Brown Birds At Potholes & Prairie Bird Festival.

This past Sunday was just about as perfect as a day can get for me. It started at 4:15am when Kate and I woke up to load up our van for the ride home at the end of the festival. At 5am, we met up with good friends Kim Risen and Bill of the Birds to have some time to just sit and enjoy some Sprague's pipits and Baird's sparrows. It was rounded out with some fun driving time with my buddy Kate and then finished with a spicy Thai meal and some quality time with Non Birding Bill. One of the first birds we saw in the wee hours of the dawn--a short-eared owl! And check it out, it's tiny, barely there tufties were erect. Not only did we see the owl...we got to see what it's named for. Take that, historic ornithologists who gave birds names for obscure parts barely seen in the field!

We stopped on some private ranch property (that allows birders to enjoy the sparrows) and headed out. You could hear the cows in the distance and one of our first birds was--

A chestnut-collared longspur just chillin' on the fence. There are brown birds, and then there are Brown Birds. Chestnut-collards take brown to a whole new beautiful level and they still have that bobolink thing going with their black chest. BNA describes them as prairie specialists: "Typical breeding habitat is arid, short to mixed grass prairie that has been recently grazed or mowed...this species avoids nesting in areas protected from grazing, instead preferring pastures and mowed areas such as airstrips, as well as grazed native prairie habitats."

The next bird we heard was a grasshopper sparrow (that's the hunch backed looking bird in the above photo). It's buzzy call was mixed with western meadowlark and about that time we heard Sprague's pipits overhead. I've linked to the songs, but if you have birdJam or any bird cds and are not familiar with these songs--look them up.

It wasn't long after that before we heard the sweet sound of the Baird's sparrow. And I had a video earlier, but here the lovely song of the Baird's sparrow yet again:

You can hear Canada geese and western meadowlarks singing in the background of that video.

There was also a pair of savannah sparrows nearby--above is one of them. The two would chase each other and periodically, the Baird's would get caught up in the chase as well. I don't think Baird's feel that threatened by savannah sparrows, but I have a feeling that their fighting was taking place a little too close to its nest.

The Baird's sparrow kept getting closer and close. Kim suggested that we all get as low to the ground as we could and see how close the Baird's would get to us. It came within ten feet. Here are the photos, it was almost too close to fit into the field of view of my scope.

There we were listening to one of the sweetest bird songs in North America, and even more sweet songs overhead and surrounding us--it seemed amost unreal to hear the Sprague's pipit's descending song right after the Baird's. The prairie was chilly, but gradually warming in the glow of sunrise, giving the wet ground a sweet and musky smell. You could barely hear traffic. Sharing the moment with people who truly appreciate the moment and prairie in the same way is what really made the morning, this is what birding is truly all about for me. As we were enjoying moment on the prairie with the Baird's we heard two vans pull up way back by the roadside where we parked. A quick scan in the scopes revealed the vans were full of people with floppy hats and khaki hats: birders. They unloaded.

  Kim Risen and I recognized one of the people as fellow Minnesota birder and Victor Emanuel tour leader Kim Eckert. I always get a kick out of the random meetings that can happen in another state. He was leading two vans for VENT and like us was there for the Baird's and the Sprague's pipits. We went over to say hello.

And as much as I would have liked to have sunk into the ground and just enjoy the sounds and smells for the rest of the day (despite the ticks) we had to head home. So, once again, after a cold, crappy, rainy, windy reception to the state, all is once again forgiven with a North Dakota dawn.

The Benefits Of Relieving Yourself In The Woods

This is the post that I was debating about: is it too much information? But Non Birding Bill said that is was gold...hm, interesting choice of words in hindsight.

I was bebopping around in Mr. Neil's woods on Sunday. I was in hot pursuit of a ruffed grouse and the report that a black-backed woodpecker had been seen (I did not see it). After spending so much time trying to get photos of fox sparrows on Saturday, I was amused at how abundant and cooperative they were for my camera. Note the guy above. He just perched right above me in the woods and sat for several minutes. We're banding at Mr. Neil's on Sunday, I hope a few stick around.

It did seem to be a brown bird bonanza day. I was trying to get a photo of a brown creeper, but boy they just do not sit still. I got this shot and then aimed my scope up a few feet higher in anticipation of getting the perfect shot...

...however, just as it was perfectly centered in the frame, it took off! Curses!

The woods were full of hermit thrushes foraging on the ground. I love these birds. They are so secretive when they feed, it's hard to remember that they are the glorious singers we'll soon hear up north. I lost total track of how long I was in the woods chasing down all these brown birds. As I was following the thrushes, I heard a red-tailed hawk call from not too far behind me. It's sound I hear the education red-tails at The Raptor Center make in their mews. I wondered if there was one on territory nearby. I know a pair is nesting nearby, but did not think that the nest would be in this direction. I soon found myself far off on a path I do not normally travel looking for the nest. The sound of the red-tail was getting louder and louder, but I couldn't see anything in the bare trees that looked like a hawk nest. I reached the end of the path, it ended right at a bend in the creek. I noticed that I had a dire need to pee. There was a place just right for needs, and I assumed the position. From that angle, there was a clearing in some tangled buckthorn with a view of some pines across the creek:

Oh hey! check out that lump in the pine. I couldn't see it when standing on the path, but from this lower angle, it was quite visible. I finished what I started and then got the large lump in the scope.

I watched for about five minutes and then saw a large lump emerge. That looks like a hawk. Then to confirm it, I heard the loud, scratchy "keeeeeer" of a second red-tail--right over head. Then a third bird appeared. There was lots of screaming and it looked like a territory skirmish was underway. The red-tail in the nest took to the sky and the two hawks drove out the third.

After the intruder left, both red-tails returned to the nest. I was excited to find the nest, but a tad bummed that it is not in a place that is easy to photograph from a distance. Once the buckthorn leafs out, it will be well hidden.

I worried about posting this because, me peeing in the woods might be too much info and really, do you need that image floating around in your head? But as I said, NBB said "How can you not blog about peeing in the woods?"

Anyway, it led to finding a cool nest.

Taunted By Fox Sparrows

Non Birding Bill went out with me today to Staring Lake Outdoor Center with Cinnamon. We were there for the open house and when we arrived, there were a ton of sparrows under the feeder. I tried to take a break here and there to get photos of fox sparrows, but the closest I came was getting a vent shot.

We had kids giving Cinnamon lots of love, completely oblivious to the disapproval. I got a kick out of the people at the table next to me showing snakes. They kept making a point to say within ear shot that it was a good thing they didn't bring the big snakes. Apparently, the big snakes would have been overly excited sensing a rabbit--that's food after all. One in particular was making a big show of staying as far away as possible from the rabbit. The first time I heard them it was amusing. After the thirteenth time, it was just tiresome and I said, "Yes, I get the food chain. I understand."

Oh well, I'm sure I've done the EXACT same thing when doing raptor programs. "Oh, better keep that purse puppy away. That's making the hawk awful interested."

I tried a few more times to get photos of the fox sparrows. I did get this lovely grackle. A whole flock discovered our apartment feeding station yesterday and made short work of the suet. Guess it's time to switch to safflower.

I did get a lovely song sparrow, but the fox eluding not only my digiscoping but the motion sensitive camera. After we finished at Staring Lake, NBB and I head out to Mr. Neil's for dinner. We arrived just as the afternoon sun was hitting my beloved brush pile.

I scattered some seed on the larger branches and nestled my body and my spotting scope in some of the surrounding shrubbery and waited. The chickadees and juncos flew in first. Note the disapproving junco above. Next flew in the song sparrows and finally...

A fox sparrow popped up and perched on one of the branches and gave me a few minutes to get the fluffy bird. Love those sparrows!

Early Spring Sparrows

Winter storm warning starts today, April 10 at 4pm! We might be getting 4 - 6 inches of snow sometime within the next 48 hours. I shouldn't complain...Duluth is supposed to get blizzard conditions (not blizzard like, just blizzard).

While I was checking the traps yesterday, I heard my first field sparrows of the year (above). When we finished banding, I took a few minutes to go out and look for them--there were several. That is such a sweet sound of spring and summer.

There were a few song sparrows (above) around too. They've been around for a couple of weeks now. Although, some song sparrows don't leave the Twin Cities in winter. When I worked at a bird store on the west side, we had them at the feeder all winter long.

The field sparrow is such a cute brown bird! I was really enjoying the time with the field sparrows yesterday. Tax time has been rough this year. We put it off (our own darn fault) and we're gonna have to pay and it's going to hurt and we've irritated our accountant--just all those crazy things that many of us go through this one week in April every year. I loved just standing out in the prairie at Carpenter Nature Center surrounded by the sweet songs of the field sparrows, soaking it in. And no matter how late we are with our taxes or how much we end up owing, birds are always a comfort. I tried to take a video through my scope of the field sparrow singing for people who may not know what they sound like (it reminds many of a ping pong ball bouncing on a table). There's a little heat shimmer, but you get the idea:

Whole Lotta Woodcocks Goin' On

I don't know where this week has gone! Between the snow, an expected house guest, giving programs at the Northwest Sports Show, banding class--aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

I'm leading a woodcock trip on Saturday night through Staring Lake Outdoor Center in Eden Prairie and I needed to double check the spot where we usually see the woodcock display. Non Birding Bill and I hit the spot and we heard them peenting and doing the flight display right away--one flew right past NBB's head as he was texting on his phone. We even heard a couple of them fighting each other--they kind sound like Bert on Sesame Street when he laughs.

There were so many and they were so loud, I got some video so you can hear the peent and when you hear the twittering sound, that's the woodcock doing the flight display.

The Joy Of A Messy Fallen Oak

I am so loving the dead oak in Mr. Neil's yard! This may look like a bunch of dead boring branches, but it is teeming with life. It was struck by lightening and had to be felled and when the tree was down, I asked if he would mind leaving it there to do its decomposition thing. He agreed and this fall it has been sparrow town! I've been scattering seeds for sparrows all along the edges to encourage them to pop out, mostly white millet, flax, canary seed, sunflower chips, cracked corn, canola, and Nyjer.

The juncos have just been lovin' it. They will even perch on some of the branches and chill out for a bit, allowing you to get cute photos of them doing their impersonation of a fluffy puffball.

Others juncos just give you the sass. It's a fun challenge getting photos of tiny birds not at a bird feeder.

This week, the migratory sparrows have shown up in earnest. Even around my neighborhood I've found some lurking white-crowned sparrows. So far in the fallen oak I have found white-throated sparrows like the one in the above photo. They seem a tad cagey compared to the juncos, preferring to stay within the tree branches. They must have just arrived, maybe after a few days of refueling they will stay out in the open more.

Speaking of cagey, there is at least one fox sparrow lurking in the oak. The above photo was the best that I could do for a photo. I swear, that is the back of a fox sparrow. Really, it is. It's different than the other brown birds featured in this post. Honest.

This bird popping out for the sparrow mix surprised me. I would have thought they would be outta the state by now. It looks a little different from we're used to. Can you guess it? If you said chipping sparrow, you'd be right. The tree sparrows should be here very soon after these guys go.

The song sparrow in this awkward position is hoping that if it sits still enough, I won't notice and will aim my scope else where and it can enjoy whatever morsel it just found in peace. It's not every day you see a bird with it's tail caught in a branch--how embarrassing. Someone call Mr. Blackwell.

Sparrows aren't the only birds enjoying the fallen oak. The titmice have been grabbing leaves and pecking the heck out of them, there must be some type of bug or larvae lurking in there.

And it's not just the fallen tree itself that has been fun. You may have noticed in previous that we've turned the stump into a tray feeder and everybody has been using it (well, maybe not the hummingbirds, hard to put nectar on a stump).

And it's not just the brown birds either. I put some mixed nuts on their for the chickadees, titmice and nuthatches, but it's never long before a blue jay wants in on some of that action. They love their nuts.

I love this photo. That chickadee looks like it's thinking, "Well, there goes the neighborhood." There's now attractive way to mammal proof a stump, but we have all the other feeder poles mammal proofed so I'm not too bothered if the squirrels and chipmunks want to hoover up the seeds. Since this stump doesn't have much in the way of drainage holes, it helps to have birds and critters move the seed faster.

The Brown Bird

Dean Martin once asked Sinatra how he always managed to get such a great crowd reaction. Frank replied that he went out and started with three songs he knew would kill, and that after that, he could do anything he wanted, and the audience would love it.

Borrowing a page from the Chairman, I've decided to kick off my stint here with something I know you'll all love: Brown Birds.

You'll note that my nickname is non-birding Bill, and not bird-hating Bill. I rather enjoy our fine feathered friends, especially from the comfort of an air-conditioned room with a high-speed wireless internet connection and cable TV, so I can, you know, have something to do after I see the birds.

Shazz, on the other hand, loves nothing more than getting up at 4 a.m. to drive 2 hours on dirt roads and stand in the freezing cold, scanning the horizon for a bird that might be there. I keep pointing out to her (as she wakes me up) that she has books with pictures of these birds in them, but she just sighs and puts on another layer of clothing.

I think these two photos, taken last Christmas, sum up what birdwatching is like for me:

Sigh.

Of course, it's not just what birders consider ideal conditions for birding (cold, damp, desolate, locust plague, raining blood). It's also the fact that they love, love, love The Brown Bird.

The Brown Bird (sepia dullus) is a creature that has evolved a remarkable form of camouflage: no other bird will eat it because it looks so uninteresting. Birders, however, posses a genetic flaw that not only allows them to see The Brown Bird, but causes them to hallucinate, causing them to think that it's actually several different birds.

To wit:

To a birder, this looks like two different birds!

However, it's not enough to see The Brown Bird sitting at your feeder, where you can, you know, find them all the time. No, birders judge status amongst their kind by the conditions under which they were seen, and will often hire a skilled professional, called a "guide," to take them to the most out of the way place, show them a brown tree in a brown copse where The Brown Bird might be seen, and then strike them repeatedly about the head with a baseball bat. Kenn Kaufman, of course, rose to fame after detailing the 1% difference in brown shading found on the wingtips of The Brown Bird while being struck by lightning! David Allen Sibley countered by drawing every bird in North America while having his blood replaced with hydrochloric acid. Then the government stepped in.

Meanwhile I go off to feed the ducks, who make a pleasant quacking noise and seem to genuinely appreciate whatever bits of food (corn, salami) I toss them.

But I kid the birdwatchers. I kid, because I love. As a recovering hardcore geek m'self (comics, etc.), I see birders as, well, collectors. And like any other kind of collector, the more detail they notice about their subject, the more joy they get out of it. Sharon is, in my not-unbiased opinion, such a great ambassador for birding because she not only has a great deal of knowledge about the subject, but is genuinely excited about birds and most importantly, gets others excited about it, too.

Even, alas, me.

I was walking to work one morning and saw something bebopping around in a hedge. "Oh," says I, "that's a yellow-rumped warbler."

And then I stopped.

And then I wanted to punch myself.

Sparrow Palooza

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.