Everything BUT An Oriole

So, part of my goal on Saturday was to get some photos of orioles--I really don't have any recent ones. A pair had finally shown up at Mr. Neil's so I thought I would go out, play with his new dog, and put together our comb honey supers (yes, I'm being optimistic for later this summer). I set myself up near the feeding stations to try and get some photos of orioles on the jelly feeder. The rose-breasted grosbeaks were incredibly accommodating. They were not in the least bit shy about all the hammering Non Birding Bill and I were doing. One pair even engaged in some..."marital relations" right on the tray of the copper Aspects feeder--daring!

The goldfinches were very easy shoot as well. This male kept cracking me up--he kept raising his little "crest". I'm not sure what was getting the finches so excited, it's a bit early for them to be nesting, but it was cute.

I have a hummingbird feeder called a HummZinger set up right next to the jelly feeder for the orioles. I decided to just aim the scope on those feeders just in case the orioles finally decided to make an appearance. A male ruby-throated hummingbird came in and lurked at the feeder. He took sips of nectar in between curious glances my way.

It was a glorious day to be outside. Look how the sun hit that hummingbird's ruby throat above--nice! The chorus of birds was unbelievable. A male scarlet tanager flew in and sang above me in an oak tree. I played my birdJam and he flew down, gave me once over and then stayed in the tops of the trees. It was interesting to see how quickly he figured out the song was nothing to be alarmed about--a fake. I wonder if they pick up on recordings being the same timing and phrasing every time?

I played the oriole call, and they didn't respond at all.

In the afternoon I heard one of my all time favorite songs--bobolink! Poor Non Birding Bill was dozing in the grass when I first heard the song. I gasped loudly and yelled at Bill, "Do you hear that?!" He jerked awake and said, "Huh? What's wrong? Where?" He was not as excited as I hoped he'd be at the idea of seeing a bobolink. I snuck over to the field where the song was coming from (and near the beehives) where at least four male bobolinks were singing out a territory battle (almost as choreographed as West Side Story). I managed to get a few photos--nothing great--but proof of the bobolink. I thought to myself, "How is it that I can get a bobolink photo today, but no oriole?" But, I still had time.

When I walked back to my supers, a male pileated woodpecker was on the suet log. I managed to trip over a frame and not scare him off and get a photo. Okay, a pileated photo and no oriole? Mother Nature has GOT to be toying with me.

I set the scope back towards the nectar and jelly feeders and managed to get a few more fun ones of the hummingbird. I love the above shot. He's on his way to chase out another male who wanted a chance at the feeder. I thought that while I was hammering away that I should brush up on my warbler calls. I'm one of the field trip leaders at next week's Detroit Lakes Bird Festival and need to be on my game. I like how the birdJam has a warbler playlist with no narration so I can just let that go and test myself. I had my iPod on my portable speaker and was going through the calls: song--black-throated green, song--blackburnian, song--blackpoll, song--blue-winged...when the next warbler came on, I noticed I could still hear the blue-winged. I turned off the iPod...

...and ten feet above my head was a blue-winged warbler! Let me tell you, it took some pretty fancy maneuvering just to get this shot as I tried to angle the scope straight up. The blue-winged sat there for at least five minutes, completely aloof to my straining below (and I kept the birdJam off the whole time). He was pretty mellow and even tucked up one of his feet in a relaxed position. He eventually flew away and then continued singing his buzzy "bluuuuuu wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing" call below.

So, did I get the oriole photo?

No, just another grosbeak shot. But hey, if I have to miss an oriole, I appreciate the pallet of colors I got from all the other birds on Saturday.

Deformed Chipping Sparrow & Unusual Cardinal Behavior

Check out this photo of a chipping sparrow that was at Mr. Neil's feeder today. At a distance, it looked like it was sporting a beard, but closer inspection through a spotting scope showed some type of growth or tumor.

The bird was able to feed, but did not hang around with the other chipping sparrows. In fact, this bird preferred to use the tube feeders as opposed to feeding on the ground.

I also wondered if this was some sort of weird crop (a storage pouch on birds) infection as well.

Has anyone seen anything like this? Anyone know what this could be?

In other news, Hasty Brook sent over this question:

I've got a question for you. I've been watching a wren working hard, stuffing sticks into a birdhouse attached to our shed. While I was watching a male cardinal swooped in and snatched the twig out of its beak! I though it was a fluke but a few minutes later it did it again. In fact for several minutes the two birds continued this. At one point the wren went into the house (sans stick), the cardinal landed on top of the house and when the wren tried to exit the cardinal attacked. Is this common bird behavior? Are cardinals that territorial?

I asked my buddy Stan and he said he thinks the cardinal is stealing nesting material--birds do that. I agree, although I have watched how aggressive cardinals are at the feeder and wonder if the cardinal is trying to discourage the house wren. Has anyone out there witnessed this type of behavior from a cardinal (or any other bird)? Any experts lurking out there who knows what is going on or can point us in the right direction for more information? I tried BNA, but have not been able to log on tonight.

Working The North Coast Nature Festival

Migration was just getting hot and heavy in Cleveland, OH this past weekend. White-throated sparrows (above) covered the ground and we could hear some warblers overhead. Part of my festival duties were to lead a "Birdchick Walk" for families at Rocky Ridge Nature Center on Saturday and Sunday. You have to kind of pick your battles on this type of walk. If you have thirty people with you, almost half of whom are under age 8, you really want to consider carefully if you want to point out that Cape May warbler flitting in the trees high overhead. In that type of situation, warblers can become an exercise in futility.

What I love about family groups is that people are excited about Canada geese (like the one snoozing above), red-winged blackbirds, and goldfinches. One of the ladies in our group pointed to some reeds and said "I saw something black and red over there." I guessed red-winged blackbird and a moment later, a male popped up. She confirmed that was the bird she saw. I said, "Good spot!" and her friends high fived her.

On the second day of the field trip, some of the young 'uns were a little rambunctious and more interested in racing down the trail and screaming. It was a warm sunny day, these boys had energy to burn and asking them to be quiet was just not going to cut it. So, I used one of my kid tricks. I told them that one of the best ways for us to find birds is to listen. If we can hear where a bird is ahead of us, that give us a better chance of finding it. Sometimes, it's hard to hear the birds in the distance, so we need to shape our face like an owl. If you cup your hands over your ears and open your mouth--you can increase your hearing ability by up to 40%! At first it looked like the boys weren't going to buy it (note skeptical look of the lad in the green shirt above).

But the kids bought it and continued down the trail a little more quietly. As I was getting the boys to do this, their parents were giggling wildly behind them. As silly as it looks, it really does help increase your hearing--and helps to quiet kids and to teach them to listen on a bird walk. After a few minutes, one of the boys came up to me because he heard a new sound. We listened and we were hearing the trilling of American toads. Very cool.

Amphibians were all over. We heard toads, spring peepers, and even found a bull frog (above). I was fortunate enough to have Jen Brumfield helping me out on my walk (mark my words, she's an amazing illustrator and will be huge in the coming years, Cleveland Metroparks are lucky to have her on staff--check out her books here--the dragonfly book is OUTSTANDING).

Jen was fearless on the walks. Here she is grabbing a frog out of the water for the kids to look at up close.

She also found a red-backed salamander (dark morph) on one of the walks. It was great and all the kids were really impressed. I've not had much experience with salamanders, when she first found this under a log, I thought it was an earthworm.

But looking closer, you could see the little nubby hands. It's kinda cute for a slimy thing you find under a log.

On Sunday, one of the best parts of our walk was finding an old woodpecker cavity chock full of raccoons. The female was sleeping and all you could see were one of her back paws sticking out. Did she party a little to hard Saturday night? We took a moment to digiscope a few photos.

After awhile, she shifted, yawned and started licking...something...

She jostled a bit more in her cavity and then a small ball of fur started moving in front of her--she had young! You can see the back of it's head on the left side of her face. Cute!

Eventually, she popped her head out as if to look down on all of us and say, "Alright, nothing to see here, move along. I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here."

We didn't see huge amounts of birds, but we observed some great wildlife that delighted the crowd. I was so happy to be part of sharing nature, birds and otherwise with the kids, and grateful to have Jen along with me. Oh, and there was one more highlight from the trip:

Notice anything familiar in the above photo? Look at the shirts. Someone is wearing a Disapproving Rabbits shirt! Whoot! Her name is Dawn and she was really sweet. When I told Non Birding Bill about it, he recognized her name and said that she was one of, if not the first person to order a shirt. Thanks, Dawn, for spreading the good work of my bunnies around Ohio. And thanks for coming along, it was so great to meet you!

Herons in Ohio

I am exhausted.

The North Coast Nature Festival--wow, this is an action packed event and it's all free! It's a great event for people in the Cleveland area. There are bird walks, banding, workshops--and it's not just birds. There are wildflower walks, pond study, photography workshops, live animals, everything.

We did our tv segments early this morning and then Non Birding Bill and I rehearsed our show for tomorrow night and then we met up with NBB's friend Kirk.

A few years ago, Kirk sent us photos of a bunch of nests in a tree and asked if we knew what they were--we did. It's a great blue heron rookery. So, Kirk was kind enough to take us to Cuyahoga National Park today to view them. The birds nest right off of the road (not too bothered by humans) and there's a parking area so you can easily pull over and scope them. I had NBB and Kirk stand on the other side to get a sense scale. Note NBB pretending to be a bird watcher by pointing.

According to the signage, the birds should have eggs that are hatching or are about to hatching. Scanning the nests, it appeared that the birds were at various stages in nesting from nest building, to incubating, to feeding chicks. The birds in the above photo are actually two nests side by side. The bird on the right is regurgitating food to some young in the bottom of the nest--barfed up fish and frogs--yum!

I had Kirk check them out through the scope so he could see the yellows of their eyes. Kirk would also like everyone to notice his jacket, he's very proud of it.

Now, I'm off to do some writing and then some much needed sleep.

I did get word from Lorraine that the beehives are feeding well.

A Spike In Sparrows

And now, a cool titmouse shot:

We are now in the lovely town of Cleveland, OH. We have to go to bed early tonight, someone from the North Coast Nature Festival is picking us up at 4:30 am for two tv segments on WKYC. We're doing two, one at 5:15 am and one at 6:15 am. Oy.

First up, there's been a comment and a couple of private emails that people still had trouble seeing the queen bee, so I added a photo and circled the queen to that entry. Hopefully you can see her in the middle of my wiggly squiggle.

One of the fun things about being out at Mr. Neil's while hiving our colony was watching all the migrants pour in. When I arrived on Tuesday, there were several of the usual suspects singing. The only sparrow I noticed was the song sparrow (above) eating sunflower chips below the feeders.

Wednesday morning, sparrows were everywhere!

Chipping sparrows were flitting around to all the feeders. For the record, I did not fill this feeder. When I'm not around, other people fill them and it makes me chuckle to see where the seeds end up. The blue jays were going crazy trying to figure out how to get access to all the peanuts. The chipping sparrow was more interested in the sunflower chips still available at the bottom feeder port.

This little chipping sparrow kept erecting his cap. His hormones must be in overdrive.

White-throated sparrows had arrived over night. I can never control myself around these guys. I always start whistling they're "oh sweet Canada, Canada Canada" or according to Kaufman "oh sweet, Kimberly, Kimberly, Kimberly" song. I started whistling and then many more in the surrounding bushes started singing. Love those guys.

I did find a lone Lincoln's sparrow mixed in. These are always such a pleasant surprise when they show up at the feeders. I put out some extra millet and sunflower chips for the migrating sparrows, they always put a little more fun in the sea of brown that seems to take over the feeding stations.

Back to the feeder with all the peanuts. As the chipping sparrows moved the sunflower chips out of the way, the titmice came in for the peanuts. This one worked for a good three minutes trying to get that nut out. It flew away and I wondered how long it would take it to chip it away into edible pieces.

Some mixed nuts had been put in some of the other feeders and the red-bellied woodpeckers were working those out. This one managed to pry out a hazelnut. If you closely at this photo, you can almost see the spear that is at the tip of his tongue.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

This morning I was sipping my coffee and watching the cars in the drive way. I was (and am) exhausted from the week. I was formulating my plan for the day when I noticed what looked like a female goldfinch flitting around my car. At first glance, it looked like she was fighting her reflection going from window to window, but I thought, "Why would a female be fighting her reflection? Isn't it early for goldfinches to be this territorial?" Something did not seem right. The finch moved on to Lorraine's car and she walked in and asked, "Why is that finch on my car?"

Then the coffee kicked in. The "finch " flew over to the finch feeder with the other goldfinches (above). "That's not a finch." I said. Look at the top photo, can you see the "finch imposter" feeding on Nyjer and sunflower chips?

I dashed to get the scope:

The feeder was almost too close for the spotting scope to focus on the bird. Here is the face. It was a pine warbler! I can't believe it, I digiscoped a warbler--barely. I think with the cool weather, this migrant was working extra hard to find insects. My guess is that the warbler was gleaning smashed insects off of our cars and when that wasn't enough decided to go for the sunflower chips--something warblers will eat if they have to.

I tried to get a better shot, but got a butt shot instead. The warbler flitted around from feeder to feeder, someone had mixed in some suet nuggets in some of the feeders and it went for those as well.

I looked over at the suet log and a second pine warbler had flown in. This one went right for the fat. When a downy woodpecker flew in, the warbler flew away and waited for another turn. Mr. Neil's suet log has an arm that sticks out that makes a great perch for waiting birds. This digiscoped shot turned out much better. I thought digiscoping warblers was going to be impossible this spring (I'm no artist like Mike McDowell) but this gives me hope.

Red-wing on Red-tail

Orv Lehman has been watching and photographing a red-tailed hawk nest in Virginia with his Nikon P1 Pro digiscope kit.

I love how at first glance it looks like the red-winged blackbird is perched on the red-tailed hawk's head, but he's perched behind the hawk. If you look close, you can see some white fluff under the hawk, behind some of the sticks that make up the nest--that is the young hawk.

It's got to be annoying to have red-wings dive bombing you at the nest. Thanks for the fun photos, Orv!

Wood Lake Great Horned Owl Nest

The other day at Wood Lake Nature Center, I wanted to get a photo of the young great horned owl in the nest. However, it was snoozin'. I went for a walk around the lake and when finished I came back to find the wee owly still a snoozin'. Just as I was putting the cap back on my scope, an old snag not too far away came crashing down. I watched in awe as it fell. I looked back to the nest and the young owl was standing straight up, having been started from the crash--even its fluffy excuses of ear tufts were trying to be erect.

After a couple of minutes, it hunkered down and stared...make that glared at me. I didn't cause it...really...it wasn't me. Okay, so I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if some noise woke they owl baby up, but really, I didn't cause a whole snag to fall."

Geez, somebody get that bird some coffee, stat!

Speaking of the young owl, it is now in that brancher phase (young owl out of the nest) and will soon be flying. Here is a link to a photo taken by Derek Bakken today of the young owl walking in the tree and another of one of the parents chewing a feather it molted out. My cockatiel does that when he pulls out a tail feather or primary feather--just kind of chew it for a minute. I wonder if that's like kids who bite off a finger nail (or worse a toe nail) and chew it for a few minutes?

Large Helping of Canada Geese with a Side of Killdeer

The Canada geese are all over the metro area. Whoo wee. I watched some geese stop traffic twice in two different areas today. Some local parks do a good job of discouraging public feeding and redoing the lake landscape to put a vegetation barrier between people with large sacks of bread and the geese. The above goose was on one of the board walks at Wood Lake Nature Center. It was a minor stand off: would it move first or would I? I forged ahead:

It flew away.

I had a meeting yesterday at the Minnesota Zoo. Afterwards I walked around, not really interested in the tigers and wolves and caribou but more for the wild birds that may be about. The most abundant bird found:

The Canada goose. They were everywhere, nesting along the trails...

Hanging out on top of the zoo's roof...

Stealing food from the caribou pen. This goose quickly moved away when one of the caribou began to approach. As I was watching through the scope, I heard some killdeer vocalizations, but not the usual "kill a deer." It was the killdeer tone, but giving a kind of peep.

Here's the whole caribou field. I could hear the killdeer, but could I find it?

After some scanning I found her. And just as I was focusing, she hunkered down in one spot--she's incubating already! I wonder if the caribou are too much of an issue? What the chances are that the eggs could get stepped on? I'm always fascinated by birds nesting in the zoo. I remember a few years ago watching some flickers that were nesting in the tiger area and I thought, "No raccoon is gonna bother that nest! Will the young survive fledging?"

But back to the geese.

I found this bird trying to dose off. With nesting going on, geese are a little on the defensive and honking wildly at each other if someone looks at them the wrong way. Every time an altercation would start, this goose would open its eyes and then slowly get sleepier...

...and sleepier...

...and then finally go all the way to sleep.

Spring At Wood Lake

Nothing says spring like the Common Garter Snakes emerging! These guys were all over at Wood Lake Nature Center today. If I had more time, I would have gone to the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge and Bass Ponds where there's a post that has hundreds of snakes emerging in spring. I've come across it twice in the last eight years and it's just hypnotic to watch all of them slithering out in the grass.

Wood Lake is nice but it's right next to a highway and there's always some new construction going on. You can see some great birds, but if you're in the mood for bird song it's not so pleasant, the highway noise and construction drown them out. The phoebe was pretty darned loud though, singing right outside the Nature Center. I was able to digivideo him and to my surprise, you can actually hear the "fee bee" call. I'm not sure if I will upload it or not. I've been doing more and more digivideoing, but I'm not sure what I'll do with that stuff.

The other very vocal singer of the day was the song sparrow. Today I watched song sparrow sex--a first for me for this species. Early on in the day I could hear some low chipping and stopped to watch two song sparrows bouncing on the ground giving the soft chips. One fluffed up, and hopped towards the other, fluttering its wings and then they both retreated into some reads and the chipping got a little more intense and about five seconds later they were out in the open. After that there was a bit more mating out in the open. After the third time, the female started to hop away with the male in pursuit, they eventually started flying around in tight circles around me. Their chirping grew more intense and then four other song sparrows popped up in the trees around me to watch. The pair flew for a few minutes and then disappeared into some reeds. As I continued to walk around Wood Lake, I heard the soft chipping in several other spots. It apparently is a hot time to be a song sparrow.

As wonderful as it was to see and hear brown birds singing, I was really hoping for some color. Grass is barely green and we have no flowers. All other vegetation is dry and subdued, so I had to settle for blackbird colors. I love this contrast of black, red, and yellow with the dried cattails. It's interesting, the males will sing within two feet over, but get twenty feet away and aim a scope on them, they suddenly get very cagey.

Now see, didn't I tell ya' earlier--these grackles are pretty and kind of arty. Aren't they? C'mon, you know they're pretty. There were some grackles doing the "bill up" display out in the reeds. According to BNA this is "given by a male in response to approach of another male, and typically results in one bird’s departure. Bill-Up Display occasionally given to members of opposite sex, especially early in breeding season when individuals are unmated. Paired birds never perform Bill-Up Display to one another." It looks like some strange alien thing though when you have several in a bunch of reeds doing it.

I did have one very obliging bird sing its rusty song in front of me. I must admit, as much of a pain they can be at the feeder (nothing that a little safflower can't solve), they really are pretty birds. I love all those shiny black feathers mixed with bronze and blue, capped with freaky yellow eyes.

As if this bird couldn't get any freakier looking, it puffed up, gave it's song and brought down its nictitating membrane. Demon grackle! It's saying, "I want to steal your soul...or at least your black-oil sunflower mwh ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa!"