Birdorable Guest Blogging Contest #3: Craig Nash

Hello, all. NBB here again.

Sharon's off to Kazakhstan (from Frankfurt, where she could not, alas, find a frankfurter, only Viennese sausage), so it's time for our latest Birdorable guest blogging contest entry.

This one comes to us from Craig Nash of Peregrine's Bird Blog, an involves some close encounters with a very large sea bird.

Kaikoura: One of the Best Birding Experiences of my Life with Albatross Encounter

Having left Kapiti Island we stayed in Wellington with my father's first cousin Jan for a few days before we headed to the South Island and went our seperate ways. I wanted to see Albatrosses at Kaikoura and Kea in Arthur's Pass and my father wanted to visit friends and go fishing.

I arrived in Kaikoura and stayed in the Adelphi Backpackers Lodge.I had booked to go out with Albatross Encounter about a week earlier on the internet. I got up on a beautiful morning and headed to the Encounter building. I had made sure I had taken my seasickness tablets the previous night and an hour before we were to leave. At the Encounter centre there is a really nice cafe serving excellent breakfasts and great coffee. so i had a quick coffee before our group of seven were to meet up with our guide Alastair Judkins.

Alastair drove us from the centre around a headland to where we would board the boat. Pretty much the same as Kapiti we got onto boat and it was then reversed into harbour. We made our way out to an offshore canyon which is pretty close to the shore.It is about a mile deep. It is here that two currents converge and forces nutrient rich water upwards which in turn supports a wide variety of fish and marine animals creating a wonderful feeding habitat for many different species of seabird.

The first we were to see were the Cape Pigeon or Cape Petrel. They have a black and white colour and were named cape pigeons because they frequent Cape Horn. They are not a pigeon but a Petrel and in NZ follow fishing boats looking for scraps.

Once we were over the canyon Alastair put a bag of frozen chum overboard and what felt like seconds birds were coming in all directions. There were Great Northern Petrels, Mollymawks, Albatrosses and as they came in Alastair was pointing them out and naming them as they came in, as I was trying to photograph them. Westland petrel, Sooty Shearwater, White Chinned Petrel, Buller's Shearwater, Hutton's Shearwater, Salvin's Mollymawk, Gibson's Wandering Albatross. The shear beauty of these very large birds cleaving the water as they bank over the waves was awe inspiring. Also the backdrop of the Kaikoura Mountains made it all the more spectacular. To me it was one of the greatest birding experiences I have ever had.

Alastair then shouted Chatham Island Mollymawk. This had to be the bird of the whole NZ trip for me. It is critically endangered on the IUCN red list. There are about 4500 pairs in the world and they breed on a rock called the Pyramid 800 miles to the East in the Chatham Islands. They would be a very rare visitor to New Zealand and this was only the third time in six or seven years that Alastair had seen one.It is one of the three sub species of Shy Mollymawk. It flew round the boat before coming into land right next to the chum. It really was a beautiful bird.

It then flew off not to be seen again. I then tried to take photos with my sigma 10-20mm lens with my camera body as low to the water as possible. I got a range of shots. In this one immediately below the tip of his bill is only about an inch away from the lens!!!

Then we were visited by a Black-browed Albatross of the Campbell Island Race. It is one of the most widespread albatrosses. It looks as though it is wearing eyeshadow.

The only other Mollymawk we saw was a New zealand White -capped Mollymawk. This one is immature.

Alastair then headed to show us the Spotted Shag Colony on a rock just a few hundreds from the shore when we stopped at a group of Buller's Shearwaters sitting on the water. We looked and photographed them and then he chucked the remaining chum into the water. The albatrosses and the giant petrels went into a feeding frenzy.It was a pretty noisy affair.

As a photographic experience it was second to none.It had to be one of the best mornings of my life. The next time I am in NZ I will definately go out on an earlier trip in the day to experience the early morning sunlight. I would also love to photograph the birds from an underwater perspective.

I entered this photograph, which I changed to Black and White, into the Birdforum Monthly Photo Competition (In this case the title was Monochrome Birds) and it won so I was pretty pleased with that.

Birdorable Blogging Contest #2: Dawn Frary

Hello all, NBB here. Sharon is safely in Germany just now, waiting to travel to Kazakhstan tomorrow.

Today's entry is from Dawn Frary, Volunteer Owl Feeder and Wildlife Rehabilitator, Macbride Raptor Project. You can read more of her stuff at her wildlife rehabilitation blog: For the Birds.

Best. Rehab. Ever

Tonight was perhaps the best rehab session I’ve had so far in my volunteer-career as a wildlife rehabilitator.  I hadn’t rehabbed in the two weeks prior to tonight, and it felt great to get back in the flight cage and see how my feathered friends are doing.  Last Monday, I didn’t go out to the raptor center because I didn’t feel well and the week before I didn’t fly either bird because they both had additional injuries that were separate from their “regular” injuries (i.e. the injuries for which they are in the flight cage in the first place).  I didn’t want to agitate anything further so I let them be.  It looks like letting them rest was a good idea because they both were in fine form tonight.

My rehab accountrements: leather falconer gloves, rehab notebook, trusty pencil.

I began with the red tailed hawk, who I fully expected to be as much of a pain in the butt as he was last time I flew him.  If you will recall, I spent nearly an hour chasing him along the floor of the flight cage to no avail at all - he barely flew for me, so I put him back without completing his regimen of five perch-to-perches.  Tonight was completely different.  After catching him (which was the hardest part of the whole ordeal), he proceeded to give me his five perch-to-perch (P-P) flights plus an additional two P-Ps.  I felt like he and I were perfectly in sync and that he understood exactly what I wanted him to do.  He didn’t struggle while being held, and he didn’t put up a fight once I had caught him and was holding him.  His flying mechanics have improved greatly since the last time I worked with him, and he demonstrated a vast improvement in his landings.  I tried to offer him positive feedback and cheer him on while he was going through his exercises, which in my mind makes all the difference.  I completed his exercises in about 30 minutes, I think, and got him back in his cage safely and soundly.

The armpit biter great horned owl was up next.  Once he came down from his high perch on the wall, I caught him easily only to be bitten very hard on the left arm.  It left a tiny but very painful welt.  But, since I’m used to the sharp sting of his beak at this point, I got right to his wing stretches and then launched him into the air from the middle of the flight cage.  His flight had improved tremendously since our last session, as well.  His height, speed, glides, and landings were all those of a bird who was well on his way to being released back into the wild.  After being a resident of the MRP since early winter, I’m sure he is eager to get back to the woods and tell all his friends about the mean girl who made him fly back and forth inside a big cage.

The new kid: a Cooper's hawk was brought to the flight cage this week. He is under observation only for right now.

I was so thrilled after the rehab session that I literally jumped up and down afterward.  I was happy with the birds’ performances, but was also happy with myself for being what I felt was a very observant and patient rehabber.  I did not allow them to intimidate me, which I do sometimes because, well, they are large wild birds who are not happy about their current living situation and the fact that people in big leather gloves come into their space, corner them, grab them by the legs, and make them do flying exercises.

Sometimes it’s also easy to forget that there is a barrier between myself and these birds, and that barrier is called WILDNESS.  These birds, no matter now much I talk to them or anthropomorphosize them, are wild animals.  They want nothing to do with me.  When I’m holding them and looking into their eyes (from a mere six inches away) thinking about how amazing it is to be thisclose to a wild great horned owl, they are thinking, “I’d kill you right now if I could.”

It doesn’t bother me.  I signed up for this so I can’t complain about the bites or the birds’ blatant animosity toward my presence in their immediate space.  I am helping them, whether they know it (or like it) or not.  And tonight, I felt like the three of us - me, the hawk, and the owl - were all on the same page.  We danced.  I led.

They’ll thank me in the end.

I made two videos from today’s session, you can view them here and here.

Thanks, Dawn. Look for another entry tomorrow!

Birdorable Guest Blogging Contest #1: Callae Frazier

NBB here. Sharon's heading off to Kazakhstan today as part of a special project for Swarovski Optik and Birdlife International, which means that it's time to begin the Birdorable Guest Blogging contest.

Our first entry is from Callae Frazier, who describes her entry as: It's an avian-related personal narrative that takes place at my childhood home in the Colorado foothills where nearly every window looks out on a bird feeder

Sky Windows

Smack! Thump.

The sound, sudden and unmistakable, resonates down the hall, through open doorways and anyone in the house familiar with it looks up, startled.  Sometimes, the echo seems to move through even the walls.  I’ve heard an impact resonate from the front of the ranch-style house to my back bedroom. More often I am in the kitchen, or living room, or study, all near the front of the house and closer to the most often hit windows.  Windows that look out on some of the busiest bird feeders among the nearly dozen seed stations set up around the house.  Clear, wide windows that birds occasionally mistake for open, wide sky.

Smack! Thump.

Dozens of species visit the area, many stay year-round.  Palm-sized, chipper, ashy mountain chickadees, with their little black caps and eye stripes and chins are fairly ubiquitous.  Ground-feeding juncos, all varieties, all stocky and stout, also spend most of the year pecking about the ground under feeders, in the driveway, or on the platform feeders.  Bullet-shaped nuthatches, white-breasted, red-breasted, and their tiny compact cousins the pygmy’s, “yank, yank, yank” their arrival at the feeder.  House finches, goldfinches, pine siskens sing their melodious, waterfall-garbled song from high atop trees before swooping down and joining the others. Orangy-red male and yellow female crossbills pass through occasionally, their high-pitched, “kip-kip-kip” calls foreshadowing their arrival.  They sit upright on the hanging feeders, and I must check, and double-check their oddly formed bills every time, marveling at how the upper mandible literally crosses over the lower one.  Winter flocks of hand-sized, yellow-bellied, thick-billed evening grosbeaks provide a bright spot of color against a snow and dark pine backdrop. Still larger birds visit as well. Mohawked, Stellar’s jays bully juncos from the driveway, and chickadees from the platform feeders with their large bodies, and raucous calls.  We know summer has arrived when the quiet mourning doves arrive in the drive, delicately pecking seeds.  The surrounding diverse sliver of habitat in a life zone typically reserved for lodgepole pine entices the birds.  And the birds entice me.

My mom tells the story of how, even when I was a little girl I loved to sit in the elevated, recessed, bench next to the entryway and watch birds for hours out the bay window.  We call the space our “window box” on account of its boxy, rectangular shape.  The window looks out on a wide, multi-level wrap around deck and I look out at birds on the platform feeder attached to the deck railing.  When young, I asked for the names of birds all the time.  Mom knew them all, and by the time I started first grade I knew my colors, letters and numbers along with the names for chickadee, nuthatch, jay and junco.  I knew that chickadees’ nasaly call sounded like their name, “chick-a-dee-dee-dee.”  My parents adopted the chickadee’s clear two-note, descending minor-third whistle, “fee-bee”, as a way to find each other in a busy space, or to get each other’s attention.  Of all the multitudes of books in the house, The Golden Guide to Birds was one I could always find on the full shelves.  Before I could write, I made up stories, sitting there in the window.  Mom listened, and committed my words to paper.  Sealed in envelopes, my words flew thousands of miles away to my Grandparents in a silver-winged bird.

Thwap!

A flutter of anticipation begins when the sound reverberates down the hall.  Approaching the window box, I search out the only sign of trauma - a bit of feathers stuck to the glass.  Pressing my face to the smooth, cool surface of the window sometimes allows me to see the tiny, feathered thing on the deck below.  The dogs, curious, will hop up the bench with me.  Their warm breath fogs up my view.  I’ve learned to leave them inside when I investigate.  They sometimes mouth stunned birds and inadvertently finish off the job.  I hold them at the front door with my knees, and slip out between jostling bodies and lolling tongues.  There, on the brown deck, I most often find a grey chickadee or dark-headed junco lying spread-legged, wings outstretched.  Larger grosbeaks and deep blue, black-crowned jays are other common casualties of our windows.

Surprisingly, for the number of windows in the house (over 40), and the number of birds who have found our land an invaluable food source over the years (hundreds), remarkably few have perished.  After smacking into the windows they fall to the ground more often only stunned.  I gently scoop up the lightweight bundles, cupping their small warmth in my hand.  They breathe so fast.  Little chests heaving up and down.  Heavily lidded eyes, glazed with shock, do not acknowledge me.  Their heartbeat pounds furiously into my palm.  It is as though they go into a kind of coma, their brain and neurons checking and rechecking the stunned body.  I like to believe my hands provide them shelter and warmth.  A miniature recovery room.  A little patience, careful watching, and suddenly the “on” switch clicks.  Small glassy eyes brighten, drooping wings straighten, an alert head rises, cocks, looks about.  I hardly exhale then, waiting to see how long they will stay.

The stunned birds never fly far.  Sometimes they make it to the wide, flat bird feeder attached to the railing.  Maybe they rest there a while.  Often they dip into the plethora of seeds at their feet.  Within moments they fight off other feeders come to the feast.  I stand mere feet away, and trace the invisible impression of wing strokes crossing delicately across my palm.  Sometimes I can find small pinprick depressions where their claws pressed down.

Thwack!

I know right away if the window-smacked birds are dead.  There is something unmistakable about a dead thing.  The way the neck bends loosely, the closed eyes, sometimes a drop of blood at the base of the delicate, grey beak. The stillness.

When I was very young my parents helped me bury birds knocked off by windows.  We dug a shallow grave out in small area west of the garden.  A place that today holds bones of several well-loved pets.  I probably covered the little mound with a rock.  Felt perhaps a little sad.  But I also found the streamlined shape, soft feathers, and the delicate lightness of the little body fascinating.  A dead bird gave me a chance to see the normally fluttery critters up close.

Later, feeling silly for making bird graves, I walked some distance into the woods, and tossed them into a bush.  Something would find and eat them.  Maybe a crow or fox.  Hopefully not our indoor/outdoor cat who had a habit of bringing dead things into the house, leaving them as surprising gifts on beds, or by doors.  I might also take the dead birds and deposit them deep in the compost pile where they would slowly decompose, adding their nutrients to the existing combination of vegetable parts, egg shells, coffee grounds, plant trimmings, and hay.  Yes, I know you aren’t supposed to include meat in your compost, but when I was young I hardly considered the small flesh of birds an inappropriate addition to the compost.

In late August, when I made my regular round of plucking fresh snacks in the low, golden light of the autumn garden, I wouldn’t remember the birds I buried in the compost a year or two before.  But they’d be there.

There, in the squat carrots I’d wrest from the soil, barely wiping the soil free on my jeans before chomping down the crisp earthy sweetness.  Or there, in the round burst of sugar peas on my tongue as I popped them into my mouth one, by one.  Pop, pop, pop.  Their presence would be found in the meaty muscle of turnips and potatoes dug out of the soil with my bare hands.  The invisible bits of birds who once mistook a clear wide window for clear open sky.