Another Day On The Job, Another Animal Part In The Tree

I honestly thought yesterday was going to be the strangest day on the particular job assignment I have here in the southern Midwest. It apparently wasn't quite over. Another day on the job, another day of animal parts in trees!

As I was walking my point, something in the trees caught my attention. Do you see anything? If you have colorblindness, you may not. Basically, I noticed a red bird not moving.

Closer inspection revealed an eviscerated male cardinal wedged and pinned to branch.  I don't think this is a case of a sharpie or Cooper's hawk dropping some prey after eating from up high in a tree.  The body of the cardinal was really wedged into the fork and hooked well on the branch. I suspect the body was cached here by a shrike, but dang on, shrikes are only 9 - 10" long and a cardinal is about 8.5" long.  That's some fancy beak work to kill a bird that size. Since shrikes don't have the talons for gripping and killing that hawks and owls do, after they kill their prey with their beak, they try to wedge it into a branch or in the case of small prey, impale it on thorns or barbed wire as a larder for later or as a way to hold it still while they hack off strips of meat.

I imagine it was a nice meal for that shrike!

Kind of excited to see what sort of dead stuff I'll find in trees today!

Dead Stuff In My Office

FYI: No podcast this week.  I got called away to work in Missouri for the week and well, we just don't like Skyping in for the Podcast.  We'll be back next week. Also, kinda gross photos ahead.

I have a weird lifestyle.  I don't often know where I'm going to be from day to day. Most recently that came to an extreme level when a quick phone call Wednesday afternoon turned in to me on the Illinois/Missouri border on Friday afternoon to help with a habitat survey.

As I travel, I frequently post to social media what I call Today's Office, which is basically a shot of what my outdoor office looks like that day.  Often, it's beautiful.

Then there are these sort days like I had yesterday:

Look close...that's not a bird in that tree...I think it's some sort of way to let nature clean off of a deer skull.  Apart from the weirdness of suddenly noticing a giant deer head with an amazing rack suddenly appear out of the branches like a magic eye puzzle is unsettling.  But then you just tell yourself, "Oh, those hunters." And press on.

Then you find another one:

And you note the rotting and shuttered farmhouse surrounded by goats and how it looks like something Jason would live in on the property and think, "Maybe I'll step a little livelier on this survey."

But deer decapitation wasn't the only fun body parts I found in today's office!

My field partner called me over to see "something cool" and he's not as into birds shouted, "You have to see this, it's so cool!" And he was right.  It looked like some sort of cache, possibly a fox had left a large, dark wing wedged into some trees.  Hmmm, what could this be? I had noticed some large black feathers as we were walking and took mental note.  I was trying to resist the temptation to explore the wing further because I have a completely different assignment to this survey and it doesn't involve CSI Special Bird Unit. But I couldn't help but take a photo and notice a familiar smell...mmmm...vulture.  And I wondered given my location if it was black or turkey.

We soon found the rest of the carcass...yep, turkey vulture based on the light gray edging on the underside of the wing.

As if that weren't proof enough, we found the head!! And that totally sealed the deal for turkey vulture based on the nose opening--look how huge it is! Black vultures do not have the sensitive aroma sniffing abilities that turkey vultures have.  Definitely a cool find and one of the things I love about my super wacky unpredictable schedule lifestyle.

I can neither confirm nor deny that this head is in a make shift field envelope tucked away in a back pack in my hotel room (yes, I do in fact have a permit if I did choose to pick up the decomposing vulture head). I'm more worried about recriminations that could be suffered when a particular cohabitant finds out.

Bunny Murder Mystery

WARNING: Some people may find a photo in here gross...especially if you are of the Disapproving Rabbits persuasion.

I know this may shock some of you, but it's December and we got SNOW in Minnesota! In the Twin Cities we got roughly 12" from Winter Storm Caesar. Much to the chagrin of the National Weather Service, the Weather Channel has started naming winter storms. On the one hand that seems silly, but on the other, in this day and age of social media and climate change bring about more extreme weather and storm systems, it makes sense.  We can't call every snow storm Snomaggeddon or SnOMG.

But we got our first real snow of the season in the form of 12" and not the expect 4 " - 6" that usually is our first dusting. It was beautiful snow if you didn't have anywhere to be and was warm enough that a walk through the neighborhood yield gorgeous views like at Lakewood Cemetery yesterday. Not much in the way of bird action, but I imagine birds had staked out feeders and thick bushes to wait out the storm.

As I was walking home, a lump on the unshoveled but well trampled sidewalk caught my attention. At a distance I wondered if someone had lost a scarf or as is becoming all too common in my neighborhood, a wayward hair weave.

Closer inspection revealed it to be the remains of an eastern cottontail rabbit. A few nudges with my boot showed the carcass to be fresh and malleable, not stiff and several hours old. Hm.  I, of course, had to study the surrounding tracks.  I noticed right away boot prints and crow tracks and was wondering if someone's dog got the bunny and the crows came in for the ample food source (we're withing five miles of a large crow roost). But I couldn't find dog paw prints with the bunny prints.

Then I found what I was looking for, rabbit tracks with wing prints. What struck my attention was how the wing prints seemed short next to the rabbit tracks and that the rabbit tracks didn't stop.  I would expect that a red-tailed hawk would be the raptor going after a rabbit in my neighborhood (we have a few urban residents). And when red-tails nail a rabbit, the bunny track usually stops.

These tracks went all over from the sidewalk to the yard, you could even see where the rabbit tried to turn around.  Based on the short width of the wings and the tracks, I wondered if what killed the rabbit was a Cooper's hawk?  That's a very common hawk in our neighborhood too and yes they are large and can go for rabbits, they do not have feet suited for dispatching a bunny quickly.  They have skinny toes meant for crushing songbirds and pigeons, not the big beefy toes of a red-tail. That rabbit wouldn't have gone gently into that goodnight.

The corner where I found the bunny carcass and evidence is well traveled and close to a coffee shop.  I suspect once the Cooper's got the rabbit, it couldn't eat that much as there would be people walking by, flushing it.  The several crow prints makes me wonder if they got more of the bunny than the hawk.

Survival continues even in the most urban of neighborhoods.