Just In

I just got in. Here is a preview--this was one of the best birding times I've had in a while--great birds around every turn. I must eat, check the email which I haven't seen since Friday, read up on the Big Sit and see if NBB actually put in any blog updates over the weekend.

I just got this photo in email from Frank. From left to right we have my sisters Terri and Monica, my Mom, Frank Taylor holding a sharp-shinned hawk and me...wearing a fabulous Pish Off shirt. Hm, that shirt is so fetching, I wonder where I got it? Frank is so awesome, he makes sure everyone enjoys the birds, is constantly educating and I would not be the raptor presenter I am today if it weren't for his training. I think my mom hit the nail on the head when she said, "If God had a refrigerator, Frank Taylor's picture would be hanging on it."

A Bird's Ability to Thrive No Matter What

All the photos in this entry are courtesy of Frank Taylor.

I just got in a weekly banding report from Frank Taylor. In it was a an interesting account of a first year sharp-shinned hawk that had impaled it's wing on a twig. Frank said that it had healed up with a bit of the twig still in the wing!

They didn't try to pull out the twig, just clipped the ends that were close to the wing. The bird seemed to be doing just fine and they didn't want to stress it out with a trip to The Raptor Center down in the Cities. Frank used to be curator of birds at TRC and has been a master falconer for longer than I've been alive. He knows a healthy flight in a bird when he sees it, and with a high strung bird like an accipiter, letting it go gave it a better shot at survival than time in a rehab facility.

The injury was healed, I wonder how long ago it happened? Perhaps when it was learning to fly.

Another fine example of how birds will survive no matter what. It would never occur to this bird that, "Hey, I've got a stick in my wing, I don't feel like hunting and heading south to find food. I'm just going to hunker down and sleep today." Birds just do what has to be done in order to survive. I love that.

Pete vs Pyle

And now, more fun from banding at Carpenter Nature Center on Friday. This time of year with odd molting patterns and juvenile/immature birds, some identification can be tricky. Some ids, with a little deduction, you can figure out pretty quick:

Check out this cardinal. It's mostly brown with lots of red patches--on the surface it shows characteristics of being both male and female. Is this bird a metrosexual? No! This is a male, hatched this summer and is now molting into his adult red plumage. When cardinals leave the nest, both males and females are brown. Half way through the summer, the males grow in all new feathers, ditching the brown and getting the red.

Check out how funky the face is. The feathers are brown like a female with hints of red. You can see the beginnings of the black that will surround his bill. And the bill itself is a whole hodge podge of colors. Young cardinals have black bills--that's one way you can tell a young cardinal from a female--adult cardinals have orange bills. This bill is definitely in transition from black to orange.

Here it is head on. Very psychedelic.

Here was another weird one. A female house finch with one pink feather on her breast. What was that about? I wondered if it was like female orioles. The older they get, the more they start to look like male orioles. However, clues on the bird said that it was a hatch year bird (hatched this spring) so I'm not sure why the one pink feather. Male house finches get their pink color from their diet--maybe this female has been eating like a male? Another mystery for another day.

And here we have a dreaded empidonax! Not the guy, but what is in his hand. That's Jim Fitzpatrick trying to figure out a small brown bird's identification. For people who don't know birds, there's a whole group of flycatchers called the empidonax flycatchers (willow flycatcher, alder flycatcher, etc) and they all pretty much look the same. In the spring when the birds are singing you have a chance to tell them apart by song. But in the fall when they are silent, it's not easy and empidonax flycatchers can bring the best birders to their knees in tears and frustration.

When you are banding birds, you use a very intense guide called the Identification Guide to North American Bird by Peter Pyle. It can tell you how to age and sex many species of birds by looking at subtle colors and feather shape and size. As we were trying to narrow the identification of the flycatcher in the above photo, we of course turned to Pyle. We were thinking it was between an alder flycatcher and a willow flycatcher.

Here is one equation offered by Pyle to determine the two--yes, that's what I wrote, an equation. Leave it to an ornithologist to use math to take all the fun out of birding:

"Formula I is (longest primary feather minus primary feather 6) minus (primary feather 5 minus primary feather 10), the latter value (p5 minus p10) being positive if p5 > p10 or negative if p10 > p5. The thin lines represent a buffer zone of 30% around the optimal equation (thick line on chart). Birds with measurements falling within the two thin lines should not be identified."

Yawn. Basically, this is saying to measure some of the flight feathers and an attached chart to determine if the bird is identifiable. It very well may not be identifiable at this time.

I brought the new Pete Dunne book Essential Field Guide Companion to see if there was any new insight to offer. There were a few hints but the end of the paragraph was tied up with this:

"But in the East, where Willow is more like Alder in all respects, the most helpful characteristic is often humility (on the part of the observer)."

Basically, you're just not going to know for sure. An excellent point, Pete, which garnered a knowing laugh from all the banders at the table.

Going back to Pyle we found this:

"Thus, successful identification of Alder and Willow flycatchers in the hand involves a synthesis of plumage characters, measurements, and wing morphology by age, sex, and geographic variation, and the use of a buffer zone in which birds should be left unidentified."

So, basically, Pyle is saying the same thing that Pete is saying. There are some things you can try, but some birds, you just aren't going to be able to identify.

The flycatcher in question was released without being banded. During the whole time, the flycatcher never struggled and sat patiently for the short time it was with us. If I were going to anthropomorphize (give human emotion to a bird's behavior) I would have said that it look resigned to not knowing quite what it was itself and could we please help it. We didn't want to keep the bird for an hour to try and guess the id and it's important to get the correct id to make sure the correct sized band is on the bird.

So take heart when you're having trouble figuring out a bird in the field. Some species are so complex, that they can't even be identified in the hand, six inches from your face.

Retrapping Banded Birds

So, why is this bird so exciting? What is this bird's id? If you don't know the id, they eyes of this bird should be a hint--note the red eyes. Now is it clicking in? It's a red-eyed vireo. And this particular vireo was in the blog not too long ago!

This bird was banded at Carpenter Nature Center on May 26 and had its photo in the blog May 29th. I was told that the same vireo was netted again at Carpenter in June while I was away, and now here it showed up for a third time in the nets on July 7th. Every now and then I meet people are against banding birds, that it is too cruel and that banders are traumatizing and scarring these birds for life if not out right killing them. If that's the case, why is this vireo showing up in the nets once a month? This bird has made an informed decision about where to set up it's territory. The nets are set up in the same spots when birds are banded, if the bird was so traumatized the first time it was banded, it would have gotten the heck out of dodge and set up a nesting territory elsewhere. At the very least it would have avoided the area where the nets are. And this vireo isn't the only retrap, many species end up being retrapped at Carpenter, it's a helpful tool in determining how long certain birds live in the wild. I'm not saying that a bird's favorite activity in life is to be handled by humans and to be banded, but birds are not as traumatized by it as some would believe. Think about what a bird goes through on a day to day basis: constantly on the lookout for Cooper's hawks, foxes, cats, snakes, never knowing where that next meal is coming from for sure, defending it's territory--violently if necessary from rivals or other species, sitting out storms, getting up and doing it's job every single day--regardless of how it feels--now that's a work ethic. Birds are hardy, tough, resilient creatures. Five minutes of banding is not going to wreck them for the rest of their life. It certainly does far less damage than someone who finds a young bird of prey and feeds it only hamburger and chicken breasts or a young robin and feeds it only bread and milk.

Since the vireo had posed so nicely with a song sparrow in May, I tried photographing it with a nuthatch for comparison this time. Nuh-uh, that nuthatch was not going to have any of that. The nuthatch trashed and snapped and made such strange catcalls that we decided to let it go. When both birds came in the nets, they were fairly low to the ground--the vireo surprised me, that's a bird I tend to associate with the tops of trees and here it had flown into the net only three feet from the ground and about the same time as the nuthatch--hm, I wonder if they were chasing each other?

I was the one who got the white-breasted nuthatch out of the net. I had to stifle my chuckles while I removed her. First she did her caterwauling, but then she started doing that usual nasally nuthatch "her her". I could feel her body vibrate in my hand while she made her yanking calls. Very cool.

Other birds we got in the nets today included a very tiny house wren--we had heard a winter wren that morning and were hoping for one, but got the boisterous house wren instead. It's so hard to believe this tiny guys make such a loud call.

We also got in SEVERAL recently fledged red-winged black birds. The young blackbird pictured above was so fresh from the nest you could still see the edges of the gape that baby birds have.

On a side note, Non Birding Bill just informed me that the Disapproving Rabbits pages are getting more traffic than the blog...Cinnamon is demanding an increase in her parsley allowance and is threatening to hire an agent if we don't comply.

Osprey Banding 2006

It's that special time of year again...osprey chick banding! After all that travel and then time off for the holiday weekend, I should have spent this morning scheduling meetings and catching up on paperwork...but I'm just a girl who cain't say no to biologists and researchers when they ask if I want to come along banding. It balanced out though, I ended up selling a couple of digiscoping adaptors and maybe even a spotting scope--whoot!

We had lots of kids and young people along this morning as we banded birds from three different locations. One of my favorites was bander Mark Martell's son Chris (or Mini Mark as I like to call him). Look at that hat! Don't you just want to eat him up? Chris is holding up one of the bands.

I love this photo, father and son banding together while an osprey waits its turn in front of them. Chris looks like he's supervising his dad. Mark needs all the suprevision he can get.

Speaking of young people, this was Elizabeth with bander Missy Patty. Elizabeth has a growing interest in biology and banding. I started listing all the great places Elizabeth can go. I'm not sure her mother appreciated all the advice, if I had kept going, I would have had her driving young Liz all over the state and even suggested that she skip school in the fall to go to Hawk Ridge on days when there's a northwest wind. There are so many opportunities for young people to get involved now, especially in Minnesota. Elizabeth is well on her way and has already volunteered with Featherfest at Waldorf Schools. Elizabeth, come to banding on Fridays at Carpenter, you know you want to! All the cool birders are doing it.

And I wonder why more people don't let me around their kids.

"GRRRR! I'm so fierce! Fear me and let me crush you like the bullhead you are!"

Now, on to gratuitous young osprey photos. The birds in these photos are around five weeks old and won't be flying for another three weeks. They're so funny at this age, they are just starting to learn what they can do with their feet and aren't very agile.

Missy Patty said that their muscles aren't strong enough to hold up their wings yet, so they just kind of hang on the sides. Doesn't this kind of take you back to eighth grade and all your adult body parts are coming in and you're growing and not used to taking up so much space? I feel for ya' dude. Instead of acne, these guys have to deal with all their feathers growing in at once. Feather quills coming in all at once have got to feel strange.

This bird was Mr. Bitey McBite Pants. It was the oldest and put up the most struggle. Since it didn't quite know how to use its feet yet, it bit everything--including its own toe! Toe biting with talons just doesn't work well at all and sure enough this bird got a minor puncture wound--man that's gotta be one heck of a canker sore. So, to keep the chick from biting itself anymore, Missy sacrificed her finger. It actually didn't hurt that much--with birds of prey, the talons are always what you worry about, not the bill.

"Wait, what do you mean you need a blood sample?"

Mark and Missy also took blood samples for all the birds for DNA testing. I'm not sure where that goes, but it's smart to start that now and keep track of bloodlines. It would especially be important if ospreys ever need to be bred in captivity again. Osprey reintroduction has been a smashing success in Minnesota. The most successful nest in the Twin Cities is at a private residence. Mark calculated that this particular nest has successfully fledged 33 birds since 1991--including three today.

One bizarre thing that young osprey do as a defense mechanism is what's called pancaking. You can see a young osprey doing it in response to my hat in the above photo. When the young birds hear the warning call from the adults or fell threatened, they kind of flatten out and tuck their heads down. What purpose could this serve? Are they just fainting and pretending to ignore the danger? No! Check out what they look like from above when they do this:

Kind of brown and nondescript. That blends perfectly with the inside of an osprey nest. So, if a potential predator is flying over, at first glance the predator may not notice any young in the nest with their white faces tucked away. Very clever.

I actually got to help and hold one of the young ospreys today. In my excitement and eagerness to help, I forgot to unclip my binos from the harness. When I was finished, they were a little messy:

Look at all that dander, shaft flakes and bird oil (that smells like fish because that's all the birds eat)--thank goodness for lens pens! Glad the talons didn't nail the lens--although, that would have been covered in the no fault warranty and I could have got them repaired.

Here we have a frog who made a cameo appearance during the banding--so tiny! I at first thought it was a spring peeper, but Missy and Mark thought it was a wood frog and with that mask I agreed. However, my Reptiles & Amphibians of Minnesota Field Guide suggests that it is a western chorus frog. If there are any frog experts who disagree, feel free to drop me an email. Whatever it was, it was teeny.

Osprey, a fierce fishing machine and yet goofy looking all at the same time.

A day in Duluth

The lake was angry today my friends. It was chilly and breezy along Lake Superior today in Duluth, but it's late October and in the 30 degree range, what do I expect? There were surfers taking advantage of the waves--and Non Birding Bill thinks I'm nuts for sitting in a box a dark box watching hawks fly by.

Hawks were moving fast and high today. We only got two in the nets, but what we lacked in quantity, we made for in quality--a passage goshawk and a haggard red-tailed hawk. We got the red-tailed hawk in first, early in the morning. We were watching three high in a thermal and at one point each of us was watching a different bird. As one person was saying, "Okay, this one is turning, it's going to come in" another got caught in the net. It was a gorgeous adult with a beautiful rusty red tail, and according to foot size he was a male (pictured right). Interesting was that he had an odd growth on his gape on the lower mandible. The growth looked like a skin tab and grew straight up, like some weird yellow tooth. Who knows what caused it, but the bird has obviously been surviving quite well for years so we let it go after banding it.

The goshawk was a lot of work to get in the net. What is the world coming to when a northern goshawk doesn't come straight for the net with a slight yank of a pigeon. At this particular banding station, we face an open field and can see birds coming for miles. Typically, when a goshawk comes on the field, they make a bee line for the nets but this bird kept doodling along starting to thermalize then getting out of it. Finally it went off to the right up against the tree line. We started to watch for other hawks, but kept half an eye out to the right on the off chance the goshawk came down the tree line towards the net. I looked out the right and there it was like a bird dark rain drop. "It's coming!" I whispered excitedly and it zoomed over the top of the blind, just above the nets and down on the pigeon--we could hear the air passing through the wings. Rick masterfully yanked the pigeon at the last second so it avoided the goshawk's talons. The goshawk landed with a thunk and then leapt up to take off, only to bounce straight into the front net. The pigeon somehow landed in the back net. That's the young goshawk above, the little male kind of reminds me of Sam the Eagle from the Muppets.

Red-breasted nuthatches were crawling all over the trees and the woods sounded like they were chock full of little squeak toys. I meandered into the woods a little bit to see if any small owls were lurking in the trees. Sometimes when my mind is wandering as I walk through the woods, I go on autopilot and absentmindedly pish. As I did this today I felt an odd sensation--I was completely surrounded by red-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, brown creepers and white-breasted nuthatches. The red-breasteds were within two feet, was I being stalked...or mobbed.

Another sign of winter was all the snow buntings on the sides of the roads (pictured right). I do love those guys. I tried to digiscope them, but I didn't spend as much time on them as I liked, there were some strange people on the side of the road and my scope and camera set up seemed to irk them so I took my birding elsewhere.

Birding with Neil

Periodically I am asked if I am really friends with Neil Gaiman. Yes, I am really am. And to prove it, I took Neil up for a day of hawk watching around Duluth, MN to experience the thrill of thousands of migrating birds of prey. First we stopped at my friend Frank Taylor’s hawk blind to band migrating hawks and then we headed to Hawk Ridge. Many don't know this, but Neil is quite the birder and has a way with passerines (note Neil with the song sparrow on the left).

Neil sits in the hawk blind to help watch for hawks flying over the field. There were a couple of times when he confused blue jays with sharp-shinned hawks but he got the hang of it before the end of the day.

We banded a passage female merlin. She graciously posed for a photo with Neil before continuing on with her migration.

Neil meets some pigeons at the banding station—all of whom never get harmed by hawks during banding due to protective leather jackets and expert handling by hawk banders. He tried to chat with them about their adventures, but being pigeons they were hesitant to speak of their exploits.

After a morning full of banding we stopped at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve. Neil took a look at the daily totals. He was most excited about seeing a Northern Goshawk and agreed with me that, goshawks are hands down the coolest North American raptor.

The banders at Hawk Ridge got in a Red-eyed Vireo—which are surprisingly aggressive and try to bite anybody. It’s okay because they are insectivores and have soft bills and don’t hurt so much when the bite. This one took a break from nipping for a photo with Neil.

A rare appearance by a Golden-crowned Kinglet at the Hawk Ridge banding station made for a special day. Neil graciously accepted a kiss from this secretive bird.

A fellow birder, Reier decides to make Neil feel like a true bird watcher by making fun of him. This is a good sign that Neil is being embraced by the birding community.

Before the day was done we found a huge mushroom. It reminded me of a smurf house. I wanted to see what it tasted like, but Neil smartly recommended we shouldn’t eat mushrooms we aren’t sure of.

Well hopefully this answers the question of just how well I know Neil Gaiman.

Hawk Trapping

I finally got to spend a day at the hawk blind! This fall has just been CRAZY and I've barely had time to enjoy my favorite part of birding (hawk migration) but I finally had a chance to participate in some hawk banding today. I headed up to Duluth Saturday after a signing with Stan at the Wildlife Science Center (a very cool place by the way--you can have a birthday party with wolves). Well, I was so unfocused I forgot to book a hotel room and decided that rather than stopping from motel to hotel to look for vacancies I would just bunk it with the boys out in the field. Rick was kind enough to offer the back of his truck and Frank was kind enough to offer a sleeping bag. I had plenty of clothes, spare blankets and a pillow in my car and thought this would be what Opie Taylor would call "adventure sleepin'" (you can see my cozy little bed pictured above). It was only supposed to be in the low fifties maybe upper forties so I figured I would be warm enough. Not only that, I had a flask of 15 year old scotch with me just in case I got cold...or couldn't sleep.

The hard part getting to sleep was being distracted by all the outside sounds. I could hear night migrants overhead and that always sends chills down my spine. Then at some point someone in a truck drove by the field with a large flood light, I assume they were shining deer. Other than that it was a pleasant night outdoors snuggled up in a warm sleeping bag listening to the sounds of Duluth.

The trapping was slim pickins'. The winds were pushing the hawks up so high they weren't interested in coming down to the nets and at this point adults start passing through and they are more difficult to get into the nets than the first year birds. We got two hawks in the nets today, one was a passage female merlin. We placed a band her and released her (pictured right). After I snapped the photo, she dropped down and bounced off my arm and headed for the woods, but not without giving us a little merlin shriek before she was out of sight. I wonder if it's good luck to have a merlin ricochette off of you?

Our second bird in the net was a passage female sharp-shin--Oh! She had a really cool flight. Frank and I were watching it high in the sky and it started a straight dive down at a small bird then stopped half way and continued in our direction, but still quite high. As it was right over the blind, Rick pulled the pigeon and it did a straight stoop down! You could see the landing gear (legs) position right in front of the face, locking the talons on the target. Then just mere feet overhead, it dodged and darted from side to side to slow down and not smashing into the ground and in an instant it was in the nets! A really great flight into the net really makes up for a slow bird day.

Since the birds were slow, we closed down the banding station early and Amber, Reier and I headed to Hawk Ridge. It was surprisingly busy, which is good because Hawk Ridge needs all the support it can get. I was so excited, they had shirts--shirts that fit women and don't make us look like shapeless bags of potatoes! So ladies if you are looking for a bird shirt that won't add ten pounds to your figure, get a Hawk Ridge V-Neck. They appear to be available in gray, white or pink.

They wern't getting too many hawks in at their banding station, but they did get some cool passerines into the nets including a golden-crowned kinglet and a red-eyed vireo (left).
Well, this has to be the end of the entry--there's just tons of freaks on TLC tonight. First it's "Face Eating Tumor" followed by "I Am My Own Twin" and to top it off " 101 Things Removed From The Human Body". Now that's what I call quality tv, and it has be educational if it's on The Learning Channel.

That Good Bird Smell

Me smelling a red-tailed hawk. Photo by Amber Burnette

I love the good, warm, feathery smell of a bird. Not all birds have this, eagles for example smell like an empty 35mm film cansiter. (I know, you thought I was going to go for the obvious vultures smell like vomit joke but I'm very serious about the good bird smell). Great-horned owls frequently smell of skunk or at the very least three day old road kill. If you are a bird handler and you have a great-horned owl on your fist you know that when they get stressed they pant and then they have rat breath. Bottom line is that owls, though very cool to look at, stink. Ring-billed gulls and osprey aren't much better as they always smell like fish.

Nothing however beats the smell of a bird that has been in the sun. Red-tailed hawks have a wild alive smell, but it's not pungent. It's definitely an animal smell and lacks the pungent urine aroma that accompanies many wild mammals. Mmmmm.

Today I heard a rumor that just makes me hang my head. I know quite a few people that go grouse hunting in the fall. The word on the street (or should I say path) is that grouse are in low numbers. This year is part of the grouse ten year cycle. Grouse populations peak and are in good numbers and the numbers drop since their isn't enough habitat to support them all. Gradually over 8 years, the population builds itself back up and then by the tenth year the numbers are high and the cycle starts all over again. Since northern goshawks hunt grouse, people unfamiliar with the concept of the food chain often think they are the reason for the decline, however the goshawk population is on a similar cycle. When the grouse population drops, the goshawk population drops and when the grouse population rises the goshawk population rises. This year, someone said they heard from a DNR worker that the reason is that the bald eagle population in Minnesota is so high they are eating the grouse. Though it is possible for an eagle to go after grouse--it's highly unlikely, they just don't have the hunting tools a goshawk has. Grrrrrr.

Forgot one photo

Okay, so several photos will be showing up on here from hawk trapping in the next few days after Amber and I start swapping, but I forgot to post the peregrine falcon with a a weird bill photo:

Who knows what happened to this bird. The injury to the lower mandible looks like it broke long ago and healed at an odd angle. Because of this the top mandible didn't get worn down as it should have and became overgrown. My personal theory is that the bird probably flew into something like a building when learning to fly or chasing after prey. Looking closey at the falcon you could make out a line on the lower mandible where it had been bent back. The bird still managed to feed as the injury healed which is a testament to how well birds get on, even at times without human intervention.

This peregrine was banded and released as is.