bulging bags of shrooms.  Never thought I would be one, but there were with heavy laundry bags full of morels--like we were pro shroomers!  As we wrapped up our day of hunting, I got a text from NBB back at the house--even he found a morel.  His location was by far the best:

He found a tiny one at the zombie graveyard.  Makes sense...morels kind of look like brains and what self respecting zombie is going to ignore a brain shaped shroom?

So above is our harvest for our first ever morel hunt.  Not bad!  Especially since we are beginners when it comes to morels and...Lorraine doesn't like to eat mushrooms.  She's getting a bit more adventurous and has eaten Hen of the Woods and she did make us an awesome morel asparagus cream soup for dinner but I think she dug the hunt more than the taste.  I enjoyed both.  NBB and I took some home and ate them in omletts and sauces and then Lorraine dried the rest.  Reconstituted morels make a most excellent broth--I'm salivating just thinking about what Mr. Neil might whip up for us when he returns.

Can't wait to see if we find any more this month.  Check out the Great Morel sight for more info if you would like to search for your own.

A Little Lang Elliot Cleanser

Okay, the news in the gulf is really bumming me out.  And I can't have a Friday be all about a bummer blog post.  So, the most awesome Lang Elliot has provided a cleanser.  Chances are that if you have listened to a bird call CD or program, you have heard Lang's work--he is considered by some the grand pooba of bird song recordings. He's started a blog with some of his friends called The Music of Nature that is "dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of nature, with an emphasis on nature that is near at hand."

Basically, they are out, making awesome videos of birds (and crickets and frogs) and sharing them.  It's very cool and looking at it, it's what I'd like to do with this blog but man oh man, their recording equipment is off the hook.  I may give up blogging and just watch this blog.

Anyway, it's a nice cleanser from the gulf spill and a great way to take a break from work and enjoys some short videos of nature.  Here's a sample:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJTaV95E9Qg&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]