Cooper's Hawk Spoils Chicago Stake Out Bird

Well, a major newspaper is covering birder squabbles. The Chicago Tribune is reporting on an out of range burrowing owl that was nailed by a Cooper's hawk:

When Chicago birders flocked toMontrose Beach this week for a glimpse of two strange birds not often seen in these parts, they got something far more: a bloody death scene and a queasy feeling they might be partly to blame.

The species—a burrowing owl and a Brant goose—were spotted about 9 a.m. Wednesday within 100 feet of each other in the wooded natural area. Within hours, however, the burrowing owl had been torn apart by a hungry Cooper's hawk in front of chagrined bird-watchers.

But where the article gets interesting is that it covers the usual "birders harassed this bird into being killed by the hawk":

By Thursday morning, local Web forums on birding were awash with discussions as to whether over-eager birders helped facilitate the doomed owl's death by showing up in numbers and repeatedly flushing it into the air so it could be seen.

"The sad truth is that we birders may very well have been responsible for the demise of the burrowing owl," wrote Robert Hughes, the man who first spotted it and sent out an alert to other bird watchers.

"Since I was the one who found the bird I suppose I could have kept my mouth shut and not have told anyone, but this would not have endeared me to other birders," wrote Hughes, who declined to speak to a Tribune reporter. "I'm not sure how this situation could have been handled differently, but maybe we can come up with some kind of protocol to deal with situations like this."

Spotting a burrowing owl or a Brant goose would be a real feather in the cap of an Illinois birder. The owl normally nests in prairie dog holes a thousand miles west of Chicago. The Brant goose mostly lives in tundra regions of the far north, wintering in saltwater marshes along the Atlantic seaboard.

Someone does point out that the burrowing owl was having some issues and it may have been doomed to be prey before it was reported by any birders:

Nobody knows how the burrowing owl, a small creature about twice the weight of a robin, managed to get to Chicago, said Field Museum ornithologist Doug Willard, but the guess is that it was blown here by winds that slammed the city days ago.

Photos taken by birders before the owl was killed showed it was missing many of its primary wing feathers.

"I am not at all certain that a Cooper's hawk would need the help of people to spot this burrowing owl," said Willard. "It was so far out of its normal habitat, it was probably exhausted, and it would be a natural thing for a Cooper's hawk to go after it."

Chirp Tracker

ChirpTracker is a revolutionary concept that provides technological enhancements to birding hobbyists by birders, for birders. ChirpTracker utilizes the integration of satellite mapping technology with a community-based environment to steer the hobby of birding enjoyed outdoors, into the virtual realm of social media to provide a rich conservational, educational, user, and data driven platform to uncover new bird species locations around the country.

ChirpTracker’s media-rich environment provides the birding community with the capabilities to assist in the plotting of bird sightings geographically, logging and maintainance of life lists, and the sharing of user’s personal profile activities with other birding enthusiasts.

To accompany a user-driven precinct, professionally researched data has been aggregated to provide the birding commonwealth with the ability to track migration patterns geographically and to assist in the identification of bird species. Users will acquire supplemental knowledge from ChirpTracker's hopeful partnerships in ornithology to form community-wide support of birding organizations and research affiliates.
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Have you heard of ChirpTracker? According to their Twitter feed, they're looking for birders with iPhones. And according to their FaceBook page:

"ChirpTracker is a revolutionary concept that provides technological enhancements to birding hobbyists by birders, for birders. ChirpTracker utilizes the integration of satellite mapping technology with a community-based environment to steer the hobby of birding enjoyed outdoors, into the virtual realm of social media to provide a rich conservational, educational, user, and data driven platform to uncover new bird species locations around the country."

Read more here.

Skywatch Friday, Cape May, NJ Style

It's Skywatch Friday again! I think I may actually be getting it in on time this week. I'm very confused because it's called Skywatch Friday, but apparently, it begins on Thursday where I live.

This is a view of one of my favorite places that I've been blogging about this week. It's called The Meadows and it's an area run by The Nature Conservancy. I think when people think of New Jersey, they may often think of maybe the opening to The Sopranos with Tony driving over the bridge and you see a lot of factories and industry. Believe it or not, you can find places where you are in a remote area.

While at the Cape May Autumn Weekend, I spent a lot of time at The Meadows, some for workshops, some just on my own. I had a magical Sunday morning there when I was surrounded by tree swallows. All weekend I could see huge flocks of them feeding on bayberries. Tree Swallows have already moved out of Minnesota, so seeing huge flocks in Cape May was a treat. They can afford to be later migrants because unlike most swallows that eat only insects, these will also eat berries, helping them to survive the late migration should they find a lack of insects.

I saw a huge flock off in the distance. This photo really doesn't do it justice. I may look like light blue paper sprinkled with fine ground pepper, but these are all tree swallows. I watched them wheeling and spinning in the air, just enjoying the spectacle. I wondered if I could walk towards the flock, but before I could take the first step, I noticed the flock formed a large cylinder and was heading my way.

Within seconds, I had swallows zooming overhead and whizzing on either side of me. I tried to take photos, but realized quickly that it was in vain, they were moving too quickly. There were thousands of them, a groups so loud, they sheer number of dainty wings flapping was an audible rushing sound. The tree swallows dipped down towards the water and took sips, then zipped over the grasses searching for insects. It was an intense, magical experience and my reverie was broken only when a nearby mute swan gave off it's farty sounding call (yes, that beautiful exotic species that rips up nesting habitat of our native ducks, also sounds like flatulence when it calls).

When the swallows were in the distance, I tried to take a video through my spotting scope. It's not the best video ever, but you get an idea of the the size of the flock. I would say that the birds you see through my scope is about one fourth of the entire flock. There were thousands of tree swallows:

Quite a spectacle to have all those swallows be part of the sky.

Birds and Beers

Hey, we have some Birds and Beers dates coming up!

Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities--if you're interested in birds, you're invited. You can meet other birders--maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists, share some digiscoping tips, promote your blog--the sky is the limit. It's low key and it's fun.

Here are the dates and note that the first date is in Harlingen, TX--in conjunction with the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest!

Thursday, November 6 at 7:45pm (or after the festival keynote speaker is finished that night). It will be held at The Lone Star, they are holding a table for us.

The next will be back in Minnesota:

Tuesday, November 18 at 6pm at Merlin's Rest.

If anyone is on a Texas birding listserv and wants to post the Harlingen Birds and Beers there, please do. It's open to anyone, even if you are not part of the bird festival.

Goshawks & Red-tails, Oh My!

Frank Taylor just sent me last weekend's banding report from his hawk trapping station in northern Minnesota. While I was busy with birding in Cape May, NJ over the weekend, he was dealing with goshawks and a double red-tailed hawk capture! So wish I had not been working and had been at the blind with him. I just love this photo! This is a red-tailed hawk getting ready to fly into the nets. But look at the great light the hawk is flying in, the sun is hitting some dark clouds in the distance and the vegetation has browns, yellows, whites and green to make a late autumn look--three of my favorite things all in one shot! You'll note I have a similar theme on my banner on the blog. That's how I imagine heaven will be (that and all the angels look like Daniel Craig).

Because Frank bands on the weekends and not during the week, the station is dependent on winds coming out of the northwest just on the weekends to get good numbers of migrating raptors moving through. The weather mojo hasn't been really been that cooperative this year, so most of the weekends have been slow going. Ah well, some years that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

Although Saturday Frank said, "Not much was moving in the morning and our first bird of the day was a huge second year adult female Goshawk that came in at 11:40 am." Check out how big that girl is! That's Chuck and Rick holding her. She's HUGE. She's no doubt female (in the raptor world females are larger than males and it's more noticeable in bird eating raptors like goshawks).

Frank noted that she's a second year bird, meaning she hatched in 2007. She's got her adult gray feathers, but her eyes are still quite yellow. The older these accipiters get (accipiters are a type of hawk that includes sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks), the more red their eyes become. Here's a photo I took a few years ago of an adult gos with those red eyes:

That red with that delicate gray makes them the most beautiful raptor (in the US) in my book. It also makes them look more maniacal.

They did get a passage (hatched this year) goshawk too--note the brown feathers and yellow eyes. Ug, this is so painful. I love Cape May and I loved birding and I got some fabulous digiscoping images (I still have a few more to post) but I love goshawks so much, I'm so sorry I missed this weekend at Frank's station. And as awesome as goshawks are, they also had some other excitement in the nets:

"A lot of birds started moving. First the Crows got up, followed by the Eagles and Ravens, then an explosion of adult Red-tails with some Rough-legs and Shins mixed in. At various times during the day, we could see as many as thirty birds in the air at once. What a day!!! A lot of the Red-tails would swoop in and perch in the trees over the blinds. We had to go out and shoo them away so they wouldn't scare off any of the others that were making their final approach to the nets."

The highlight of the day came when we got a double of adult Red-tails at 3:35 pm. When they hit, Rick shot out past the one in the front net knowing it was securely caught and grabbed the one in the mist net that was all but out, except for its feet!!! Chuck got on the other one right away. WAY TO GO, GUYS!!!! That was the first time we ever got a double on larger hawks. (We did get a triple on Shins once a few years back.)"

Total for Sunday - 13 Red-tails, 2 Goshawks, & 2 Sharp-shins. Total for the weekend is 19 birds. 13 Red-tails, 3 Goshawks, & 3 Sharp-shins."

Thanks for sharing your photos, Frank. This is his last weekend up at his banding station for 2008. I'll have to wait until next year.

Sigh.

Check It Out, Malasia Had A Bird-A-Thon!

From The Star Online:

Bird lovers flocked to the Borneo Highlands Resort near here recently to take part in an inaugural bird watching competition.

Dubbed the “Mini Bird Race”, the event was organised by the resort and the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) to promote bird watching and bird conservation in Sarawak.

Sixteen teams of two people each participated in the race, which took place on the jungle and mountain trails around the resort.

Located on the Penrissen Range some 1,000m above sea level on the Sarawak-Kalimantan border, the Borneo Highlands Resort is an important bird sanctuary where more than 150 species have been sighted so far.

These include endemic species such as the Bornean Barbet, Blue-banded Pitta, Chestnut-crested Yuhina, Yellow-rumped Flowerpecker, Black-sided Flowerpecker, Pygmy White-eye and Mountain Black-eye.

Other striking birds include the Wreathed Hornbill - regularly seen on the Kalimantan border - Waterfall Swift, Great Argus and Asian Paradise Flycatcher.

During the event, the participants spotted six more species which had previously not been sighted at the resort - the Black Hornbill, White-crested Hornbill, Long-tailed Parakeet, White-breasted Waterhen, Spotted Fantail and Blue Rock Thrush.

The race required teams to identify and record the bird species they managed to spot over a six-hour period.

The Liver Bird team comprising Jason Hon and Lihon Singga emerged the winner as they spotted 31 bird species on the day.

You can read the full story and see more photos of birds and Malasian birders here.

What a great idea to get publicity and to get birders aware of your resort! And I don't know why, but the team name "The Liver Bird" just makes me smile.

Hairy vs Shrike

One of the people I band birds with at Carpenter Nature Center is Sue Plankis. She had an interesting encounter last weekend:

"At the Visitor Center this afternoon," Sue said, "we watched birds for about 45 minutes warming up from our hike at Bass Ponds. That feeder is an awesome one for comparing Hairy woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers. Occasionally, the birds would scatter and I would look for a hawk or for people walking by but didn't see anything. At one point, there was a quick squabble between whatI thought were woodpeckers and I took some photos."

"It wasn't till I got home and looked at the photos of the squabble and discovered who was making the birds scatter. Cool"

"The second photo is proof that the Hairy said, 'Got ahead punk, make my day.' and that Shrike skidaddled."

Thanks for sharing the photos, Sue, what a cool observation!

Mexico Plans To Ban The Capture & Export Of Wild Parrots

According to National Geographic, Mexico is cracking down on the parrot trade:

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa has signed into law a bill to ban the capture and export of Mexican wild parrots. The bill, introduced one year ago by the Environment Commission of the Deputy Chamber, was passed in the Mexican Senate on 22 April, 2008 with near unanimous support (66 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 1abstention).

Mexico considers half of its 22 parrot species endangered, and all but two are protected by federal law.

But between 65,000 and 78,000 parrots and guacamayas—a bigger type of parrot—are captured illegally every year, and most of these birds die each year before reaching their intended buyers.

The government has been unable to control the clandestine capture and sale of the protected birds, environmentalists say. The new ban—an amendment to Mexico's wildlife law—will eliminate the parrot and guacamaya market completely. The law will go into effect when it is published in the official congressional diary, possibly by the end of October (this month).

The Defenders of Wildlife Mexico report identified U.S. demand as a major driving force behind the illegal trade for some species, such as the yellow-naped parrot, which is found only in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Mexico is home to 22 species of parrots and macaws, of which six are found nowhere else in the world. Approximately 90 percent of all parrots and macaws found in Mexico are in some category of risk. The latest Mexican classification (yet to be published) lists 11 species as endangered, five as threatened, four as requiring special protection, and two as unclassified.

Although this bill marks an immense victory for parrot conservation, much work is yet to be done.

I think that last sentence is an understatement!

How is this new ban to be enforced. Will the ban put a higher price on these birds making them even more valuable to poachers? Does Mexico have enough officers to enforce this new ban? Will this put further pressure on other bird species? Okay, so there's a ban on parrots, will more cardinals, tanagers, and buntings be seen in open markets for sale?

This is a cautious victory.

Digiscoping The Meadows During Cape May's Autumn Weekend

I think my favorite place at Cape May is The Meadows, an area managed by The Nature Conservancy on the southwest tip of the Cape May peninsula. It has dunes, fresh and saltwater marshes, meadows, ponds, and a mile of beachfront. The lighting can be beautiful and during migration, you can get some great bird shots. There are plenty of ponds and marshes on either side of the trail so that you can get birds in both morning light and evening light if you take the time. Check out this swamp sparrow that was lurking in some of the bushes with some white-throats, the same area were I got the Carolina wren. In the morning or the evening, this place is just the best. Part of my fill in duties at the Cape May Autumn Weekend was to do Clay's digiscoping workshop. It was supposed to be both indoors and outdoors and the forecast was 100% chance of rain, lots of wind and probably some thunder and lightening. Most spotting scopes can take that...but not most cameras. Fortunately, it barely rained and the worse we had to digiscope in was some strong wind.

I had the pleasure of doing the workshop along with Cape May Bird Observatory volunteer Betty Lemley who does digiscoping workshops locally. She is a hoot and if you are going to be at CMBO and do any of their events, sign up for one of hers. A big part of digiscoping is just getting out there and working with your camera. I met one woman who was understandably frustrated with her digiscoping set up. She said that she could never get her photos to come out clear and sharp. She's seen photos on websites that are digiscoped images and were tack sharp, but hers did not turn out that way. I asked how many photos she took and she said not many and that she stopped because they weren't turning out like what she'd seen from others. I assured her for every photo that looks as good as the sparrow above, there are about 200 that look like this:

...or even worse. It takes a lot of photos to get one that looks in focus, even if you have great light, a great scope, and the best digiscoping camera on the market. Here's another example:

I can't tell you the number of duck shots that I have that are like this. It's tough to get them completely in the frame when they're swimming and feeding, plus figure out light settings and focusing. But with some patience and taking lots of shots, you can get a wigeon shot that looks like this:

I was having so much fun working my digiscoping mojo on the wigeon. I just love this duck: some rust, some green and then that big ole honkin' white stripe down the forehead. If you ever hear someone refer to a duck as a "bald pate" they are talking about the wigeon.

Sometimes you get birds that are back lit, like the above Savannah sparrow (there were a ton of these guys scurrying around all the surrounding vegetation, running along the trails, and hiding just as you were about to get the scope on them. You generally want the sun behind you when you're taking photos, but you can get what I call arty shots. Okay, sure this bird is never going to grace the cover of a birding magazine, but since I'm the person in charge of my own blog and I say it's arty, it's all good. Incidentally, I did work my way around this bird so the sun was behind me. It teed up on a stalk, in perfect light. Just as I was getting it in focus I heard the familiar "per CHUP per CHUP per CHUP" of a peregrine falcon. Just as I was thinking, "Crap, that sparrow is gonna bail," it ducked down in the grass before I could snap the photo. Peregrines, I love you guys, but not when you spook my photo subject!

When we took our group out for the field trip portion of our workshop, the rain had stopped but the wind picked up. We decided to go for it and though a few drops fell here and there, we stayed mostly dry. We went to the beach at the meadows and participants got to practice taking gull shots while being pelted by beach sand. Taking shots when it's cloudy is a challenge too, not always the easiest light to work with. In this shot, you can see some of the sand blowing around the great black-backed gulls.

We did work our way around and got the chance to get some waterfowl in the evening sun. I love the gadwalls. It's a gray duck but has the funniest quack. I've actually got it as a ring tone on cell phone, but it just lovely soft grays and black...even with a bill full of aquatic vegetation.

There was also a male hooded merganser hanging out with the waterfowl, a pleasant surprise.

A fun selection of birds and I hope people had a good time and have time to really work with their cameras. One big digiscoping mistake is that people order all their stuff right before they leave for a trip of a lifetime. You really need several days to get used to using the scope, know how to adjust the head on the tripod, what your camera is capable of. The more you play and become one with your setup the more usable photos you'll have.

Common Cape May Birds

I digiscoped so many images this weekend, I'm having trouble organizing them into blog entries. I found a most cooperative northern mockingbird at Higbee Beach. I know for some of you southern readers that a mocking bird is not the most exciting bird on the planet, but for a Minnesota girl, getting a chance to see that yellow eye gleam in the sun. The hawk migration is still going strong in Cape May and Cooper's hawks like this juvenile above were all over the place. A DC Birding Blog (who is banding hawks at Cape May this year) mentioned that they are seeing more Cooper's hawks passing through than sharp-shinned hawks. We usually see the opposite at Frank's banding station in Duluth. A quick scan over at Birds of North America Online says that the ability of Cooper's hawks to adapt to humans has been great, their population has increased very well, however it's uncertain if their increase in population could have a negative effect on other raptor (or even prey for that matter). There is some evidence that Cooper’s Hawks regularly take American Kestrels, and that they may be playing a role in the current declines in this species in the eastern part of their range.

I was trying to take a photo of a couple of black vultures and I even got a blur of a Coop's passing behind it.

I did get a shot of the full black vulture. This was was another common to Cape May but exciting to a Minnesota girl type species. All we get in MN are turkey vultures, so the smaller guys with the all dark head were a treat.

Here is a pair. The one higher up is an adult, the lower, shaggier looking one with a black bill is a juvenile. They had a beautiful blue sky behind them and were on a blue water tower. Looking at the photos, the two blues look kinda weird.

I wonder what we're missing in Minnesota so that we do not get black vultures? We have turkey vultures for part of the year. I'm sure we'd have places for black vultures to nest. It's interesting to note that turkey vultures find their food using their sense of smell, but not black vultures That ability is not nearly as highly developed in black vultures, so they follow turkey vultures to find carrion.

Doing some reading on BNA found an interesting theory: according to some studies, the large communal roosts that black vultures form at night might serve as a means for communicating food locations. They had several studies to back it up. Birds that were marked returned to same carcasses on successive days, could they be leading birds at the roost to food? When the black vultures leave the roost in the morning, smaller groups fly off at different intervals...are the groups following a specified forager vulture (kind of like a forager honey bee)? In one study, black vultures deprived of information about local distribution of carcasses and were released in evening at communal roosts and joined the ends of groups departing from roosts to feeding sites the next morning and tagged vultures that were not privy to a carcass and released to a roost, still arrived at food sites in early morning as members of groups that have come directly from roosts.

Fascinating stuff!