Guess What? Pigeon Butt

On cold mornings, one of the pigeons on my ledge likes to press its vent (ornithology term for butt) up against my window for warmth. Is it a good omen to be mooned by a pigeon first thing in the morning?

FYI to those owling this weekend

Birders visiting Sax-Zim this weekend should exercise extreme caution. We had an ice storm today, and all side roads are covered with a slick layer of ice. Travel is possible only at very slow speeds (it took me 15 minutes to drive the 2 miles between hwy 53 and my house in Melrude this evening), and other drivers will have a difficult time avoiding parked vehicles or birders standing in the roadway. I would advise against stopping on 52 (Arkola/Comstock Lake) road at all, and be advised that shoulders on other roads (Hwy 7...) may well be ice covered even if the roadway itself is clear. Owls will likely have a much more difficult time finding prey with the thick layer of ice now covering the snow, so any birder/photographer activity that interferes with hunting behavior should be avoided at all costs.
Thanks, and please be careful!
Ben

Ben Yokel

NBC Nightly News!!

I'm so excited! Thanks to Carrol Henderson I'm going to go out with a film crew from NBC Nightly News and look at owls next week. They're going out on Tuesday with me (to get the birder perspective) and Wednesday with Jim Lind (to get the scientific perspective).

I have to give a big thank you to Rachel at Denny Kemp Salon. Being female the first thing I worried about this was my hair. I don't want to look like the usual birder, I want to sassy up the color. On this short notice and with what I want done it didn't fit with my schedule or Rachel's work schedule, so bless her heart she's going to come in on her day off to color my hair.

I also just learned that my sister Terri and my mother are coming up for some of the owl action next week. What an exciting year. Neither have ever seen a great gray and so this will be a real treat. I just thought, my mom is only 4'8", some great grays are 3 feet in length, that's over half her length, they will seem very big to her.

Important Reminder

This is just a friendly reminder for anyone who is planning to look for
owls in the Sax-Zim Bog--please be safety conscious while birding! If
we get ice on the roads this weekend from possible rain, the area could
become dangerous to those who are looking at owls and not paying
attention to traffic on the roads. My DNR colleagues who work in the
area have asked me to relay this reminder to birders. The people who
live in the area are concerned. Please spread the word. Enjoy the
owls, but don't stop in the middle of the road, and pay attention to
traffic so there isn't an accident.

--Pam Perry, DNR Nongame Specialist, Brainerd

Varied Thrush

This morning as I was getting ready for work I saw on mou net that a varied thrush was in Falcon Heights (not too far from where the St. Paul great gray owl was seen). I had an hour before work and figured since it was after rush hour I could get to Falcon Heights in 15 minutes, look for the bird for ten minutes and then have about 35 minutes to get from there to Wayzata--it was doable, I could get a new Minnesota bird.

The directions were easy, the bird was out in the open in plain sight hopping around under someone's feeder. You can view the varied thrush on the Recently Seen page of the MOU website.

I love getting a cool bird before work, it's better than coffee.

Owls just don't stop

I took a group of two non-birding friends and my husband out to Cotton to see a few owls. We were in Duluth looking at used book stores and antique stores (looking for old fountain pens). Around 3pm we headed out and after getting some coffee we made it to Sax Zim at about 4:15. It was funny because one friend, Jody, had never seen an owl and within 45 minutes she saw 14. Not only that, she saw three different species: great gray, northern hawk owl and one far off barred owl. Even my non-birding Bill got in on the action, he was taking photos. It was fun to watch my regular non-birding friends point out owls.


One of non-birding Bill's photos of a great gray owl on a sign as we drove by.

Well, the KARE segment went great and lots of people are signing up for our impromptu owl tour through the bird store. It also looks like our owl prowl classes in the Twin Cities through The Raptor Center are filling up quickly too.

So many owls are flooding into the state and now owl stories are popping up. One birder thinks that he may have caught someone illegally killing a great gray up at the bog, but it turns out that the person is legally setting out leg hold traps for fur bearing animals. Great grays that are hungry are flying down for the bait and getting caught in the traps. Because they are legal traps, it's illegal to interfere with them. Most of this is just rumor but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Another interesting rumor through the rehabber grapevine is that the great gray owl that was seen in the St. Paul area is dead. Someone called and reported that they had an owl carcass (they're not sure but possibly a great gray) from that neighborhood. That bird most likely starved to death since that neighborhood wasn't the most ideal habitat for an owl. The bird also received much more harassment by local corvids than it would up north. Up north crows and jays have learned that the great gray owl's feet are too tiny and the owl to slow to give them any trouble. In the metro area the corvids just see an owl of some sort and mob it constantly. Excessive mobbing by corvids may have been a factor). Again, this is rumor at this point.

Someone who lives up near the bog asked on the birding lists how they can avoiding hitting the great gray owls with their car. Apparently they have hit two already this winter and both times the owl swooped down off the perch at the last minute. I have no idea how to solve that problem. That's one of the reasons why tossing mice to the owls from your car is frowned upon. It gets them used to the road and a little lax about flying in front of or around vehicles. Owls typically drop from a high perch and fly low to the ground and many times when they are hit it's a result of poor timing on their part and not the result of reckless driving.

In other news, we do have nine great gray owls and at least one northern hawk owl recovering in the clinic at The Raptor Center.

Birds on the Radio

If you listen to radio shows, around the holidays guests hosts start filling in. I always wondered how they pick the hosts and get the poor suckers to work...now I know, I'm guest hosting A Balanced Breakfast with Ian and Margery Punnett. I'm incredibly excited, I love Christmas Eve it's a fun day (if you approach it with a relaxed sense of humor). I'm excited, hosting a radio show, getting the message out about birds on a mainstream station and then working at the bird store for a few hours and then dinner and a quiet evening with my husband, what a great way to spend the day. At the bird store, either regulars who are just grabbing a little extra seed for the holiday are in, or men in a panic looking for last minute mom gifts. You are the light in the dark, helping them find something you unique and insure that mom gets a good sturdy bird feeders (if she's not into birds, she will be after she sees one of these babies).

And the answer is...

Immature goshawk.

Note the hawk has a very long tail in relation to the body, suggesting an accipiter. There's also the white eyebrow and the fact that the bird is about the size of the mallards.