Honey Bee Nursery

I know I don't do as many bee reports on the blog as I used to but in a lot of respects our bees do the same thing over and over. Not that I don't delight in watching the hive, but how often can I report the same thing? Things that are fun to check are larvae. I especially like frames with black foundation, makes things ten times easier to see and it really pops the color of the bees.

Above are mostly worker bee eggs (the things that look like mini rice) and some larvae off to the right. If you don't find your queen when you're digging around in your hive, you can be relatively confident that a she is alive somewhere in there because eggs stay in that shape for about three days as they are fed royal jelly from the worker bees.

Once the larvae is three days old, it's switched to a mixture of pollen, honey and water (some bee sites call this bee bread). You can see at least one worker up there feeding someboyd as her head is wedged into a cell. The larvae grows and eats for six days.

After six days, the workers cap over the brood and they pupate for 12 days as they go from a squishy blob into a segmented, leggy, winged bee complete with stinger.

Like this girl! On a side note, while looking up something else entirely I wandered into an article on eating bee larvae. I suppose eating all that honey would make them tasty.

For those curious, I think our hives are doing splendidly this year. Many are as tall or even taller than I am because they are stacked with so many honey supers for us to harvest soon. Though, Lynne was quick to point out that since I'm only 5 feet tall, that's not saying much.  Thanks, Lynne. ;)

 

 

Birdchick Podcast #118 Scott's Fined Millions For Tainted Bird Food

Scott's Wild Bird Food aka Miracle Grow fined $12.5 million in criminal and civil penalties that regulators say are the heftiest ever issued under federal pesticide law. Weirdest survey about birders and birding...ever. Warning, it takes awhile.

Are you a member of the American Birding Association? Be sure to cast your vote on whether or not to expand the listing area!

Cloaxia combines your vagina, urethra and anus into one hole. SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/ucbcomedy Watch more videos by The Punch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VozVSHq3hwc&feature=share&list=PL28885456FBB38DD2 Director Andy Bond Writer Adam Sacks Featuring Laura Michelle Cleary, Lisa Kleinman, Risa Sang-Urai, Keisha Zollar, Amey Goerlich, Avery Monsen, and Brian Glidewell Director of Photography Adam Sacks Editor Adam Sacks Animator Adam Sacks Producer Luke Kelly-Clyne Sound James Leggero, Silvija Ozols, and Casey Cline Production Assistants Andrea Shapiro and Jesse VandenBergh Special Thanks Matt Klinman Brought to you by UCB Comedy.



Random Barred Antshrike

Going through some photos for upcoming presentations at Hawk Ridge and Berkeley Springs, I came across this bird, a barred antshrike from my trip a couple of years ago from Canopy Tower in Panama.  I suddenly feel a huge ache to be back in Central America, specifically to this lodge. I always try to plan a mid winter trip...think Panama must be it in 2013.

Digiscoped with a Swarovski scope and Nikon D40 (with a DCA adapator).

BirdCast Predictions For 9/11 Memorial

As migration is in full swing and most everyone I know in the US has thoughts of what happened on September 11, 2001 on their minds today, I can't help but think about the 2010 memorial. For people who may not be familiar with this story, in 2010, after a week of lousy weather for migration, the winds were favorable on September 11 and as the lights for the memorial were lit, literally thousands of birds that migrate at night and use the stars for navigation were caught in the beams. Here's a sample of the video: [youtube]http://youtu.be/EZAQSw0qCAI[/youtube]

The video and images found around the Internet are hypnotic. I always wondered what the skies would look like if we could see the thousands of warblers, vireos, thrushes and other species passing overhead on night migration and this gives us a glimpse of that.

What's hopeful about this situation is that Audubon's New York City Chapter was able to step in with organizers and they managed to turn off the memorial lights for a 15 minutes, encouraging the flocks of birds to move on. Otherwise, the birds would have circled the lights all night and lose valuable fat stores needed to continue the marathon south.

Apparently, the weather today could pose could migratory conditions for birds and a similar situation could happen. Hopefully, Audubon will be on hand again and if we get a crazy glimpse of night migration caught in the lights this year, the lights can be turned off for a few minutes, giving birds a chance to move on.

Wait, That's A Bird Name & Not A Disease?

One of my favorite parts of travel is when I find myself in a completely different habitat from where I live. It's amazing to think how much there is to see and how different area terrain can be in the United States. I can travel from one end of the country to another, wake up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit at my home and then a mere few hours later be sweltering in 104 degrees Fahrenheit at Agua Caliente Park in Arizona. We mercifully didn't bird the whole afternoon in the heat but went up Mount Lemmon to look for birds where the higher elevation was much kinder temperature-wise.

Along with being in completely different habitat, it's fun to find things like a gila woodpecker excavating a saguaro cactus as opposed to a red-bellied woodpecker working on an old as tree like I would at home. Other birds we found on our way up included a blue-throated hummingbird female feeding young, Scott's oriole and canyon towhee.

Though it is fun to run into familiar faces even if I am 1600 miles away, like the above Cooper's hawk. I'm used to seeing these birds dodge dumpsters and hipsters in my flat urban neighborhood. This bird took full advantage of the canyon walls when it finally took off and used a little bit of a different flying technique, but it had more open space than the hawks in my neighborhood.

I was hoping for a few life birds on this trip, I didn't expect tons, I'm running out of places in the US where I can really rack up the life birds. I was surprised to knock out 10 new birds on this trip (it is quite possible that my disinterest in listing contributed to that as my listing records are haphazard at best and I"m sure I have forgotten what birds I've seen). One bird I know for sure that I was missing was the phainopepla (pronounced fay-no-PEP-la). This has been a target bird for a long time, they look some crazy black cardinal with a tiny beak and red eyes. I love saying the name over and over. My buddy Clay got me one at Molino Canyon Vista on Mount Lemmon. And though I was grateful...it wasn't an adult male--I know for some that is birding elitism, but the first time one sees a crazy bird like a phainopepla, you want to see the best plumage possible.

Now that's what I'm talking about, that's a phaino-freaking-pepla! You may be wondering what the deal is with the crazy name, does it sound like it says, "phainopepla" when it sings? No. It's Greek for "shining robe." Yeah, I don't get it either, but where would North American birding be without weirdo bird names that make little sense? Non Birding Bill seems to think it sounds like some sort of venereal disease when I announce, "I got phainopepla in Arizona!"

These birds belong in the silky-flycatcher family and if wikipedia is to be believed...kind of related to waxwings? Which I suppose one can kind of see a waxwing like beak on this bird. Silky-flycatchers aren't quite like the tyrant or empidonax flycatchers that can be their own source of identification grief. There are only four species in this family and they all look noticeably different different.

I posted a picture of this bird on Twitter and someone noted the maniacal red eye.  This is not the craziest looking bird you can see.

How evil looking is this guy? Up in the higher elevations we got yellow-eyed juncoes bebopping around in the parking lots. A bit more of a maniacal looking bird than what I'm used to. As we went along the road, Clay would see a bird fly across, make us stop and before we knew it we'd be surrounded by painted redstarts, black-throated gray warblers and Hammond's flycatchers.

Even if we weren't getting great birds, the view on top of Mount Lemmon would have more than made up for it. While we were perched here, we could hear distant peregrine falcons echoing off the walls and a band-tailed pigeon. The pigeon is in the above photo, a mere speck on one of the dead conifers.

This was taken through the new Swarovski ATX on full 60 power zoom by holding my iPhone up to it. It's not bad for a documentation photo! As we were watching this bird, it suddenly took off and we looked up to see a zone-tailed hawk in a full on dive from high above. Zone-tails are awesome, they are shaped and fly like turkey vultures...giving protential prey a false sense of security. I wasn't able to digiscope a shot of the hawk, but it was fabulous to see.

 

 Mount Lemmon is not a bad way to spend an afternoon if you find yourself in Tucson.

 

 

Guidelines For Minimizing Killing Birds At Oil Field Waste Pits

This is a fascinating video put out by US Fish and Wildlife for oil and gas facility managers and staff. It's to advise ways to reduce bird and other wildlife mortality through "best management practices." There is no implication that if managers choose not to follow these guidelines that they will be prosecuted via the Migratory Bird Treaty.  That may be a conscious choice by the video makers to make this seem helpful rather than "the law will come down on you hard." http://youtu.be/Az0Uwrq6s2g

Not that birders can access any of these sites, wouldn't it be interesting to have someone monitoring them?

Obsessed Podcast & River City Revue

I have a couple of events going on this week: One is the River City Revue, a trip on the Mississippi River via one of the Padleford Boats with a variety of presenters on science, nature and art.  I think some of my former park ranger buddies will be there too and the view on the river should be beautiful.  That will be this Wednesday at 7pm.

And we've talked about this on the Birdchick Podcast, but I'll also be a guest on the Obsessed Podcast with Joseph Scrimshaw...talking about how I don't consider myself obsessed with birds. The show will be recorded live at the Bryant Lake Bowl this Saturday.  If you can't make it, you can download it later, but if you can, the BLB is a great time--have a drink and great food and laugh.  I believe John Moe will also be a guest on this episode too.