You couldn't have asked for better weather for the Spring Raptor Release yesterday. It was gorgeous, although the one downside was that I was down wind from an apple orchard and all the binocular demos kept getting dusted with pollen. It was encouraging to see parents getting monoculars and kid sized binoculars for their children.

TRC released four birds yesterday, 1 Cooper's hawk, 2 red-tails and one hefty eagle. I worked my way through the crowd to try and get different shots of the birds taking off.

Above is a little boy who was sitting on his father's shoulders watching one of the red-tails take off after recovering from a wing injury. It was fun to watch the difference in the birds. The Cooper's hawk took off like a shot in one direction. It didn't try to catch a thermal, it just shot out of there above the tree line. The two red-tails looked for thermals and tried to use those to circle up high in the sky.

After watching which was the birds took off, I decided to find a spot where I thought the eagle might fly low. It was down off to the side of the stage, facing the crowd. There were a few other TRC volunteers there too. As they were making all the speeches about the bird's recovery, Lori, one of TRC's vets came by and told everyone to sit down. This was a big bird and would more than likely need a few seconds to get serious lift.

The eagle was thrown into the air. For second it looked like it might land on one of the speakers. Although, the hoard of people around it, made the eagle change her mind. Then she turned and flew towards the area I was sitting in.

And then I got this shot! I can't believe it, I look like a professional photographer and all I used my little Nikon Coopix 7900. Really, the bird was quite low and I was quite lucky. Boy, I was grateful that Lori had warned all of us to sit on the ground--or that bird would have run into one of us for sure. From there the bird flew right over our heads and into the wild blue yonder. I rolled over backwards as she flew over us and revelled in seeing her talons zoom past a few feet above my head.

And on a weird note, I have a mention in the New York Times. Non Birding Bill noticed in the website stats that we were getting some traffic from there. The link wasn't open to non subscribers until today. The writer was at the Ivory-bill Celebration. I remember Bobby Harrison telling me that he was going out with someone from the New York Times, and the writer apparently came to my beginning birding workshop. It's a nice mention and will make my mother proud. I have to say, it's interesting to read Bobby's comments, which reminds me that I haven't heard from him in weeks. Hmm, has he seen and photographed something and has been taken into the woodpecker mafia custody?

I'm also kind of curious about my status with Cornell...the no talking ban was supposed to be lifted in either April or when Cornell gave me the official go ahead...I haven't heard. Can I start talking about scaling and cavities and if I did or did not see the bird? I don't know. Although, I suppose if given enough scotch, one could get me to sing like a...an ivory-bill?

It was a brown bird bonanza yesterday at Carpenter Nature Center. I was in brown bird heaven watching all the Harris Sparrows (that's one pictured above) and getting the chance to see them up close and personal during banding. I was hoping to get them on the NovaBird Camera, but alas, all I was a chipping sparrow:

The chipping sparrow didn't seem to be too thrilled with the black oilers on the ground. I should have put some white millet down, that's their type of fair.

I could not get enough of those Harris sparrows. For a little brown job, it's quite striking with that orange bill highlighting all the black around it. The photo below are both a male and a female Harris sparrow. Can you tell which is which?

Yeah, I can't either. The black surrounding the bill has more to do with age than sex. The banders used wing cord ( the length of the wing from the wrist to the tip of the longest primary) to tell them apart. The bird on the left is a female, the bird on the right is a male--according to the length of their wing cords. You can learn all this stuff if you come to Carpenter on Friday's for banding.

As I was working on this entry, I got a call from Kim Kaufman in northern Ohio. She was telling me about the big warbler push they were getting the last few days at their banding station. I told her that up here Minnesota we were getting a big sparrow push here and that's when she told me that she banded 92 white-throated sparrows (pictured below) on Tuesday at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge--sheesh! I'm pooped just thinking about it.

"Even I'm shocked by that exorbitant amount of white-throated sparrow banding!"

Kim was trying to make me drool with her reports of banding cerulean warblers and golden-winged warblers and I told her of our Harris sparrows and she was a little jealous of what we had going on up here.

We are getting quite a few white-throats and white-crowned sparrows up here. After the two birds above were banded I wanted to take a quick photo. As I was doing this, the dude on the right started to squeak a little setting off all of the sparrows around Carpenter. They were like our own personal pishing devices. As soon as the birds were let go, calm was restored to Carpenter's feeder area.

One white-throat in particular really intrigued me. Check out the guy in the above photo. He had some yellow on the feathers around the wrist. I had never noticed that before, but then again, I've never had a white-throat this close before.

These are just classy looking sparrows! I can't get enough of them. For the non birders that periodically check this blog, these are the ones that go "Oh Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" or according the second edition Kaufman guide "Oh Sweet Kimberly, Kimberly, Kimberly". Kim Kaufman says that they are saying, "Oh band me, Kimberly, Kimberly, Kimberly."

And to be fair, since last week I showed male bird hoohas, I figure turn about is fair play. Here is a female robin brood patch. Female birds get these open patches on their breast to help incubate eggs. Surrounding feathers help keep her warm when she's not incubating.

If there are major typos, I apologize, blogger spell check is down and I'm too tired to look it over. Ah well, at least it's a sign an actual person types this blog and not some corporation.