I got my first royalty check from Adventure Publications today. The really cool part is there's a list of stores that have purchased the calendars and some of them have very weird names like Loonasota, Jabberwocky or Shaman Drum. Then, I see that completely unexpected places are carrying the bird calendars like City Drug or Exit Restaurant.
First Blood at the Bird Store
A little before 5pm today, Melissa called me to the back door and asked if I had my good binoculars (pish-sha, did I have my good binoculars--what kind of birdchick would I be without them?). There was a Cooper's hawk that had just grabbed something from the feeder...and it was still alive. Melissa and I tried with our binos to identify the prey being killed and left poor Denny to tend to the customers on his own. The Coop's was an immature bird probably fairly fresh from the nest and seemed confused and surprised that it not only had hold of something, but also how to keep it from moving. Every time the hawk lowered it's head to pluck feathers, the bird in its talons fluttered and tried to peck the hawk's face.
I often ponder how I would like to be killed if I were prey. As much as I love accipiters I think that would be the worst way to go. They have skinny little legs and thus do not have the squeezing and crushing power a great-horned owl or red-tailed hawk do. Cooper's seem to turn their feet into fast little squeezing devices so it almost looks like your being pricked to death by a sewing machine. If I had my choice, I think a peregrine falcon would be the best way to die. They dive at you at incredible speeds so as soon as they hit you, you would die or at worst be knocked out. When they have you in their talons on the ground, they snap your neck--you're nice and dead when they start to eat you. Accipiters start eating whether you're dead or alive, not so much fun.
Anyway, the prey finally died and the young Coops seemed to be at a loss as to what to do next. It started watching all the red-winged blackbirds and goldfinches mobbing it, still stimulated for a hunt. It would start to move and then realized that it was holding something and stay for a second. Then it started to preen it's feathers. Eventually, Denny had a chance to come out to watch and we all speculated what the prey item might be. I thought it looked large and had a white chest and speculated it was one of the you phoebes that are hanging around. Melissa thought maybe a cardinal or mourning dove. Denny thought it was a house sparrow. It looked too large to me, but some crows flew in to feed without noticing the hawk and the Coops was noticeable smaller than the crows, indicating that it was a male and that the prey was not as large as I thought it was.
Once we were sure the prey was dead, we started to invite customers back to look at hawk (you never know how people feel about the food chain) and they were pretty excited to see it. It was time for Denny to leave but his car was near the hawk and he didn't want to flush it off its prey. I pointed out that the young Coops had left the prey on a branch and was preening a couple of feet away from it so it probably wasn't that hungry. Denny went to his car which was parked near the Coops--the bird didn't flush! We thought for sure that when Denny drove away, that the hawk would flush. Denny drove by and the hawk stayed. Denny turned to look at me, shrugged in disbelief and continued home.
Melissa was leaving next and she has a big old mini van, surely that would flush the young Coops. No.
At 6pm when it was time to close the store, the hawk started eating in earnest plucking feathers everywhere. I closed the door and periodically watched the hawk. When I had the store secured, I noticed the hawk was gone. I thought I would go out to see if the bird had left any evidence of what it ate. When I approached the feeding area, the hawk flew up off of the ground and perched. It must have dropped the prey and continued eating it on the ground. I was ten feet from the hawk and took the photo at the beginning of this entry. Note that the
hawk is sitting on one foot meaning it was completely relaxed and not bothered by me a bit. I snapped some photos and went back into the store. After another ten minutes, the Coops flew off. I went out hoping to find some carnage to investigate but found very few clues as to the hawk's meal--it ate almost everything.
Based on the bird's behavior and tolerance of humans, I couldn't help but wonder if this was the bird's first official kill? I did manage to find a couple feathers and thanks to my new Bird Tracks and Signs Book that I just bought, I was able to enjoy studying the few feathers I found. The feather on the left has two creases along the shaft. That is where the hawk had placed it's bill when plucking the feather out. Notice the punctures on the plumage of the feather on the right? Those were probably made by the bill while plucking as well. I compared the feathers, with feathers in the book and it looks like Denny was correct, it did eat a house sparrow.
My, how the worm has turned...
This time of year when many robins have fledged and the flocks lay low, usually someone starts and alarm that is something to the effect of "I'm not seeing robins, are they in trouble?" Several possible sinister explanations are tossed around and inevitably someone will say, "I see more crows and they eat robin's eggs and babies, crows must be responsible!" That just kind of adds to the whole anti-crow movement that is out there...and now there is this. Oh sure the robin is an innocent looking songster, but now it could be the possible carrier of West Nile Virus and not the dreaded crow?
This is an excerpt in tonight's Star Tribune:
The beloved American robin, not the annoying, raucous crow, may be the more potent source for West Nile virus, according to new research. A DNA analysis of blood taken from the abdomens of 300 mosquitoes trapped in Connecticut in the past three years found that 40 percent fed on the blood of the red-breasted songbird and only 1 percent on crows, said Theodore Andreadis, chief medical entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in Hartford. "I was quite surprised," he said.
Not Bloodworm
In my post about the Meadowlands Meeting I mentioned there was a "bloodworm" infestation. I got a couple of emails, including one from Mark Martell pointing out that trees don't have blood. I was incorrect, it is budworm that infected the trees at the bog.
My little brain must think bloodworm sounds better.
Why I Love Non Birding Bill
So, during the last blog entry I was absent-mindedly playing with my toes while typing and I felt something odd between my toes, I knew right away it was a tick and I FREAKED. You would think that someone in the birding industry would be able to handle ticks, but NO not me. I hate ticks. You know how Indiana Jones felt about snakes, multiply that by about 30 and that's my feeling about ticks. Eww. Anyway, I felt something "tickish" between my toes and just froze. Thank goodness Non Birding Bill came home from play rehearsals within the next five minutes. He noticed my agitated state and I told him that I thought I had a tick and he took care of it. I hate ticks! They just oook me out. I could see twenty severed fingers in one day and be totally okay, but a tick on my toes just makes me incapacitated. I hate ticks---ick! Why, why were they created? Ticks are almost enough to make me give up birding.
That's not really serious, that's just the several shots of scotch talking that NBB gave me to calm me down. Think, happy thoughts...turkey vulture...barfing pelicans...crows eating an eye socket off of a road kill deer...hmmm, that's better.
i hate ticks
i'm probably going to regret this post in the morning
i hate ticks
Bald Cardinals
Well, it's that time of year again when I get a phone question that goes something like this:
"I think I have an escaped cage bird, or some rare bird. I've got a bird that is all red, almost as red as a cardinal (on a few occasions the bird will be brown). The bird has a small black head, and big orange bill. Do you know what that is?"
It's the bald cardinal sometimes called "pinhead" or "mini red vulture". Melissa Block got this photo. It was very funny, she called when I was in Virginia and asked if she could borrow the NovaBird Camera to get photos of birds eating mealworms for the Wild Bird Store's newsletter. I told her to just take one from the store, use it for a day or two and then bring it back. Two days later I get an email from Melissa telling me that she's having too much fun with the camera and will just buy it. It's fun, it's like you're still able to bird when you aren't home. Notice the hole just below the eye--that's the cardinal's ear. I wonder if their hearing is affected without the feathers covering the hole?
Cardinals can go bald for a couple of reasons. This time of year the birds are molting so before the new feathers grow in the old feathers fall out and for some reason cardinals will sometimes loose all the feathers on their head. The skin is black and without the fluffy feathers, their head looks teeny tiny especially with the massive bill.
Sometimes birds will get feather mites and all their feathers will get eaten away by the mites and the birds are bald until they grow in new ones. However, if you are seeing bald cardinals this time of year, it's a safe bet that they are molting. You may also see bald blue jays or grackles as well. Hilton Pond did a great article about feather mites, that featured a frightening photo of a bald female cardinal--eeeeeelich.
UPDATE: You can read more about bald cardinals here.
Raptors and Rabbit Calls
Yesterday I walked out to the feeding station behind the bird store and flushed a Cooper's hawk. The vegetation is fairly high so I crouched down. Sometimes you can get accipiters to come back by making squeaky signs. They are a bird that acts before thinking (like me, I think that's why I accipiters so much). I thought I would try out an injured rabbit call that Carrol Henderson taught me, he says that he's gotten foxes and coyotes come within twenty feet with that call. I gave the call and a cottontail rabbit hopped right over. It saw me and then hopped back in the tall grass. I thought that was weird and most likely a coincidence so I made the noise again. The rabbit slowly crept out of the grass towards me. The more I did it, the closer it came. Before I could help myself I just started laughing and the rabbit seemed to come to its senses and hopped in the grass. The Cooper's hawk never came back, so either I did the call completely wrong and sounded like a friendly bunny or rabbits have a morbid curiosity about injured fellow lagomorphs.
I noticed that there was a whining red-tailed hawk out in the wetland so I took a quick walk over. As soon as I came into view, an adult red-tailed hawk flew right over my head and started screaming (photo above). It even did the flare thing that Brian Wheeler and Stan Tekiela taught me that eagles do. When eagles see something they think is hinky, they will kind of pause in the air and flare out the talons. It serves as a message to other eagles that something is a little off over here. Anyway, the adult red-tail kept doing the same thing over my head, flashing it's talons and screaming. The immature red-tail just kept whining and trying to catch a thermal to get up and sore. I've heard that when young birds leave the nest, parents will mob a lot more actively almost to show what is danger and what isn't. I wonder if the younger red-tail was like, "Yeah, yeah okay mom I get. Oooo, big scary human. Now what's for dinner."
Meadowlands Meeting (Sax Zim Bog)
This shirt is now available at the Country Store in Meadowlands in Sax Zim Bog. All the sizes were too big for me, but I have started a tradition of giving all the bird shirts I would love to wear to Non Bird Bill. I gave it to him and he said, "I don't know, I've never birded the bog."
"Yes, you did," I insisted. "Remember last January? You , me, a librarian and a rockstar...about a dozen owls?"
"Oh, yeah." he replied.
Yesterday I headed up to the Sax Zim Bog area with Carrol Henderson and Mark Martell to a meeting with the locals and business owners about birding tourism in the area. Carrol talked about what is birding tourism, Mark talked about turning the area into an IBA (Important Bird Area) and I talked about how to market to birders. ( I'm beginning to think more and more that I'm a birding agent--Show Me the Birdies!)
I was so excited by the turnout. When Jim Larson and Pam Perry were putting this meeting together we thought maybe 12 people would show up, but there were about 70 people from the surrounding townships, and even Duluth. Some were excited to learn about what they can do to make the area more accessible to birders and some were just curious about all the fuss. There didn't seem to be anyone opposed to birders at the meeting but I have been in email contact with one person who thought people coming to watch her feeders in the front of her yard was incredibly rude and a huge invasion of privacy. I did think it was cute that she wonders why people wanted to look at her feeders, there were no owls there just common winter birds (pine and evening grosbeaks, hoary redpolls, the occasional boreal chickadee you know all those common birds we all get ;)
What I really liked about the meeting is that last night's meeting was the result of a group of people from the DNR, forest management, wildlife management, birders, townsfolks getting together to find a way to not tick off the locals and to find out what birders would like for the area. Also, there have been some huge misconceptions about how the land is managed. A couple of years ago, some people were concerned at what looked like willy nilly logging. What turned out to be the problem was a budworm infestation and they were trying to take out tress in the infected area to prevent the budworm from taking all the trees. This kind of communication is so important and we are really going to go in a great direction. I think it was a great idea to have a town meeting just to let residents know what was going on and that we weren't going to come in and tell the locals what we were going to do, we were getting their input and enthusiasm.
Birding in the Sax Zim Bog area is just going to get better and better. We won't have the owl irruption like we did, but it's still reliable for great grays (just not dozens by the day) plus other super cool birds. This is going in a great direction.
Birding in the Tabloids
This showed up on BirdChat. Can I say how much it makes me smile that birding is out there in the mainstream enough to warrant time on a tabloid tv show?
Have you been denied access to a favorite birding spot because ofsecurity concerns? "Inside Edition" (TV show) wants to know aboutyour experience. Please contact Heather King, Story Coordinator, at212-817-5516
Ivory-billed Woodpecker Insanity
From the post and timing you are probably thinking that I will write about the whole ivory-billed woodpecker validity controversy. Well, I've got something much better, someone has written a song about the ivory-bill. If you're a fan of the soundtrack to The Last Unicorn or the animated version of The Hobbit then you will probably enjoy a song by Sufjan Stevens called The Lord God Bird now available for download exclusively at the NPR website.
It's interesting to see the controversy being played out in major newspapers. Some birders are taking the nay saying over the ivory-bill very personally, but many of us have experienced a questionable sighting with various state records committees. This is nothing new to birders and listers, except the questioning is on a national scale.
Why would people question the likes of John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology? The argument could be made that someone like him wouldn't put his reputation on the line because too much would be at stake. The counter argument would be look at all the increased money Cornell will get from excited folks donating to become members to Cornell. I have heard researchers criticize some conservation organizations for using certain bird species as a way of making money through donations to their organization. Another possibility could be sour grapes over who was invited in the secret search of the ivory-bill and who was not. There are only so many people who could go look for the ivory-bill and keep it secret. Not to mention that politics run rampant in any field, birding being no exception.
The main reason(and I think the mostly likely reason) is that questions should always be asked in science. Let's face it, so far the only published footage is not what we hoped it would be and I see no problem asking questions if that really was an ivory-bill or not. Birders do it constantly, think about how many times someone has asked, "Was that a Cooper's hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk?" or "Was that a curved-billed thrasher or a Bendire's thrasher?"
Personally, I believe more and better footage will come, and that the most important thing that the very slight ivory-billed woodpecker sighting has brought us at this point is much needed hope.
On the off chance you have missed the ivory-billed articles these two break it down. I believe the New York Times require a free subscription.
New York Times article with interviews with Kenn Kaufman, David Sibley and Pete Dunne.