Migration Floodgates Opened At Carpenter Nature Center

We had so many birds fly into the nets today (like the Nashville warbler above) at Carpenter Nature Center that I did not have a chance to document them all. I really felt more like a helper today as opposed to someone under foot. It was awesome, I was getting birds out nets--even uber challenging ones, I was using my Pyle book and my Pyle dichotomous key and even understanding it to age and sex birds--it was just sweet. Hey, Peter Pyle, have I thanked you lately for making the words "truncate" and "abraded" part of my daily vocabulary? Perhaps next time I get my hair done I will tell my stylist Rachel, "I would like the bangs fresh and truncate and the back to be tapered and relatively abraded with pale to buffy edging."

You can see his little rusty feathers on his crown. Migration was in full swing, as I was taking birds out of the nets I could hear red-eyed vireos singing and Jim Fitzpatrick, our instructor could hear a towhee.

And eventually it was trapped and banded. Jim said that he thinks this eastern towhee may be a first time banded bird for CNC--he got to do the honors of banding this bird. It was an exciting bird to see up close. This particular male's eyes were not bright red, but more of a rust.

Check out how the eyes on this male perfectly matches the rufus on his flanks. Very cool bird. Just as we stepped out to let the towhee go, he made a few odd squealing sounds and from the nearby woods we heard an uncertain, "Towhee?" Jim and I looked at each other--there was another towhee was in the woods. We let him go and he flew in the direction of the towhee call. What a bonus bird.

A surprise today were two clay-colored sparrows. My fellow classmate Sue heard them out on the prairie but we didn't expect them in the nets. Two came in at the same time in the same net, I wonder if this was related to mating? Two males chasing each other or a male in pursuit of a female?

I thought this was going to be my big challenge bird today--a female ruby-crowned kinglet. She was so tiny, it was like trying to get a dust bunny out of the nets. I took a deep breath, grabbed a toothpick to help remove the net tangled around the wings and got it out. Woof. I got her in the bag and eventually got to band her. She was so light, I decided to take her outside to band her. I wasn't used to banding such a tiny bird and chances were could that she could slip from my fingers in process. I thought it would be better to just have her fly away totally than get loose in the building and hit a window. All went well, I got the tiny band on her, measured her wings, and away she went.

But, she was not the most challenging bird of the day for me. It was this male rose-breasted grosbeak (he still has some of his brown juvenile plumage from last year--that made aging him a little easier). At one point we had several birds waiting to be processed but we hadn't checked the nets. I asked Jim what would be helpful, helping to band or doing a round to check the nets. He told me to check the nets and if there were several in one net to give a shout and someone would come out to help. I checked one net and there were four birds--including the grosbeak. We had been warned that grosbeaks and cardinals would bite the crap out of our fingers. I thought about saving the grosbeak for Jim and concentrating on the chipping sparrows, but I realized that I would have to learn on one of these sooner or later, might was well be now.

At first, I tried to hold him so that he couldn't reach my fingers as I tried to get him out of the net, but that just wasn't getting him free, so I changed my grip and she started to bite my hand. When he would get the entire tip of my finger in the grasp of that fat beak--it wasn't too bad, almost like being bitten by a sharp-shinned hawk. However, when he would use his beak to pinch and grab a tiny piece of skin...ZOWIE, that hurt. He also completely scraped off the nail polish on my index finger. But, I didn't have it so bad.

Fellow classmate Kelly worked to get a downy woodpecker out of the nets and he went after her fingers like Homer Simpson in a donut factory. Boy, that woodpecker seemed to know where to strike, right on the cuticle and along a knuckle. Downy woodpecker blood lust, who knew?

Kelly took her banding wounds in stride.

I ended my morning by banding a male brown headed cowbird. When he was in the net, he was incredibly docile, but as soon as I had him in the bag he freaked and was fluttering like crazy. Since cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds contributing to the decline of many species of birds including thrushes and warblers, it was tempting to do some experimental neutering on this male, I could not. The CNC permits only allow us to place a band on the birds and measure them, so I had to let him go.

The male cowbird really is kind of a striking bird up close. They filled an important niche when the bison roamed the prairie by following the large herds and eating the insects kicked up by the large animals. The traveler lifestyle isn't conducive to raising chicks, so they evolved over time to lay eggs in nests of other species of birds and those parents would raise their young. There aren't any herds to follow anymore, so the cowbirds follow the sedentary humans. One female cowbird depositing 60 eggs while following a herd of bison for miles and miles is one thing. One female cowbird depositing 60 eggs in a neighborhood can cause problems.

I have to admit that after spending the winter banding mostly juncos, I wondered how I would handle doing several species in one day, but I think I'm going to be fine. Can't wait to see what the rest of May brings and who knows, maybe by the end of summer I'll be ready for those difficult flycatchers.

Eagle Nest and Tons on the Horizon

For the readers who don't go to Disapproving Rabbits but would like to hear some of the sounds rabbits can make, check out this video of Cinnamon grunting.

So much to blog and so little time! I got the word from Lorraine that the bees have landed. I was hoping that they would arrive tomorrow or Friday and I would hive them on Friday but they came today. Right now I'm trying to rearrange my schedule to install them on Thursday. I'm hoping Non Birding Bill will come and use his mad video directin' skillz to make a short on how we install our bees. I can't help but giggle and think of two years ago when we first hatched the crazy bee plan. Mr. Neil and I with visions of hexagons and buzzing and Lorraine and NBB heavily protesting. Both saying we were not going into the bee business because Mr. Neil would be out of the country writing and I would be at some bird thing and Lorraine and NBB would be the ones to have to deal with the bees and they under no circumstances would not be helping with the bees...and here was Lorraine dealing with early bee arrival while Mr. Neil was away and I was doing a bird thing.

I stopped by the bald eagle nest at the 5-8 Club to get a last view of it before the trees leaf out. The chicks have hatched and the male and female are stopping by to feed them throughout the day.

Word on the street with the banders is that many eagles are about two weeks behind from last year because of the long winter. Some banding of eagle chicks was supposed to start next week and they are now scheduled to start on May 12. Eagles are usually good with starting early, they don't need water to be open, but osprey do. I know many lakes in northern Minnesota are still frozen, I wonder if they will be late this year too? Speaking of which, the are talking flurries again for the Twin Cities this weekend--for the first weekend in May. If that happens, that means that we will have had a six month winter. Our first snow was last November 5. That's the hardcore Minnesota winter we know and love!

The weather can't put a hold on the rest of migration. We had one intense day of banding at Carpenter Nature Center today, which I will get to tonight. The towhee above is just a hint. Boy, wasn't it just the other day that I blogged about wanting to get a photo of that crazy towhee eye? Sometimes, wishes do come true in the short term.

Here are a couple of other hints: What bird hates black sparkly nail polish more than titmice hate purple nail polish?

And, what bird caused this blood bath? That's not my finger...dodged a bullet with that bird!

Odds and Ends

Gary Reuter has combined two of my passions: a bird house painted to look like a beehive! He used the wren house nest box plans from Woodworking for Wildlife and then just painted it to look like a hive.

Speaking of nesting, if you have noticed any nesting in your yard, consider participating in NestWatch--a new, free citizen science project developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in collaboration with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and funded by the National Science Foundation. Participants visit nests during spring and summer to collect simple information about location, habitat, species, number of eggs, and number of young in the nest. Then they submit their observations online.

“NestWatch introduces birding and simple methods of scientific inquiry to families, children, retired adults people of all ages and skills,” says project leader Tina Phillips. “It’s easy and fun. It helps people reconnect with nature in their own yard, nearby park, or nature preserve.”

In other words, this is easy for anyone of just about any ability and would especially be a great idea for kids to get an interest in nature.

While you're checking out the NestWatch site, don't forget to visit all the NestCams Cornell has going on too.

Also Karen Sowizral emailed me this photo she took of a two headed gull (insert sinister music here). I think it's two herring gulls (thanks Nicki ;) side by side, but it does look like something Godzilla might fight.

New Mind Games To Play With Starlings

From The Telegraph:

Starlings can tell if you are watching them, according to a study that has shown for the first time that starlings respond to a human's gaze.

Starlings will keep away from their food dish if a human is looking at it. However, if the person is just as close, but their eyes are turned away, the birds resumed feeding earlier and consumed more food overall, according to experiments by Julia Carter and colleagues at the University of Bristol, reported today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.

Could this be exploited to make a better scarecrow? "Starlings do seem to have a reasonably strong aversion to eyes, even to artificial eyes, but these birds are also very quick learners," she says.

"Previous studies have shown that starlings will learn within a matter of hours to ignore even relatively elaborate bird scarers - these devices never do what a real predator would, they don't actually chase the birds or present any other signs of danger, so the birds quickly learn to ignore them."

This fear of being observed directly may be hard wired into bird brains, since predators tend to look at their prey when they attack, so direct eye-gaze can predict imminent danger. Equally, it might be a sign that starlings are doing something smarter than that, by taking into account the view of another, not just another bird but another species.

Carter says:"It is not yet clear what this means for the intelligence of starlings, they are certainly far more observant and sensitive to human facial cues that we might have imagined - what we find is responses to really very subtle differences in a human's eye-gaze, even though there are far more conspicuous and salient cues that don't change in the experiment: the close proximity of the person, and their body and face orientation."

"The possibility that the starlings can "read the intention of another species" is certainly an intriguing one, and is indeed an interesting possibility, though there are likely alternatives to consider," she says.

"The simplest explanation might be that these birds are responding at an innate instinctive level: circular eye-like patterns are thought to be rather conspicuous to vertebrates like starlings, so a human who is staring directly at the starling is likely to attract the bird's attention (because the direct eye-gaze presents a completely visible circular pattern) more so than the averted eye-gaze (which presents an angled view, and therefore a less circular pattern)."

Another likely possibility is that the starlings have learned to fear a direct look. "If a starling is ever chased or captured in the wild or in captivity, the event is preceded by the captor looking directly at the bird.

"A starling is never chased if it is not looked at first, so a predictive relationship can be learned - looking leads to a risk of capture. The final possibility is that the starling can recognise that the human is looking at it, and infer the likelihood that they will consequently be chased."

But, she says, "It is notoriously difficult to get inside the black box of an animal's brain in order to establish, for example, whether they can appreciate another's visual perspective or even whether they have a 'theory of mind'.

The reason that they benefit from being sensitive to a human gaze is down to peer pressure. Wild starlings are highly social and will quickly join others at a productive foraging patch. This leads to tough competition for food so an individual starling that assesses a relatively low predation risk, and responds by returning more quickly to a foraging patch (as in this study), will gain valuable feeding time before others join the patch.

"By responding to these subtle eye-gaze cues, starlings would gain a competitive advantage over individuals that are not so observant. This work highlights the importance of considering even very subtle signals that might be used in an animal's decision-making process."

Responses to obvious indicators of risk - a predator looming overhead or the fleeing of other animals - are well documented, but Carter argued that a predator's head and eye-gaze direction are also useful indicators of risk, even though subtle, since many predators orient their head and eyes towards their prey as they attack.

Carter did the study with Nicholas Lyons, Hannah Cole, and Arthur Goldsmith.

Barn Owl Pellet Reveals New Mammal

From the Telegraph:

A species of shrew has been found in Ireland for the first time - after it was discovered it was featuring on an owl's menu.

Scientists were alerted by the size of a skull found in food remains passed by a Barn owl.

They eventually managed to trap several of the greater white-toothed shrew to prove that it has taken up residence.

It is only the third new mammal to be found in Ireland in almost 60 years.

The shrew is normally found in parts of Africa, France and Germany and the closest it has previously been spotted to Ireland is the Channel Islands.

It is not known how the shrew arrived but the scientists believed it was introduced only recently.

Dave Tosh, from the School of Biological Sciences at Queens University, found the shrew in Tipperary and Limerick in the south-west of Ireland.

He was studying the diet of the Barn owl in Ireland as part of his PhD last winter when he was sent pellets - regurgitated food remains - from owls to help with the study by John Lusby, Barn Owl Research Officer from Bird Watch Ireland.

"It was amongst a batch that I was about to dry in an oven, that I noticed a very large shrew skull," he said.

"Having looked at hundreds of pellets from Ireland already I knew that what I was looking at was very unusual as our native pygmy shrew is very small in comparison.

"I ended up looking through more and more pellets and discovered more and more of the strange shrew skulls."

In March seven greater white-toothed shrews were trapped at four locations in Tipperary and their existence has now been recorded in the scientific journal Mammal Review.

Professor Ian Montgomery, Head of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen's, who helped trap the shrew, said the discovery of a new mammal species in Ireland is extremely rare.

Blogging On A Snowy Spring Day

I think this post needs to be book ended by butter butts (aka yellow-rumped warblers). In many ways spring is a cruel and at times non existent season in the northern US. Some might even goes far as to call spring a treacherous snake woman. After the magical Wednesday of seventy some odd degrees Thursday and Friday were rain, rain, rain, snow. Yep, snow. Now, luckily in the Twin Cities we just got a few flurries and a dusting that melted away by Saturday afternoon. However, up north they got 6 - 10 inches. I'm curious to see if there will be snow when I go up to the Detroit Lakes Festival in a few weeks.

After it rained all day Thursday, I headed 150 miles south to Wisconsin on Friday morning to give some bird programs at an elementary school. I knew cold weather was coming because my right knee was acting up--very stiff and painful to walk on--I dislocated that knee in a skateboarding incident at age 16 and like some weird voodoo it can sense dramatic temperature shifts. After I gave the programs, I used the chance to hang out with my buddy Joan and she took me to Trempealeau NWR. We had a few breaks between rain showers to do a little walking. When we stepped out of the parking lot we overcome by the aromatic and eye watering smell of:

a fish kill! Not since Stink Island have I had an nasal experience like that, it looked like mostly carp. I tried looking up the cause of the fish kill on "the google" and found that Trempleau NWR has a history of fish kills. The carp cause a disappearance of aquatic plants by grubbing up the roots and that leads to a deletion of dissolved oxygen in winter causing the fish kill. Bleh! However, some birds try to make the most of it:

This red-winged black bird was announcing his territory. I thought it was a pain to be out on a cloudy and drizzly day--this guy was singing on a pile of floaters--that's optimism! Imagine being a female red-winged blackbird, just returning from migration and you find a male you kind of like and he takes you back to see his territory and he takes you to this! Actually, she probably wouldn't care too much, not having a highly developed sense of smell. When the male wasn't displaying to rival males, he hopped from dead fish to dead fish feeding. At times it looked like slivers of fish meat and a couple of times it looked like he had found some sort of aquatic insect larvae. Leave it to birds to make the best of a rotten situation.

There were tons of yellow-rumped warblers. As I would drive, I could see clouds of them rolling through fields, the edge of woodlands, along water edges looking for anything edible. On my way down and on my way back to the Twin Cities I saw many recent insect eating arrivals: chimney swifts, purple martins, palm warblers, and on the listservs people were reporting orioles, thrashers, and rose-breasted grosbeaks. As much of a bummer as cold snap in spring is to me, I can't help but wonder how birds exhausted from migration can survive it.

I drove along and heard a familiar song--an eastern towhee. That's not a bird I hear very often in the cities and just took a few moments to enjoy his "drink your tea" song. I was bummed that I didn't have fantastic light. I'd love to try and get a shot where you can see that crazy red eye on the towhee--ah well, another bird for another day. His song was a welcome tune to the chilly day.

Okay, this is not the greatest shot ever of a red-tailed hawk, but the bird cracked me up. It was between rain showers and the bird was trying to air dry it's wings. Poor guy.

It's been interesting to watch the birds around my neighborhood. Saturday when it was snowing there were some yellow-rumps in my neighborhood searching for food around the tree buds and in crevices of apartment buildings--it's so strange to see them in their breeding plumage while feeding in snow flurries. The week is going to be chilly but should be warm by this time next weekend. I wish I could control the weather to give the arriving migrants a warmer welcome.

Turning A Corner With Banding

Wednesday was a glorious 70 degree day and just a fun morning of banding--I'm finally getting my footing with getting birds out of the net. We got in quite a few white-throated sparrows like the bird above.

KARE 11 came back to film a few more shots for the bird segment they are working on. Jim Fitzpatrick is getting interviewed above. And once again, as I was trying to get a bird out of the net I heard, "Hey, hold still, we're coming over to film that!" Happily, there was no panic attack like last week. I ended up doing it twice and I really feel like a turned a corner in my learning process. I have to admit that after last week, I was questioning whether or not I should keep going--but thanks to some extra practice last Sunday and the patience and teaching of some of the other banders at Carpenter I feel like I'm back on track with little birds. The only thing I worry about is that I don't dress for tv when I'm banding at Carpenter, I tend to dress for comfort--ah well.

The most interesting bird that we got on Wednesday was the last bird in the traps--a junco (quite possibly the last junco I will band this spring). When I was taking it out of the bag, I could see that it had a pink rump. Closer inspection revealed that they were not pink feathers:

The bird was missing a large patch of feathers on its rump. It must have happened a couple of weeks ago, pin feathers are already growing above the tail. You could also see that in the middle of the pink skin was a healed over puncture wound. Something had attacked this junco and it survived! And it was still strong enough to migrate! At this point, the juncos we are getting at Carpenter are ones that spent the winter further south like in Missouri or Texas. Somewhere along the way, something tried to eat it. We made a note about the wound and it will be interesting to see if the junco is retrapped and how long it survives.

Here's a photo pointing out the growing feathers and the scabbed over wound. You can also see the uropygial gland also called the preen gland. They squeeze this gland and oil comes out that is used when preening. I wonder if this wound is from a shrike? Shrikes kill with their beaks? It could also have been a sharp-shinned talon too. I don't think it's from a cat, small animals usually don't survive that. Cats have a bacteria called Pasteurella that will infect the bite or claw wound and kill the small animal within a few days.

So many things learned at banding.

Would You Sette For A Cleansing Robin?

There has been a request for a cleansing bird after the last post (sorry I didn't give the gross out warning with that one). I must admit, that looking out the window and seeing snow this fine April 26 that I myself am in need of a cleansing bird. So, how about a cleansing robin:

Breathe in the robin. Breath out the robin. In. Out. In. Out.

Spring can be such a biotch.

File Under: That Had To Hurt Comin' Out

I was sent this story about a California wildlife rehabber who found an injured hawk:

A hawk was found dead along a California highway with the claw of a songbird protruding from its chest.

It's not clear, however, if the partially digested meal, one claw somehow managing to get back out from a terribly wrong location, had anything to do with the hawk's death.

On the evening of Sunday, March 30, Julia Di Sieno of the Animal Rescue Team in California noticed the dead sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) while driving a sick night heron to the Solvang Veterinary Hospital. Sharp-shinned hawks are birds of prey and considered stellar hunters. They are the smallest hawks that reside in the United States and Canada.

"So I did a U-turn, put on my gloves and picked the bird up, and immediately rushed him to the vet where he died in my hands," Di Sieno told LiveScience. "Upon examination, we noticed that there was a small bird foot out of its chest."

A pouch in the hawk's chest area called the crop had ripped open and the songbird, which had been a meal for the hawk, was spilling out. You can see this in a larger version of the above photo here. There is also another angle of the hawk here.

"We removed a good portion of this bird [the songbird], which was partially digested," Di Sieno said by telephone yesterday. The hawk had apparently just finished downing what might have been a sparrow, she said. "He [the dead hawk] even still had down feathers and meat on his beak."

However, Di Sieno said she is not sure how the hawk died or what caused its crop to burst open.

I'm not sure what happened. It the larger versions of the photos, the head looks really flat and more like a Cooper's hawk than a sharp-shinned--but the photos are at odd and unnatural angles. Also, the leg looks like a blackbird leg. Either way, I don't think that the prey ripped it's way out. Sharp-shins and Cooper's typically do not swallow prey whole--they are smaller and they rip it apart. I doubt whatever bird it was would have had a chance to claw it's way out of the crop. My guess is that when the hawk was hit by a car, the impact or some part of the vehicle cause the very full crop to get ripped open. But we don't know for sure and it makes for some interesting conjecture.

Speaking of bird feet undigested...

I found some interesting excrement at Carpenter Nature Center yesterday! It looks like mammal poop and that the mammal had eaten a large bird. Do you see the long bird toes in the above photo?

This chunk had shafts from feathers in it. The bird wasn't white, but the shafts got bleached as they were worked through a digestive tract.

The toes were just fascinating. I'm guessing that they are pheasant toes, but turkey is a possibility--both can be found at Carpenter. While I was taking photos I could hear a pheasant giving its old rusty car horn call not too far away. Still there are many questions: What sort of mammal is this from? Red fox? Gray fox? Coyote? Was it a turkey or pheasant? And how much did it hurt to have those bird claws coming through the back door?

Trapped Squirrel

Sometimes squirrels get trapped in the Potter Traps for songbirds at Carpenter. We have to get them out, so I usually use a stick to open the door to avoid being inadvertently clawed. Today's squirrel was a little slow on the uptake: