Birdchick Blog
Here I am, on the first day of vacation in south Texas and what did I spend digiscoping?
Ducks. Thousands of redhead ducks. Never mind that I count them for work this time of year. I still watched, photographed and counted them on my first day off.
I am a sick woman.
Just a reminder that this weekend is the Minnesota deer opener. All my Minnesota friends birding in the woods--don't forget your blaze orange!
Okay, the duck blog posts are about finished...for awhile. I'm winding up work this week and next week I'm off to the magical birding land that is South Texas. If you've never been to the Rio Grande Valley, find a way to go. The Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival is one of my favorite bird festivals in the country--I love it so much that next week I'm on vacation and I'm going to the festival--not working a booth, not giving a workshop, not leading trips--just hanging with my friends.
Meanwhile, ducks are on in Minnesota. I got a call from Avian Images asking if I would like to meet up after work for the long-tailed duck on Lake Vadnais. Some girl talk and ducks--perfect end to a work day.
Here is the long-tailed duck mixed in with a pack of goldenye. I was not prepared for how close or how cool this duck looked. When I've seen the long-tailed duck show up in Minnesota before, it wasn't such a snazzy specimen as seen here or here.
This was an adult male in winter plumage, which I think looks better than his breeding plumage. There were still a ton of ring-necked ducks on Vadnais, but it was easy to figure out where the long-tailed was being observed--you just followed the pack of birders with large lenses and scopes.
One of the gentlemen with what looked like a 600mm lens asked us what the light colored duck was. I was surprised that A. no one else in the group told him and B. someone with a huge lens like that was taking photos of birds and didn't know the species. He said he had a guide and couldn't find it. I told him that it was a long-tailed duck and depending on the age and type of guide, it may be listed by the politically incorrect name of oldsquaw. Personally, I always call it Long Duck Dong (bong) in my head. But that maybe because I was raised on too many 80's movies.
I have my first post up over at 10,000 Birds.
When I was at Lake Vadnais last week looking for the long-tailed-duck, I took advantage of the close up trumpeter swans to get some swan shots. Note the swan in the back. I was watching that one and noticed it was a wee bit smaller than the two in front. After the preening, the swans started dipping for vegetation.
The swan in back came closer to the other two and side by side, it was noticeably smaller (the smaller swan is the one on the right). Was this a female? In swans, females are smaller than males. Or...was this a tundra swan mixed in with the trumpeter swans?
They both popped up at the same time and look at that--the smaller bird has a touch of yellow on its beak--it was a tundra swan! Tundra swans nest in the tundra, not in Minnesota. They are in the midst of their migration and this time of year, hundreds can be seen flying over on their way to the coasts for the winter. Trumpeter swans nest in Minnesota and many will end up staying here for the winter, wherever they can find open water, many in Monticello.
It was fun to have an opportunity to really get a close look at the difference between the two swan beaks. Above is the trumpeter swan (with a little white feather stuck on the beak)--all black, no yellow. It's also a little bit of a bigger beak compared (up close) to a tundra swan. It's hard to tell them apart at a distance. If you can hear the call it's a no brainer. Here is a trumpeter swan call (like a kid playing a toy trumpet). But if your driving and it's during migration and you see a flock of swans fly over--how can you tell. I've heard some say that if you see a huge flock of 50 or more birds high up, chances are good it's a flock of tundra swans. If it's a small family group of 3 - 5 flying low, it's probably trumpeter swans.
Here's an up close of the tundra swan beak--with the little bit of yellow right in front of the eye. This is a tundra swan call. This bird would do a periodic bark, but I'm used to hearing a whole huge flock with they migrate, so it sounded strange.
Since I saw my first tundra swan in the Twin Cities last week, I figured I'd get to see them on my surveys on Monday and sure enough, there are tundra swans gathering on the Mississippi River. We found some on Pools 4 - 7. I'm sure there are a few trumpeters mixed in, but not really an easy way to separate them from the mostly tundras. If you have never seen the tundra swan migration in this area, you should really check it out. You can get info from Alma, Wisconsin but a great spot to view them for the next two weeks will be at the viewing platform in Brownsville, MN. You should get some other species too. This week we had lots of canvasbacks, buffleheads and ring-necked ducks--just to name a few.
Is it me or does this hen mallard look like she's about to engage in some tomfoolery and goose that trumpeter swan?
Very interesting blog post from the new American Birding Association president Jeff Gordon (birder, not racer) who attended the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear over the weekend toting signs that read "I Bird, I Vote." How many times have we seen bumper stickers that read "I Fish, I Vote" or "I Hunt, I Vote" so why not one for birders? It's supposed to be the second fastest growing hobby in the nation. And from the many voters I meet, it crosses all political lines and parties. I personally don't vote based on a particular party. I tend to put my vote to the person I think will do the most for birds and wildlife and I think we need to waive our bird flags a bit harder in the future. We are the voice for birds and wildlife...or at the least the translators and interpreters.
There's an interesting trend going on in the bird blogging world--bird bloggers are banding together to form multi author blogs. Recently, the guys over at 10,000 Birds announced their new "Beat Writers." Besides the usual updates from Corey, Mike and Charlie you get other great writers like Patrick from Hawk Owl's Nest, Nate from Drinking Bird and Julie Zickefoose. Some of my favorite bird bloggers all coming together to what already is a great site. I like how it's becoming a news oriented site. Mike, Corey and Charlie have been kind enough to include me in the list and starting Wednesday, I'll have a post there every other week.
There was also the recent announcement of BirdingBlogs which is billing itself as "the birding bloggers in one site." The site's founder writes:
"I noticed it was hard to get a lot readers to my own blog unless I posted something every day. Also it would be difficult to provide top notch content every time one writes. The day simply has not enough hours for all I wanted to do. I looked at the amazing numbers of unique visitors ranging to several thousands per day on sites such as 10000birds and grrlscientist. It was clear that post frequency and good content together was the key to more visitors."
Some of the bloggers this site will use to increase traffic include Kenn Kaufman, Jeff Gordon and Dale Forbes.
The American Birding Association also has also launched a multi author blog as well--different birders from around the organization sharing their passion for birds. I'll also post here too along with several other members like Nate from Drinking bird and Laura Kammermeier.
I'm excited about the changes the organization is making, curious about the new leadership with Jeff Gordon and hopeful that the organization can turn itself around and one day be a loud voice for birding and birds they way Ducks Unlimited is for hunting and conservation.
With so many birding blogs bringing together so many voices at the same time, this appears to be a big trend. I'm interested see where all this multi-author blogging goes. I like that we are developing Salon or DailyCos type of birding sites.
UPDATE!
There's also another multi author bird blog that I just learned about called North American Birding. This site boasts:
"You’ll find a hugely talented – and growing – group of contributing bloggers, from seasoned experts to young beginners. Scientists and photographers, professional guides and graduate students. Oh, and a professional writer or two. Our goal is to assemble voices and opinions as diverse as the birds themselves."
I'm excited to see Chris West as part of their roster--he's an awesome up and coming birder!
I'm a sick, sick girl. Once a week, for work, I am assigned to go in a plane and focus an insane amount of energy watching and counting ducks from a plane. Then after an intense day of not stop ducking, I have to listen to the audio recording of my notes, tally the numbers and enter them in to a database. If I have time, I try to enter the numbers in to eBird or write up little articles of our progress for the park service or other organizations.
So. What do I do on my mornings off?
I watch freakin' ducks! There was a report on the listservs of a long-tailed duck on Vadnais Lake in St. Paul. But of more interest to me were the numerous other species of ducks reported on the lake. It was mostly ring-necked ducks (there's a few mallards in the above photo too). So, I headed out. I didn't care if I got the long-tailed, I've seen them before, but some non work related duck watching sounded good.
In fairness, we didn't fly last week because of that massive wind storm/"landcane"/record low pressure system. The 45 mph winds made flying 100 feet above the river a wee bit too dangerous. Perhaps, I was feeling a bit of duck withdrawal--I was torqued and ready to go and then got the rug pulled out from under me. I do appreciate ducks in the fall. Most birds are brown and somber in coloration. Male ducks--still quite colorful--above with the ring-necked ducks are a lone bufflehead and a redhead.
Here was the view of Lake Vadnais. This view was from a pull0ut lot of the road. Some trumpeter swans were near the shore along with a few mallards. The large raft of ring-necked and other ducks were just beyond. I situated myself against a tree and the swans paid little attention to me. As they swam closer, the larger raft of ring-necks didn't seem to to be disturbed by me.
As other birders continued further down the road, the raft of ring-necks drifted towards the swans...and me! I really enjoyed the pressure of enjoying duck colors and numbers without the pressure of counting and documenting.
The lighting was so perfect, I could actually make out the ring on the neck of the ring-necked ducks (bird in dire need of a name change).
Here's a pair of goldeneye that were mixed in with the ring-necks.
The raft of ducks were in a feeding frenzy, bobbing and dipping--the yellow eyes on most of them gave the whole party a maniacal look. Here's a closer look at the redhead duck (love the ring-neck with just its head visible in the lower right corner).
If you find a raft of ducks in your area, take a few moments to soak up those colors before they fly off when the water freezes.
We're down to the bitter end in migration. The fall robins are all over the place in Minnesota. On the bike trails around town, the robins are so numerous, I can hear them over the sound of my headphones as I bike past. These tend to be more aggressive birds and I'll admit that it's fun to see someone who can bully starlings.
I was a little surprised to see a Swainson's thrush mixed in with the robins. We usually see other thrushes mixed in with flocks of robins, but this late it tends to be hermit thrushes. The bird was not a welcome part of the flock. The blurry robin in the above photo was on its way to making a sneak attach and chased the thrush off before I could get a better photo.
Robins totally dig all the fruit trees people plant in their yards, although many of the robins I find are raiding the buckthorn branches. I'm torn, I'm happy to see robins adapting to a source of food, but I also realize that they are laying the groundwork to plant more buckthorn that has been removed.
Earlier in the summer I reported that an empty hive feel victim to a wax moth infestation. The frames were nasty and full of webbing and tons of squishy larvae. This gross combo did lead to me finding a way to combine my love of beekeeping and birds:
It took some convincing, but the birds got comfortable enough to approach the frames and totally dug the fat little protein packed larvae (note the black-capped chickadee above with a worm)! I placed the frames on a stump that I use as a tray/feeder photography studio. At first, I had to scatter some favorite seeds to get the birds' attention and when they landed, they instantly saw the squirming wax worms and chowed down. I did have to flip the frames over from time to time, the larvae would crawl to the other side to hide but I think the titmice, chickadees and nuthatches took care of them. I'm not sure what to do with the webs that remains on the frames. Some beekeepers say to put them in the hive and the bees will clean it off. At night, something has been coming up to the stump and eating all the wax off of the frame (perhaps mice). Maybe if I leave the frames out, the mice will take all the webbing too and I'll have a totally bare frame?
You may recall that earlier this summer, Mr. Neil's newest dog Lola learned that if you violate bee ettiquette, you get stung. I must say, this incident of swollen dog face was not enough to convince her to avoid mischief around the hives. Non Birding Bill and I took her to the hives after this incident and she went straight for one and started sniffing the entrance. She got bonked and a sting and then went back to the entrance for more. We had to guide her away and fortunately, she did not swell to the epic proportions as she had before.
When we went out last weekend to the hives, I learned that Lola is in love with piles of leaves--like any eight year old (even the one buried inside every adult).
Which is a much safer area for her to play in rather than right in front of the hives.
If you are wondering about her cape, it's hunting season. Currently it's bow hunting season on deer and grouse shooting season. In a couple of weeks it will be deer shooting season. The dogs run so quickly it's best that they wear orange when they are barreling after small mammals in the woods. You may think that a white dog couldn't be mistaken for a deer, but there are some hunters who shoot first and ask id later (as in this infamous 2002 MN incident) and we do have quite the population of albino deer up here. I saw them on my first trip to Father Hennepin State Park...I should go back and try to digiscope them sometime. Here's a video of an infamous albino buck that used to live along the Minnesota/Wisconsin border.
But check out the unadulerated joy that is Lola in a pile of leaves!
Dog smile! A much better time for Lola at the hives than earlier this summer.