Blackbird Report

I took this at the store yesterday. Say what you will about starlings, they do look pretty cool in their spotty plumage this time of year.

For all those saying, "Hey, I thought you said blackbirds would be gone by now!" They will be gone soon. As soon as we get some snow they will be gone. In the meantime, it's fun to appreciate the male red-wing blackbird's red patches with the fall colors. The starlings will be here all winter. If you want to cut back on the number of starlings coming only feed seeds in a hard shell. They can't crack them open.

I also hear from Denny Martin that they turkeys in his backyard bully away the blackbirds for access to his millet, so try to attract some turkeys.

Another Rainy Day

Well, here I am living the dream. I have a relatively clean home (thank you Ritzy Clean-if you work full time and would rather spend your few days off a week not worrying about mopping the floors, dusting or scrubbing counters get a house cleaner they're not as expensive as you think).

Anyway, I'm living the dream: rainy day, nice autumn scented candle, big cup of coffee and writing away. I turn in the calendar tomorrow so today I'm home getting the last few details together.

Boy, northern owl species reports are pouring in. There's even been a snowy owl reported already. I'm supposed to go hand out with a friend this weekend but I'm thinking of calling a "birding emergency" and heading north. If anyone has been thinking I might come to Minnesota for owls this winter, I would turn that into a definite plan. Here's an expert from one of the weekly Duluth Rare Bird Alert yesterday:

We may be at the beginning of a large irruption of northern owls. Steve
and Diane Millard found 7 NORTHERN HAWK OWLS in the Sax-Zim area on
Monday and Tuesday, including several birds along Cty Rd 7 north of 133
and another bird a mile east of Cty Rd 7 on Stone Lake Rd. Another bird
was reported on the Beyer Rd near Jean Duluth Rd and the Strand Rd on
the 24th.

The Millards also found a GREAT GRAY OWL on Cty Rd 83, 2.5 miles south
of 27. Jim Lind found another today on the Stanley Rd (Cty Rd 9) about
4 miles west of Hwy 61 and the Two Harbors Ford dealership. Doug
Johnson found another along Hwy 61 one mile west of Flood Bay. Yet
another Great Gray was seen along Cty Rd 16 between Makinen and
Brimson. The bird was in the vicinity of the extensive spruce bog one
mile west of the entrance to the Whiteface National Forest Service
Campground. Uwe Kausch had a GREAT GRAY OWL at his house northeast of
Duluth.

The first SNOWY OWL of the season was found October 23rd at Paradise
Beach in Cook County, about 14 miles northeast of Grand Marais.

Anyone Missing a Baglafecht Weaver?

A weird bird turned up at someone's feeder in Stearn's county. The MOU has a photo of the Baglafecht Weaver on their recently seen page. I know there has been some question if this bird is a released pet or flew here from Africa of it's own volition. The bird appears to be wearing a pink leg band which says to me that it was a captive bred bird.

I also want to point out to people that the bird is eating what many people would refer to as crap seed. Look at all the milo and millet! Now, I don't want people to get any ideas, just putting crap seed in your feeder is not going to guarantee a good stake out bird. Although it makes sense that a species from another continent would eat seed that species on our continent won't touch. I wonder...maybe I could made up a new mix at the store: Rare Bird Chow, full of cheap filler seeds but tasty to those unusual birds that bring the listers to your backyard. If no birds are eating it in your yard that just means there are no rare birds in your area yet.

The bird does look very strange. Kind of reminds me of a coked out lesser goldfinch on steroids.

A goldfinch finally!!

For the record I live in the Uptown area of Minneapolis on a second floor apartment on a busy street. The trendy place to eat, get tattooed and pierced, have hair color not found in nature. My only feeders are off my bedroom window (the only place I'm allowed to have them anymore). I get surprisingly interesting birds at my feeder especially during migration. Two unexpected birds were a female Baltimore oriole and male rose-breasted grosbeak. The bane of my feeder list has been an American goldfinch. I have on occasion seen them merely a block from my house feeding on petunias that have gone to seed. I know they nest in the cemetary four blocks away, but never have I had even one at my feeder...until now. It's an ornery little bird too. A house sparrow just landed and he fluffed up and screeched and the house sparrow flew away. I've seen house finches bully the house sparrows, but never a goldfinch. Doh, he just flew away. Well, at least I know the goldfinches are aware of my existence at the feeder. It only took six years. It's odd, I got flying squirrels coming to my feeder before I got a goldfinch. Who knew?

Twilight Zone Moment

Okay, I've geeked out about Wheeler all week, this will be my last post and it should be out of my system.

Saturday night after a long day of pushin' seed at the Bird Store I collapsed on the couch to read my Raptor of the American West by Brian Wheeler. After watching his photography technique I had an even larger respect for the number of photos and variety of angles of the birds in the book. I started reading the acknowledgment section to see if I recognized anyone. That's one of my favorite things to do with bird books is to go over the acknowledgement section. I get so excited if there's a Minnesota name in there, I feel like a cheerleader screaming "Go Team!" Anyway, I was reading through the gigantic list and of course found a few recognizable Minnesota names like: Dudley Edmondson, Dave Gilbertson, Mark Martell, Frank and Kate Nicoletti, Matt Solensky, Sharon Stiteler... I must have reread that last name about ten times before I started hyperventilating. I asked Bill to read through the list to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Yes, my name spelled correctly is in the acknowledgments. To the best of my knowledge I'm the only Sharon Stiteler in the birding community. There is another Sharon Stiteler, but she's a diving champ and aerobic instructor and I'm sure when she googles her name wonders who the birding weirdo is that's out there.

Bottom line is, if that is my name in there, I don't know what it is that I did. To the best of my knowledge I've never met or encountered Brian Wheeler until the last month or so. I think my biggest fear is that somewhere there's information about raptors out there with my name on it and it's not really my information, that my name is in there by mistake. I'm terribly excited to have my name in print on one of the best raptor books out there, I just want to know what I did to deserve it and make sure there's not another Sharon Stiteler taking over in the birding community. I wondered momentarily if it's my evil twin, but Bill pointed out that I am my own evil twin so that blows my theory.

Call of the Wild

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match...

So, if anyone out there is interested in picking up men, especially rugged outdoors type guys, I can't recommend wearing camo enough. In order to go photographing with Wheeler and Tekiela we were ordered to be in full camo, plus they covered us in tarps so the birds would see nothing at all. When we arrived in Duluth, we stopped at a gas station for some coffee and breakfast sandwiches in our camo pants and jackets. As we entered, every male eye in the place was on us. I opened the refrigerator case for nice wholesome bottle of milk when I heard a roguish voice ask, "So, you ladies up here deer hunting?" He cocked his eye brow, coyly and gave a knowing smile.

I wanted to tell the truth, that we were going to sit on the ground covered in a tarp, watch hawks soar overhead and listen to two of the greatest bird photographers of our time go "clickity, click, click, click, click" with their cameras. Alas, I decided to flirt back and sound macho so I gave a little white lie and said, "We're hawk trapping!!" (we do go up for hawk trapping, however we were not this particular day).

He looked bewildered and a little disappointed that I wasn't going to go out and take out a buck with a nice rack (while sporting a nice rack of my own--ba da ching). Anyway, I tried to make it sound cool and exciting, but really in thirty seconds of flirting it's incredibly difficult to get the finer point of hawk trapping across. Knowing my luck, he probably thought I was going to kill hawks and is turning me in as I type.

The moral of the story was that if you want to meet men, go to a gas station wearing camo...it's a turn on.

This is a bird chick blog so, I should mention birds seen up in Duluth LOT AND LOTS of bald eagles! We had a kettle of about 7 eagles at one point and one of them turned out to be a golden eagle. We also saw many rough legged hawks. I saw more dark morph rough legs yesterday than I have in my entire life. Other points of interest included black-backed woodpeckers, snow buntings, lapland longspurs, gray jays, harriers, and my favorite raptor the goshawk!

Crouching Tekiela Hidden Wheeler

Stan Tekiela Tries to hide his gigantic scope (paging Dr. Freud) under a camo tarp. Combine that with Amber and I sitting nearby in camo burkas we were a scary looking party on the Duluth hillside.

Brian Wheeler attacks Amber. Why can't more authors be fun like this?

I totally geeked out yesterday. Amber and I got to hang out with Stan Tekiela and Brian Wheeler yesterday. It was just as exciting as I thought it would be. We sat under camo tarps, watched hawks come in and listened as Tekiela and Wheeler click clicked their cameras.

I'm so tired right now, I don't know how I'm going to make it to work today. I'm just grateful that I have Denny and Ron in today to put away the seed order. I got home past midnight last night after sitting on the ground most of the day, but again it was sooo worth it.

The best was watching Wheeler getting into his photographing outfit. He looked like Swamp Thing. The other thing that cracked me up was the amount of cell phone usage. I warned Bill and the people at work that I would probably be in places that it would be hard to reach me. I mostly didn't want to be the odd person out with her phone going off every few minutes. No one called me at all and these guys were talking every few minutes. It was great.

Wheeler had a sense of humor although Stan had warned us he was kind of a stick in the mud (which in hindsight I think was a joke Stan was playing on Amber and me...I got even, I told Wheeler what he said).

Amber and I are the coolest people I know.

Disapproving Rabbit Alert

This is a note from Cinnamon the Rabbit. I disapprove of millet.

Bird Gossip

A certain European S was found faternizing with a certain Columba Livia...

We have two list serves in Minnesota. One (Mnbird) is a general list that people can post pretty much anything relating to birds (as long as it's not politically partisan) and the other (mou-net) is for posting rare birds, odd bird behavior or movement. Some people don't like that there are two lists. Some people in the birding community don't get along. If you're on a list serve, you know what I'm talking about, it's the same in any geeky community.

Someone recently brought up that it's a shame that Minnesota birders are so nasty that we have to have to listserves. It cracks me up, I've been on nasty listserves and I would not call mnbird or mou-net nasty or cantankerous. Here's the birder idea of cantankerous: "You didn't mention seeing a weak olive vest on the bird you saw, are you sure it was in fact a dusky flycatcher?" The birder equivalent of a fight is questioning sightings or someone's bird knowledge. For the people involved it's very serious, but for outsiders looking in, it just confirms how nerdy and geeky we are. Some of the posts that show up from time to time can be misread in tone and interpreted as flaming, but it's more the result of people lacking social skills and being a little too direct in their emails.

I've been so tempted to respond to some of the posts that are showing up, but I don't think I would contribute anything new to the subject only get off a couple of zingers that would make me feel. Plus, I would probably end up engaging in a war of emails with someone I don't care for and really I'm too busy writing the calendar to spend sending emails slams back and fourth.

Orange Breasted Thugs

We've had flocks of robins moving through the last few weeks. I enjoy seeking them out on my walks, watching as they move secretly through the trees with a soft high pitched whistle. The bad boys that moved in today are a bit more aggressive.

Robins surrounding a roof top puddle. The bird on the far right is a cedar waxwing.

On one of the buildings behind mine, the roof is very slanted and water is always collecting. In the winter I watch the owner break up the ice dams, but in warmer weather this area serves as a make shift bird bath. This time of year I usually see a flock of cedar waxwings descend on the puddle. Today they showed up en masse, but their drinking plans were thwarted when the hordes of robins arrived. Any time a waxwing would try to go the puddle, at least two robins would fly in and pounce on it. Even the starlings were afraid of these guys. The robins sat in the trees and flicked their tails in defiance while giving sharp "chirip chup chup" calls. No one was going to mess with this flock. The dominated the puddle for the afternoon. After they had their fill and moved on, one lone brave blue jay flew in for a quick sip and then scooted away. I never saw the waxwings return, but there's enough shoddy roof work in Uptown, I'm sure they will get a drink somewhere.

I went for a walk around the neighborhood and to a park near Lakewood cemetery. The park of course was full of robins. I walked down the path and swarms of robins flew off ahead of me. With my headphones on, I almost fancied myself an Agent Smith from the second Matrix movie when he walks in with a flock of raven to confront Neo with...and then I realize how geeky that sounds.

I found more juncos and even a brown creeper.

I watched my KARE 11 segment on cable access today. I need to do something about my eyebrows, they're non-existent with those studio lights.