Young Finches Learning The Ropes At The Feeders

As signs of fall migration make themselves achingly apparent, many of the goldfinches in my area are still holding on strong to breeding plumage.  As I was digiscoping this male yesterday, I noticed differences in the bird calls around me.  No indigo bunting singing on territory or red-eyed vireo--that was first this month.  There were contact calls of warblers.  I did hear a scarlet tanager giving the old "chick-burr" behind me and noted that while the tanager was here, all the orioles were gone.  I know most people in my neck of the woods have lamented our cold summer.  Wearing a jacket in August is crazy, even by Minnesota standards, but I have loved it.  Although, as much as I enjoy cool nights and several days without turning on the air conditioner, I look at all my friends who cannot get a tomato to turn red in their gardens this summer and wonder how this affects the seed crops and insects fall migrants need to head south.  I also wonder if this means an exceptionally long winter as well.

I did notice this male goldfinch on the long tube with kind of a reverse goatee.  He's bald around his beak.  I seem to recall seeing this before in a goldfinch either last year or two years ago.  I wonder if it's an odd molt or some sort of mites (not unlike the bald cardinals we see this time of year).  This particular male had at least one recently fledged chick following him around to the feeders begging to be fed.

The adult male is on the bottom of the sunflower tube feeder and the begging chick is on the upper perch.  The adult would dutifully demonstrate how to get seed out of the port, while the younger bird above continued to beg.  Eventually, the young bird left the adult alone and tried pecking around the feeder.  It ignored the gaping opening of the feeding port, and pecked at the plexiglass tube.  It could see the seed and couldn't understand why it couldn't get at the food.

Eventually, the adult male flew to a different feeder and what does the young finch do? Continue to ignore the open port with food and hang upside down towards where the adult had been feeding and unsuccessfully pecking at the tube around the port.  Not the brightest bulb on the tree.

The young finch followed the adult male over to the Nyjer feeder and begrudgingly began to eat the seed out of that port.  All the while, continuing to flutter its wings in a food begging behavior.

The young bird finally left the Nyjer feeder and flew over to a black oil sunflower feeder.  Soon afterwards, it was joined by a young house finch (who had just a hint of pink show up along his flanks).  Both birds fed in peace, but periodically the larger house finch would lunge toward the goldfinch if it got too close.  I wonder if these will be the last of the fledglings I will see for the year?

Cardinal With A Receding Featherline Singing

On Saturday, I was taking some video on a bird walk and this cardinal caught my attention, he's starting to lose his head feathers.  It's an occurrence that happens often enought that it's a question on my FAQ, usually in late summer someone will email me about a crazy looking cardinal and it's a bald one.  Here's a collection of all my blog entries involving balding birds.  I think I have photos of cardinals, a goldfinch, a grackle and a screech owl.  The above bird is about to lose his head feathers and you can see some of his black skin around his bill and his crest is half the size it should be.

However, what really caught my attention what the way the back of his neck puffed out as he sang--he has a little bubble popping up and down back there.  Check it out:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLCO0xvVm2Y[/youtube]

Wood Lake Digiscoping

So I headed out to do some digiscoping this morning. I didn't care what I would see, I just wanted to be out in some quiet.

I started at Wood Lake Nature Center and found some ducks still in their eclipse plumage. There wasn't too much action at first, I kept scanning the reeds hoping for even a great blue heron in good light. I stood and waited and thought to myself, just wait something interesting will pop up. As soon as I thought it, an adult red-shouldered hawk flew past--very cool, but not digiscopable. Then, a pied-billed grebe popped up out of the water--the closest I've ever been to one. I'm not sure who was more surprised, me or the grebe. The grebe paused and eyed me warily, I'm sure hoping that I hadn't noticed it mistake in resurfacing so close to a human. I wondered if I could get my camera off the scope and get a photo--it was entirely too close to digiscope. As soon as I moved, it dove back under water.

But, a female goldfinch was preening nearby and I was able to photograph her. I thought it was so cute that she was grasping a leaf for leverage to lean and get access to her wings--cute. I just love those little tiny toes grasping that leaf.

Speaking of goldfinches, Wood Lake has redone some of their gardens and the goldfinches were all over this plan. I'm not sure what it is, I'm going to guess prairie dock, but the finches were all over it. There at least three feeding on the plant in the above photo.

A male cardinal was perched near the finches. Take heart all you people with bald cardinals, here's proof that he feathers do grow back. If you notice, he's missing his crest but it looks like his feather shafts are growing back in. I got a question earlier this summer about a bald cardinal that looked like it had white skin instead of black. I wonder if that person was seeing the pin feathers growing in and not the skin? At a distance, several pin feathers look white. Here's a closer look at this male's head:

Plugs or Rogaine? No, it natural for the feathers to be growing back. Man, that's has to be a little uncomfortable to have a bunch of hard feather shafts emerging from your skin and fluffing out into feathers.

On my way out of the park, I spotted this Droll Yankee Big Top feeder. The bottom dish was supposed to be filled with black oil sunflower, but looked like it was full of grass. I took off the bottom dish and found:

A house finch nest! This is not the first time I've found a house finch nest in this feeder at Wood Lake. A few years ago, there were two nests side by side. One nest was empty and the other had smashed eggs inside. I'm not sure what that was about, was it two males competing for territory? Did the same pair build both nests? Who can say, but let this be a lesson to people who don't fill their feeders--the birds just may nest in them.

The Cleansing Nuthatch

I don't know why, but for some reason I'm have an overwhelming desire to seek out every republican in North America and have my picture taken with them...and I'm not even a republican, I'm not a democrat either but that's neither here nor there. Actually, I do know why, when someone I don't know starts to tell me what I should and shouldn't do and when I should be ashamed of myself, it immediately triggers a rebellion inside and I want to do the exact opposite.

So, I think it's time to embrace the red-breasted nuthatch:

Look at the nuthatch, breathe in the nuthatch. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. I had a gorgeous morning over at Carpenter Nature Center. The temperatures were cool, the sun was shining, and there was not the overwhelming sounds of the state fair. Ahhhhhhh.

It wasn't as busy as last week, but there were still lots of migrants moving through. Everywhere we went you could see flocks of birds flitting around. We got some warblers in the nets like the Nashville warbler above and a Tennessee warblers. I think we banded five red-eyed vireos and I got a video of one being released. With some birds, when you let them go, you can lay them flat on their backs and they sit for a moment before taking off. That's what happens to the vireo when I let it go in the video below:

And since you can't really see the brown eye so well in the video, here is a photo:

Red-eyed vireos don't get their red eyes until they are an adult. So the brown eyes on this bird tell us that it was hatched this summer. Here's an adult red-eyed vireo that we've banded in the past, you can really see the red eyes on that bird. FYI - for an insectivore, this bird really can bite.

Here is a typical male American goldfinch. This is a bird we banded awhile ago, but I want you to get a good look at what the face should look like. Now, take a gander at this male goldfinch:

Yikes! What happened to this guy? I'm not really sure. I banded this one and I couldn't see any mites running around on its head so I don't think that was it. I wondered if maybe it was an odd molting pattern. I asked Jen who works at Carpenter and she wondered if it had gotten its feathers worn off from a bird feeder or something else?

It was missing feathers on both sides of his bill, so it does seem to be a uniform pattern. The bird was molting elsewhere on his body, so it is possible that this is just a weird molt pattern. I'll be curious to see if we get this bird in the nets again.

And now, let's close with the cleansing nuthatch. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, see the nuthatch, breathe out, be the nuthatch, breathe in, love the nuthatch, breathe out, hang upside down on a tree trunk like a nuthatch...

Screech Owl Looking Rough

Okay, not only is it the season for bald birds, but it's all the season for squirrel cannibalism. I'm suddenly getting a lot of comments on this old post, if anyone is interested in reading about squirrels eating squirrels and birds.

Boy, I would type a caption for what this bird would be saying about getting its picture taken, but I just don't use that kind of language (well, not in the blog anyway). Looks like somebody had one too many jello shooters.

This is the education gray phase eastern screech owl from the Raptor Center. If you saw the bald bird post from earlier this summer, you may have seen a link to Susan Gets Native's photo of her education red phase eastern screech owl also molting out all its head feathers at once. Perhaps we should get together with our ed birds. At least we will have a matched set.

And don't worry folks, like the bald cardinal or blue jay you may be seeing out your window, these owls will grow back all their facial feathers before winter. You know, I just thought of something. The feathers along the owls facial disc are supposed to direct sound to their ears. I wonder if a rough molt like this affects their hunting ability? That's kind of a moot point for the education screeches, they're fed dead and gutted mice. But if this happened to them in the wild, I wonder if they have relearn how they hunt?

Bald Cardinals and Other Bald Birds

All of a sudden in the last two weeks, I have been getting comments to an old post from July 25, 2005 (way back when I worked at the bird store). The post is about bald cardinals.

Every year about late July and early August there are questions from people asking about black headed birds, miniature vultures or bald headed feeder birds. Most of the time, people are describing cardinals without any feathers on their heads, but I've also had reports of bald blue jays and grackles.

While I was down in Indianapolis, my mom had a bald cardinal coming to her feeding station. So, what is the dealio? No one knows for sure, even Cornell Lab of the Big O admits that the case of the bald cardinal is not well studied. There are two possible explanations. Number one, this is the time of year when many songbirds (including cardinals and blue jays) are molting (shedding old feathers and growing in new feathers). For some reason, the birds drop all of their feathers on their heads at once. I've seen this with captive birds like great horned owls and even our education screech owl at The Raptor Center. The birds are healthy, they just molt everything at once (interesting to note that all of those species mentioned are tufted: cardinal, blue jay, great horned owl, eastern screech owl--hmmmmmmm).

Alas, my mom didn't have just a bald male cardinal, she also had a bald grackle (so much for the only tufted bird theory). This grackle was much more wary than the cardinal and this was the only shot I got of it. The bird seemed to sense the spotting scope and flush right as I was about to take a photo. I don't blame it, the bird kind of looks like a Skeksis, I wouldn't want my photo taken either. This bird leads me to the number two reason birds can go bald and that is that they can get feather mites. Generally, birds can use their bills to remove pests like mites when they are preening. However, they would be unable to get to mites on their heads and so the mites eat away the feathers. It's tough to say what really is going on, without trapping the bird and looking for the mites, you really can't tell for certain if it's molting or mites causing the lack of feathers.

There was another grackle coming to mom's feeders that was starting to lose its facial feathers. Interesting to note that the cardinals are dark skinned under the feathers and the grackles are light skinned. Since my mom had at least three birds that were either bald or starting to become bald, I wondered if this was a case of mites being passed around. The birds appeared in good health and were eating well, looking alert--all good signs. And mites don't usually kill a bird. Annoy it and make it look grotesque--yes, but kill birds--not so much. Check out the video I got of the male cardinal eating a berry off of mom's fuschia plant:

Did you note how he scratched the back of his head? That also makes me wonder if mites are the cause. Although, I would bet a bunch of pin feathers growing in at once would be rather itchy.

By the way, don't feel too bad for him, he's still gettin' some play. Not long after I took that video, this female flew in and he jauntily bounced over to her and fed her some of the fuschia berries--very clear mating behavior. She didn't seem to mind his bald pate one bit (perhaps she likes that Christine Lavin song). Although, if you look right behind her eye, there's a small bald patch--mites? Will she be bare headed soon as well?

As I was watching the cardinal, I noticed something new. Check out where his ear canal is. Do you see it? It's that large hole right under his eyeball (there's a small red feather over it). How cool--who knew that their ears were just below their eyes...and about the same size. I wonder if anyone has done any studies and the hearing capability of cardinals? So much we don't yet know...

And just for comparison and to not leave you with grotesque cardinals, here is a photo of a proper male cardinal. Whether the birds in the other photos have mites or an odd molt pattern, don't worry too much. In most cases, the feathers do grow back in plenty of time before the winter sets in and all will be right with the cardinal world once again.

Bald Cardinals

Well, it's that time of year again when I get a phone question that goes something like this:

"I think I have an escaped cage bird, or some rare bird. I've got a bird that is all red, almost as red as a cardinal (on a few occasions the bird will be brown). The bird has a small black head, and big orange bill. Do you know what that is?"

It's the bald cardinal sometimes called "pinhead" or "mini red vulture". Melissa Block got this photo. It was very funny, she called when I was in Virginia and asked if she could borrow the NovaBird Camera to get photos of birds eating mealworms for the Wild Bird Store's newsletter. I told her to just take one from the store, use it for a day or two and then bring it back. Two days later I get an email from Melissa telling me that she's having too much fun with the camera and will just buy it. It's fun, it's like you're still able to bird when you aren't home. Notice the hole just below the eye--that's the cardinal's ear. I wonder if their hearing is affected without the feathers covering the hole?

Cardinals can go bald for a couple of reasons. This time of year the birds are molting so before the new feathers grow in the old feathers fall out and for some reason cardinals will sometimes loose all the feathers on their head. The skin is black and without the fluffy feathers, their head looks teeny tiny especially with the massive bill.

Sometimes birds will get feather mites and all their feathers will get eaten away by the mites and the birds are bald until they grow in new ones. However, if you are seeing bald cardinals this time of year, it's a safe bet that they are molting. You may also see bald blue jays or grackles as well. Hilton Pond did a great article about feather mites, that featured a frightening photo of a bald female cardinal--eeeeeelich.

UPDATE: You can read more about bald cardinals here.