Skulls and Stuff

Today I headed over to Big Willow park for some light birding. This is a good spot for owls in the Twin Cities in the winter. It's a fairly reliable spot for great-horned owls, long-eared owls and saw-whet owls, especially in winter. I was kind of bummed to see that some of the trails are now on private property and therefore off limits. One trail in particular is great for saw-whets and for signs of saw-whets and Amber and I would use it for our owl trips with The Raptor Center. We may need to come up with a plan B.

I didn't see any owls whatsoever today, but I did find some small mammal skulls under a tree that saw-whets like to roost in. I think these skulls are from last winter, there were no pellets under the tree at them moment or any signs of owl poop. As I was photographing the skulls I noticed a leaf moving out of synch with the wind. Was this a little mammal popping up? No, it was a wood frog looking for a place to hibernate.

I went down towards the creek and found a huge flock of robins, grackles and red-winged blackbirds foraging. While there I small flock of yellow-rumped warblers moved in and then one of my favorite things happened. While focusing on a butter butt a fox sparrow moved in behind it. There ended up being a total of four fox sparrows kicking up the leaves around the banks of the creeks. I love watching one bird and then another cool bird gets mixed in.

It was strange, sitting there on the bank of the creek it almost reminded me of early spring. Most of the leaves were of the trees, the grass was green, the air was chilly and you could hear robins and grackles calling and singing.

Closeting

Cinnamon would say "Happy Halloween" if she didn't disapprove of it.

Did you ever start a project you thought would take an hour maybe two and then took over the ENTIRE weekend? Thanks to the new job at Eagle Optics I have some fun stuff to travel around with--I thought I was popular before, but have a case of optics for people to test out and your cool points skyrocket. Rather than leaving the case out for Cinnamon to sit on I decided that if I just rearranged a few things in a particular closet then the case would fit beautifully in it...well at least the closet is organized now and my home office is coming along quite nicely.

Didn't get much birding in this weekend as a result of the closet ordeal but I did notice that a blue jay in our neighborhood is mimicking the crows very well, only its caws are much softer and a bit rapid--impressive nonetheless. I know blue jays can be trained to talk and mimic just about any bird, but I had only heard them mimic red-shouldered hawks and broad-winged hawks in the wild before.

In other news, I have a chickadee acting a little strange at the bird feeder. Apparently, it hasn't read the books that describe chickadee feeding behavior as grabbing one seed flying to a nearby branch, peck it open and eat it. This chickadee just sat at the feeder eating sunflower and peanuts. I thought this was smart since that would save energy, but I'm sure there is some predator defense that works since most chickadees grab a seed and eat it elsewhere.

Brown creepers have just taken over the neighborhood, you hear them everywhere you go. OH! And I almost forgot! The other morning the crows went ballistic. I thought for sure from the commotion that they had found an owl. I quickly shoved on some shoes, grabbed my binos and digital camera and dashed out the door. I went down the ally toward the commotion and couldn't find any raptors in the trees and looked down. Thirty feet away on the ground was a young Cooper's hawk sitting on a freshly killed pigeon. I started to digiscope with the camera and binoculars. It didn't turn out well because the flash went off. I would have stayed had I not started to attract the attention of neighbors. Surely a short red head in her pajamas and boots sporting binoculars and a camera taking photos in people's backyards wouldn't look that suspicious? Well, the one photo I did get, the bird has glowing eyes (above), which seems appropraite for the holiday. As if accipiters didn't look creepy enough as it is.

Fun with birdPod

So in the process of transitioning jobs I haven't had a chance to play with a new software called birdPod. If you have an iPod and the Stokes CD set you can download this software to organize the CD set in iTunes and your iPod.

When I first started loading all of my bird CDs onto my iPod, I had this noble idea of organizing them, but this software does it for you (only with the Stokes CDs) and puts them into alphabetical order, phylo order, or eleven other tracks according to habitat or my personal favorite Crazy Birds. A really cool feature is that the software takes all of the tracks that have two different species like the White Pelican/Double-crested Cormorant Track and divides it into two separate tracks.

Another cool feature is that it takes Lang Elliot's narration off (no offence, Lang) which is handy if you want to use the tracks for calling in birds or just want to test yourself on how well you know your calls. I also like this feature because when your not sure of a bird and you just want to play the calls, taking out the narration cuts back on the possibility of you trying to turn the bird into the rarity you hope it was.

I had some trouble installing it and the staff at birdPod was prompt and patient with me while we tried to figure out the problem. My problem: I had previously installed the Stokes CDs into iTunes and had several tracks in several different playlists. Once I took the Stokes out of the library and reinstalled that solved the problem.

If you don't already have an iPod or the Stokes set, you can order everything through birdPod online store and I believe they have the software available for both the eastern and the western regions.

I and the Boid

It's time of the best bird blogging carnival ever I and the Bird is up and running at Living the Scientific Life. My personal favorite submission this time round is Speaking of Birds Blogs' universal laws of birding.

Peregrine Falcon Harassing Osprey Photos

Mark Alt, president of the MOU sent a link to some very cool photos of a peregrine falcon trying to steal a fish from an osprey. Interesting, you can see that the falcon is banded in some of the photos.

It reminded me of a story Bud Tordoff told me about a male peregrine falcon who was good at skimming right on top of the water and would bring back sora and pied-billed grebes. One day it brought up a fish. The young peregrines in the nest looked at it and played with it, but none of the young ate at it seriously.

Disaffected Coots

Tonight I headed over to Lake Calhoun to watch the ring-billed and herring gulls come in to roost for the evening. There were few rafts of coots lurking near the shore (pictured left). I had my spotting scope and a video camera to film the birds and after about 20 minutes a woman came up and asked if I was looking for the bald eagle. She then told me about the rare eagle that had been hanging around. She asked what I was looking at and I pointed out to the hundreds of gulls massing out in front of us and she looked me like I was nuts--why would I want to look at that instead of the rare eagle? I tried to tell her that eagles were pretty common during migration around the Twin Cities, but I don't think she bought it since I was crazy enough to be more interested in scrubby gulls. I want to use the gull footage for KARE 11 on Monday, by the way we are dressing in costume for the show--should be a good time.

Meanwhile, my rabbit is stoned. I got Cinnamon a mineral block and she has been licking it all night and has been sitting on it looking blitzed out of her mind for the last half hour.

For the record, that is one of Non Birding Bill's movies next to her called Dracula's Dog--"Man's Best Friend May Be Man's Worst Fiend". We watched it for a bad movie night party and it wasn't bad, it was boring. Not recommended for any viewing...at all...not even for bad movie parties.

Birdchick Needs High Bird Counts

Do you keep track of the number of a particular bird species in your home state? Along the lines of "On October 26, 2006 I saw 1,840 ring-billed gulls on Lake Calhoun in Hennepin County." I'm in need of high counts of birds for the following states for any time of year or any year:

Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Missouri
Florida
North Carolina
South Carolina
Pennsylvania

If this applies to you, can you drop me an email? sharon@birdchick.com

Also, if anyone has any birding spots that they think is a must for a birder visiting that state or cool websites for those states I'd love to know that info too.

Thanks!

And yet more bird photos!

Just got this from Casey Tucker, Education Specialist, Audubon At Home.

Gratuitous Bird Photos

So, I'm doing some research on a writing project today and came across some photos of songbird banding at Black Swamp Bird Observatory in Ohio. I'm quite envious of the person holding the male scarlet tanager--how red does a bird need to be? The bird is so red that it looks like the hand holding it should be burning.

Minnesota Fall Great Gray Owl and Northern Hawk Owl Report

This just in from Kim Eckert:

I recently received a couple of reports of northern owls from 2 northern Minnesota locations:

- Dee Kuder of Crane Lake observed a Great Gray Owl back on 12 October in N St Louis Co, along Minn Hwy 73 near the jct of Co Rd 22 and the town of Sturgeon.

- More recent and interesting were the 2 N Hawk Owls seen by visiting CA birders Frank & Susan Gilliland on 24 October in N Beltrami Co, at mile 42 on Minn Hwy 72, which is about 5 mi N of Waskish.

The question naturally comes to mind as to whether these will prove to be just isolated sightings or as harbingers of another irruption of northern owls this fall and winter. Such repeat irruptions are rare but possible: they occurred in 1990-91 & 1991-92 (primarily Great Grays) and in 1995-96 & 1996-97 (all 4 northern species).