Can't Stop Watching Ducks

I'm a sick, sick girl. Once a week, for work, I am assigned to go in a plane and focus an insane amount of energy watching and counting ducks from a plane.  Then after an intense day of not stop ducking, I have to listen to the audio recording of my notes, tally the numbers and enter them in to a database.  If I have time, I try to enter the numbers in to eBird or write up little articles of our progress for the park service or other organizations.

So.  What do I do on my mornings off?

I watch freakin' ducks!  There was a report on the listservs of a long-tailed duck on Vadnais Lake in St. Paul.  But of more interest to me were the numerous other species of ducks reported on the lake.  It was mostly ring-necked ducks (there's a few mallards in the above photo too).  So, I headed out.  I didn't care if I got the long-tailed, I've seen them before, but some non work related duck watching sounded good.

In fairness, we didn't fly last week because of that massive wind storm/"landcane"/record low pressure system.  The 45 mph winds made flying 100 feet above the river a wee bit too dangerous.  Perhaps, I was feeling a bit of duck withdrawal--I was torqued and ready to go and then got the rug pulled out from under me.  I do appreciate ducks in the fall.  Most birds are brown and somber in coloration.  Male ducks--still quite colorful--above with the ring-necked ducks are a lone bufflehead and a redhead.

Here was the view of Lake Vadnais.  This view was from a pull0ut lot of the road.  Some trumpeter swans were near the shore along with a few mallards.  The large raft of ring-necked and other ducks were just beyond.  I situated myself against a tree and the swans paid little attention to me.  As they swam closer, the larger raft of ring-necks didn't seem to to be disturbed by me.

As other birders continued further down the road, the raft of ring-necks drifted towards the swans...and me!  I really enjoyed the pressure of enjoying duck colors and numbers without the pressure of counting and documenting.

The lighting was so perfect, I could actually make out the ring on the neck of the ring-necked ducks (bird in dire need of a name change).

Here's a pair of goldeneye that were mixed in with the ring-necks.

The raft of ducks were in a feeding frenzy, bobbing and dipping--the yellow eyes on most of them gave the whole party a maniacal look.  Here's a closer look at the redhead duck (love the ring-neck with just its head visible in the lower right corner).

If you find a raft of ducks in your area, take a few moments to soak up those colors before they fly off when the water freezes.

Winter Robins Arrive In The Twin Cities

We're down to the bitter end in migration.  The fall robins are all over the place in Minnesota.  On the bike trails around town, the robins are so numerous, I can hear them over the sound of my headphones as I bike past.  These tend to be more aggressive birds and I'll admit that it's fun to see someone who can bully starlings.

I was a little surprised to see a Swainson's thrush mixed in with the robins.  We usually see other thrushes mixed in with flocks of robins, but this late it tends to be hermit thrushes.  The bird was not a welcome part of the flock.  The blurry robin in the above photo was on its way to making a sneak attach and chased the thrush off before I could get a better photo.

Robins totally dig all the fruit trees people plant in their yards, although many of the robins I find are raiding the buckthorn branches.  I'm torn, I'm happy to see robins adapting to a source of food, but I also realize that they are laying the groundwork to plant more buckthorn that has been removed.

Take That, Wax Moths!

Earlier in the summer I reported that an empty hive feel victim to a wax moth infestation.  The frames were nasty and full of webbing and tons of squishy larvae.  This gross combo did lead to me finding a way to combine my love of beekeeping and birds:

It took some convincing, but the birds got comfortable enough to approach the frames and totally dug the fat little protein packed larvae (note the black-capped chickadee above with a worm)!  I placed the frames on a stump that I use as a tray/feeder photography studio.  At first, I had to scatter some favorite seeds to get the birds' attention and when they landed, they instantly saw the squirming wax worms and chowed down.  I did have to flip the frames over from time to time, the larvae would crawl to the other side to hide but I think the titmice, chickadees and nuthatches took care of them.  I'm not sure what to do with the webs that remains on the frames.  Some beekeepers say to put them in the hive and the bees will clean it off.  At night, something has been coming up to the stump and eating all the wax off of the frame (perhaps mice).  Maybe if I leave the frames out, the mice will take all the webbing too and I'll have a totally bare frame?

Unadulterated Dog Joy In Leaves

You may recall that earlier this summer, Mr. Neil's newest dog Lola learned that if you violate bee ettiquette, you get stung.  I must say, this incident of swollen dog face was not enough to convince her to avoid mischief around the hives.  Non Birding Bill and I took her to the hives after this incident and she went straight for one and started sniffing the entrance.  She got bonked and a sting and then went back to the entrance for more.  We had to guide her away and fortunately, she did not swell to the epic proportions as she had before.

When we went out last weekend to the hives, I learned that Lola is in love with piles of leaves--like any eight year old (even the one buried inside every adult).

Which is a much safer area for her to play in rather than right in front of the hives.

If you are wondering about her cape, it's hunting season.  Currently it's bow hunting season on deer and grouse shooting season.  In a couple of weeks it will be deer shooting season.  The dogs run so quickly it's best that they wear orange when they are barreling after small mammals in the woods.  You may think that a white dog couldn't be mistaken for a deer, but there are some hunters who shoot first and ask id later (as in this infamous 2002 MN incident) and we do have quite the population of albino deer up here.  I saw them on my first trip to Father Hennepin State Park...I should go back and try to digiscope them sometime.  Here's a video of an infamous albino buck that used to live along the Minnesota/Wisconsin border.

But check out the unadulerated joy that is Lola in a pile of leaves!

Dog smile!  A much better time for Lola at the hives than earlier this summer.

Hey? Any Food In There?

I found this nuthatch meticulously searching beneath each shingle for insects to eat.  Woodpeckers aren't the only birds looking for insects off the sides of houses.

Useful Beekeeping Tools

The lone bee!

It's late fall and we are getting our bees ready for the winter.  As we were winding our bee season to a close, I thought I would bring up 2 different pieces of bee equipment that have been incredibly useful to use this year.  There's a lot of bee equipment equipment that is mediocre (or does not come with instructions so is about as useful as a Slap Chop).

This was a hive tool Mr Neil found...I think when he went to Australia.  Hive tools are needed to pry boxes and frames apart--especially after bees have propolised them together.  Our newest one is called an Australian hive tool. What separates this from your garden variety beekeeping hive tools (besides higher cost) is the little hook on the end--you can use it to pull out the frames from the brood boxes.  If you are only going to have one hive tool...I'd go with with this one.

The other really cool piece of equipment that Mr. Neil ordered for us is the escape board.  Every year when we extract honey, we have the not so fun task of convincing all the worker bees to leave those honey supers and join all the other bees in the brood boxes.  We don't always see eye to eye on this sort of thing.  We've tried other things to get the bees to leave like Bee Quick which is an essential oil that you spray that causes most of the bees to leave the super and go deeper into the hive.  You have to order a new bottle every year because it appears to be less effective after the first summer.  There's also Neil's shake the hell out of the box to flick the bees out method.

But I gotta say that this escape board works WAY better!

You place the escape on top of the supers or boxes that you do not want to remove and place it so the triangle side is on the inside of the hive.  The top has a hole, the bees crawl down that and out the triangle to join the rest of the hive at night.  The next day, when they try to return to the other honey supers, they can't figure out the triangle maze and don't go back.

You then place the box full of honey that you want the bees to vacate on top of the escape board and in a day or two you have a bee-free honey super--it's awesome.  More effective than the Bee Quick and the flick method.

You end up with happy bees and not angry bees lost and irritated in the honey super you are trying to harvest.  Bonus!

Digiduel 2 Results

Clay and I both posted albums of our five favorite photos from Digiduel 2 on the Swarovski Optik Facebook page.  You can vote on your favorite Clay photos here or my photos here.

This photo of rock pigeons balancing on thin branches of a hackberry to eat the fruit was one of the photos that didn't make it in to the deadline.  It's weird to for me to see pigeons in a tree--I'm so used to them on buildings and sidewalks.

My eventual goal with this Digiduel Project is that we can open it up for other people to play all over the world-you have a digiscoping set up and Twitter account--you can take a turn at a Digiduel.  Clay and I wanted to do a few against each other to work out some kinks...and boy were there kinks to work out this time around:  We usually use Twitpic to upload photos onto Twitter but it was down for a good portion of the day.  I switched to Plixi as a back up but eventually Twitter refused photos from any photo site.  I had about ten images (like the above rock pigeons) that never made it up to Twitter in time and Clay had a few come in after the deadline of 4pm Central time, even though he sent them in well before the deadline.

We also decided to add a new component to the competition.  There are now two ways to win.  You can try to take as many species photos as possible in the time allotted or you can go for "quality images" or really try to get the bird in a pretty pose with some nice fall color behind it.  By adding the photos to the Facebook site, people can vote on their favorites.  And the above European starling did not get uploaded to Twitter before the deadline and I didn't include it in the album on Facebook.  It's just as well, I don't see a lot of people voting for a starling, no matter how cool they look in their winter plumage.

If you are interested in participating in a digiduel, let me know.  Clay and I will try to work you in to the competition.  The keys are to find a spot where you can get photos of birds and have internet access.  It appears to work best if you can do it from or from a park with reliable internet access.  I tried doing it from a park and popping over to a coffee shop periodically.  Doable, but annoying and a waste of gas.

Hooded mergansers flying away.

Digiduel going on NOW

There's a Birds and Beers at Merlin’s Rest at 6pm this Thusday.  Birds and Beers is a friendly gathering of birders of all ages to get together and talk some birds. YIKES  DIGIDUEL IS TODAY!  If you saw this post this morning, I said the digiduel was tomorrow--it's today!

Clay Taylor and I are doing another Digiscoping Duel or "Digiduel" on Twitter today.  This time I'm going to take my spotting scope and digital camera to the Minnesota National Wildlife Refuge and use local coffee shops to upload images. The competition goes from 8am - 4pm Central Time.  Clay will digiscope someplace in Texas.  We're going to try for "pretty" images this time and then put up albums on the Swarovski Facebook Page.  People can vote on which image we like best.  There's no physical reward for getting the most votes, we're testing out the challenge idea.  My hope is that we can do the challenge in all sorts of ways and get other digiscopers to participate (if you are interested in being a participant or have an idea for a digiscoping challenge, drop me an email sharon at birdchick dot com).

Also, using Twitter, it's a way for people to follow the progress as we load a few images throughout the day.  If you'd like the follow Digiduel 2 then follow both me and Clay at or if you have a program like TweetDeck you can follow us with the #digiduel hash tag or the #birding hash tag.

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