Jen Vieth from Carpenter Nature Center sent some cool photos of her grape jelly feeder. She's getting orioles, like the young ones above, but she also gets:
an American robin coming in to the grape jelly too.
Thanks, Jen!
Random Meowing Catbird
I think this is a young catbird--note it is banded. I digivideoed it at Carpenter Nature Center.
Young Grosbeak
So, I'm in Rhode Island at the moment hanging at the Swarovski Headquarters. I'm eating lunch (real mashed potatoes, thank you very much, Swarovski Cafe) under a large crystal chandalier. Ah life. I'm giggling too because Non Birding Bill has just sent me a link to a limited edition Beverly Hills 90210 iPod Nano. But, if I download all the episodes, will I still have room for birdJam?
Check out this funky bird in hand that we got in at Carpenter Nature Center last Friday (boy am I behind on some blog entries or what. To those who are not as familiar with birds this might be a tad confusing but banding wise this was a fairly easy bird to figure out. We didn't have to debate too much with the Pyle over it. It's a hatch year male rose breasted grosbeak. Normally you have to look at feathers and see if they're truncate and fresh or relatively abraded, blah blah blah. But, because this dude looks like a female grosbeak with pink on the undersides of the wings, that tells us he's fresh from the nest and male.
It this upclose head shot you can see the gape at the corners of his beak indicating a young bird. Don't get me wrong, even though he's young, that beak is still quite capable of breaking the skin. Here's hoping he survives his first migration and visits us again next spring.
Okay, now back to looking at naked binoculars.
Caterpillar Fierceness
If you watched the caterpillar shed video in the earlier post, here is a little background info. As caterpillars grow, they shed their skins. The period between each shed is called an instar. Monarchs do this too as they grow, but what's fun about black swallowtail caterpillars is that they change color. When tiny, they start off resembling bird poo and not a protein powered snack a bird might want to eat and as they get larger, the coloration switches to help them blend in with parsley stalks. The caterpillar that shed was in its third instar and then shed into the fourth looking completely different. Pretty cool huh? Here is a cool site that helps explain it.
One of the cool things about black swallowtail caterpillars that I neglected to mention during last year's ranching season was their crazy defense mechanism. When threatened, two little orange protuberances that resemble horns pop out. Note the horns on the above black swallowtail caterpillar? They have a strange aroma and they whip their heads around flashing their horns. I think the smell is supposed to repel potential predators, but in my case, it just fascinated me.
They even have them when they are tiny caterpillars. Beware the mighty black swallowtail caterpillar! And of course, I corralled Non Birding Bill into helping me video it. I've read that you can squeeze your swallowtail cats to get them do this, but I don't recommend it--why risk the injury. Sometimes just brushing parsley near their butts results in the stink horns coming out. In the video, NBB is just barely grazing the cat with a Q-tip. Here is the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj1jNu3aEDc[/youtube]
Swallowtail Caterpillar Shedding Its Skin
Okay, time to get back to blogging as usual. I'm currently on my way to some interesting travel. I'm on my way to Rhode Island and will be here for a few days and take a side trip to Cape Cod, then come back to Minneapolis late Friday night and leave Saturday morning around 7am for a whirlwind jaunt to South Dakota.
In the meantime, it's Butterfly Ranchin' time at Chez Stiteler and below is a video of a black swallowtail caterpillar shedding its skin:
Jane Goggin
Another hard loss for the Minnesota Birding Community. Last week, losing Bud Tordoff was hard, but combine that with the way too early loss of one of my favorite vets at The Raptor Center makes this an almost unbearable Monday morning indeed.
Jane Goggin was young, she was gifted--a rare vet not only with a sensitive bedside manner with birds, but also with humans. She didn't like to be in the forefront, she was quiet and it was darn hard to ever get photos of her, but talented though she was, the limelight was not her objective. Chances are good that if you ever communicated with one of the vets at TRC, it could have been Jane, she worked in clinic for over 16 years. She was part of some of my most memorable blog entries. Above is one of the very few photos I have of her, test flying a Cooper's hawk. This was from the day she and fellow vet Lori Arent allowed some volunteers to watch them test fly a young Cooper's hawk that was recovering in clinic--the Coops almost clotheslined us.
She was so generous for information and never made lay people like myself feel stupid. Another memorable moment was the day she and Dr. Juli Ponder (above) explained about young eagles with maggots in their ears--read it here, but be warned, it's kinda gross.
Jane cared about conservation of birds and cared for individual birds, their comfort when injured was always a priority. She will be greatly missed. TRC has put up a lovely tribute here.
Partial Albino Golden Eagle
The above photo is of a partial albino (or whatever bird scientists are calling it these days). from the Pueblo Chieftan There's a once-in-a-lifetime guest at the Pueblo Nature and Raptor Center who'll be staying indefinitely.
Diana Miller, raptor center director, said the leucistic ("partially albino") golden eagle was found July 12 by ranchers in the Hoehne area in Southeastern Colorado. They contacted state Division of Wildlife officials, who brought the weakened bird to Pueblo.
Miller said the male bird's feathers have been severely damaged by parasitic, chewing lice. She surmised that they were especially susceptible to insect damage because most of them are lacking normal pigmentation. Pigmentation protects them from damage caused by the elements, she explained.
"He's also suffered a minor shoulder injury at some point. His wing is a little droopy," she said. "The condition of his feathers is a big problem. They're in horrible shape. Lots of them are very fuzzy and very frayed."
Miller said albino eagles are "pretty rare" and human encounters with them even more rare. "I have no idea what the statistics would be, but it would be way up there - one in a million, maybe," she said. The bird won't be on display at the raptor center until - and if - it is healed to the point that Miller and others determine it can either be released back into the wild or transferred to the public area of the center where other permanent residents live. Only birds that can't survive on their own stay on at the center after they've healed from the injuries or other conditions that brought them there.
"It's hard to say if he'll fly again. It's gonna be a long road. He's going to need to moult, and we'll have to wait and see how the new feathers come in and what condition they're in before we see whether he can survive in the wild again," she said.
Curious nature lovers may be able to view the eagle's progress by video on the center's Web site within the next few weeks.
"We're working on getting a Web cam set up and we'll see how that goes," Miller said.
For now, she added, "He's adjusting well. He's calming down and getting accustomed to his situation. He's eating well and enjoying having a pool of water to bathe in. I think he's just happy to have food and water, and not be out there struggling and starving to death."
She said the bird's tail feathers indicate an age oJ 2 or 3 years, so apparently it had been independent and healthy until this summer. "There's no way he could fly when he was found," she said. "We hope he will be able to again after he's healthy."
The raptor center, located on Nature Center Road just before the curve that leads to the nature center, accepts donations of cash and the raw meat of elk, deer and antelope to feed the birds of prey in its care.
Harrison Bud Tordoff
Bud Tordoff, peregrine falcon guru has died.
This is how I will always remember him. He loved peregrine falcons, he loved showing them to the public, he loved restoring our falcon population in Minnesota.
I'll never forget the first time I got to tag along to a peregrine nest with Bud and Mark Martell. Years ago when I was kid, reading my Wonder of Birds book or being sent articles by an uncle about reintroducing peregrine falcons in cities, I dreamed about what it would be like to be up on one of those buildings, watching a falcon nest.
When I started volunteering at the Raptor Center, my friend Amber and hoped to get out to the nests. We got to know Mark who went out banding with Bud and who managed to get us an invite. We were both nervous and excited. On the one hand we were going out to see a peregrine nests up close and learn about falcons. On the other, we were with one of the guys who not only worked with Dr. Pat Redig to reintroduce peregrine falcons in Minnesota, but was a past president of the American Ornithologists' Union and was a World War II Flying Ace. I just hoped I wouldn't come off as some Twinkie and not annoy either Mark or Bud too much. But we soon learned that with Bud, if you liked peregrine falcons, you were good company. We would listen to him recount the various histories of peregrine falcons not unlike the way one of my aunts would recount all the loves of Susan Lucci on All My Children. Even over the years, if one of us would find a banded peregrine and told Bud, he would ask if we could read the band number. If we could, he usually knew what nest it came from and when and where it was hatched.
The first time we went up into a building to a peregrine nest platform, it was a cloudy day in Minneapolis. Traffic was noisy and bustling on the street, but when we ascended the Multifoods Building and made it to the nesting corridor, it was silent except for the wind whipping through the screen. I remember walking down the dark corridor, feeling the wind and noticing pieces of pigeon wings, starling legs, grackle heads and other bird parts. With the wind blowing and the bird parts, it almost seemed like we were walking into some monster's lair. Bud spotted a peregrine perched on a building about two blocks away. As we aimed our binoculars, it dropped from its perch. Before I could get the sentence out, "Huh, I wonder where it went?" the falcon's dark form flashed right in front of us. We laughed at being startled and admired the bird's speed to defend its nest. I was so nervous that day, I foolishly didn't bring a camera. I'll never forget that day and it certainly is in my top five birding moments of all time.
Bud was kind and generous with his information. I've met so many people who would tell me of meeting a "nice old man who apparently knows a lot about peregrines." If you hung out at any of the nesting spots in the Twin Cities, the chances were good you might find him along side you watching the birds as well. No question was too stupid, he would answer them all and often ask bystanders about what they had seen, always wanting to know more about the falcon species he loved so much.
I'm just scratching the surface of all the wonderful avian projects Bud was involved in, I know others who knew him could add to it. He is going to be missed.
Birds And Beers Tonight!
Tonight is Birds and Beers at Merlin's Rest. It should be interesting, we start at 6pm and they are doing a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) fundraiser (silent auction and raffle) at the same time. They're even doing a special pub quiz tonight too starting at 7:30pm.
Hope to see you there!
Orange Variant House Finch
We had an orange variant house finch show up at feeders. Usually when you think male house finch, you think pink--and there can be various shades of pink. Periodically, you might even notice and orange one like the bird above or perhaps even a yellow male.
Here's a comparison of an orange variant male house finch and a typical pink colored male house finch. According to Birds of North America Online, the color of male feathers results from 3 carotenoid pigments: ß-carotene, which produces yellow to orange color in feathers; isocryptoxanthin, which produces orange color in feathers; and echinenone, which produces red color in feathers. By doing controlled feeding experiments with captive house finches researchers found that all individual male finches in all populations all over the US have same potential to be pink, orange, or yellow; the color variation based on the finch's access to carotenoid pigments when they are molting (shedding old feathers and growing in new ones).
In experiments, males that were fed a plain seed diet, which was fully nutritious but provided few carotenoid pigments, all males grew feathers with similar pale yellow coloration. On a seed diet with ß-carotene added, all males grew pale orange feathers. And, on a seed diet with the red carotenoid canthaxanthin added, all males grew bright red feathers. So, this male above is getting his ß-carotene, but not the right carotenoids for red feathers.
There is also a study that suggests the brightness in color in male house finches can be a signal of nutritional health to female house finches. Females may look at a brightly colored male as a better mate since he appears to have access to a good food supply in his territory.