Bees & Owls

When you're sick as a dog, your friends will blog. Mr. Neil did the beekeeping entry this week! When we learned that the Kitty hive had died, we decided to keep her honey for ourselves rather than give it to Olga (on the off chance Kitty died from some bee disease). So, this week Mr. Neil undertook that monumental task of extracting Kitty honey. He used the simple (and sticky) cheesecloth method.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to catch up on all the work I missed last week. Ugh. Tomorrow, I plan on going out and birding the crap out of Sunday. Perhaps, take my Fuji out for one last hurrah before my new digiscoping camera arrives. Today, I stepped out for an hour to peak at a great horned owl nest that Ecobirder has blogged about. It's a busy intersection in the south metro, across from a strip mall. The owls are remarkably obvious when you drive by.

There are two owls in the above photo. Can you spot them? If you can't see them, check out the photo below:

The female was on the nest and the male was hanging out towards the center of the tree. Normally, the males are well hidden, but I'm not gonna argue a good look at a great horned owl. If he doesn't want to behave the way books say he's supposed to behave, who am I to tell him what to do?

You could see the female on the nest through the scope, but it was pretty much a vent side (aka butt side) view of her.

The male was much easier to see and a welcome treat for sore eyes that had been holed up indoors for the past week.

A Much Needed Rough-legged Hawk

After being sequestered in the apartment for a few days, I really needed to get out. I'm mostly better and have that whole throaty voice thing going on (which I would use on Non Birding Bill if it wouldn't keep getting ruined by fits of a doctor would call a "productive cough"--ick.) But it was so nice out and I needed some fresh air. I got on the highway and thought about stopping at a local nature center and began having second thoughts--moving around, I realized I was still fighting the virus and probably shouldn't be standing outside just yet. But then I saw it...

I was passing the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport and noticed two raptors flying. One was a red-tail, the other was a little different--it was a rough-legged. I found an exit on the highway to turn around and make my way towards Cargo Rd (where the snowy owl is usually observed) and just as I passed beneath the birds, the rough-legged did hard dive onto the red-tail. Even though the red-tail was slightly larger, it booked out of there. By the time I was off the highway and on to Cargo Rd, the rough-legged had landed and was sitting on a hangar.

I pulled over on a side street leading to a hangar where the hawk was perched. I wasn't sure if this was an area where people are allowed to pull over--it was far away from fences, not planes were in direct site and there was plenty of space coming and going for approaching traffic to see me. I decided to try and digiscope it. These really are beautiful hawks and I'm so glad that I took a moment to watch it in the scope. Check out in the above photo how the hawk is looking directly at me. Now here is a photo of the hawk without the spotting scope:

That teeny tiny dark spot on the top of the hangar is the hawk--quite a testament to that amazing raptor eyesight! After five minutes, I decided not to push my luck with airport security and get moving. Turned around and headed over to Cargo Rd and the rough-legged hawk took flight.

Then it landed on a light post above my car and I took a quick photo through my windshield. I'm not sure how long it will stick around. There've been rough-legs all over the Twin Cities this winter but I never seem to see them in the same place twice, they're constantly on the move.

If you need a bird fix, check out Liz Stanley's photos from Sax Zim Bog. She may not have seen a wolf, but she did get some photos of a pine marten when she was watching one of the deer carcasses--sweet!

UPDATE: Chad Gustafson got some photos of the same rough-legged hawk south of the airport, check out his photos (Big Brother Hawk is watching you...).

Squirrel 'Splosion

I headed over to Richardson Nature Center to take a few minutes to enjoy their feeders and found the whole feeding station inundated with squirrels. It was mesmerizing to watch all the bouncing and romping and crawling and chasing. The above photo has at least 8 squirrels, but I did count 17 grays and 2 red squirrels out all at one time. Between the snow and wind, the baffles were lower and the squirrels had figured out how to jump past them. I chuckled at one point as a squirrel dropped like a stone from above onto a feeder.

This chickadee paused for a moment of grabbing some black-oil sunflower seeds to watch two squirrels fighting. All of the squirrels had some type of open sore on their bodies that many of them kept chewing at. I thought about posting a photo, but thought better of it after the TLC show link--lol. I think that whole herd could stand a few visits from a great horned owl or red-tailed hawk.

This male cardinal flew in to eat out of they fly thru tray feeder. He kept waiting for the squirrel to leave but the furry thing refused to relinquish his prime seat in the middle of the sunflowers.

It was while he was sitting on the roof of the feeder that I was able to get some head shots of him. It was fun to just drink in the patterns of his feathers, like the brown edging along the edges of his back...hm...I wonder if Pyle would call that light brown or dusky brown (banders will get that joke).

He eventually flew to a nearby bush to wait out the squirrel. He looks almost dejected in this photo. "Oh, will I ever get to eat sunflowers again. Sigh. I feel like a lonely asparagus."

Alas, he did not get oilers while I was at the nature center, but did get some hard core posing in. He could have gone to the tube feeders--not a cardinal's first choice, but I have seen them on the tube feeders here before, perhaps this one does not have the hang of it yet?

Cleansing Cardinal

Okay, here is a cleansing cardinal dedicated to all the readers who clicked on my TLC link and got a little more than they bargained for this morning. If it's any consolation, Non Birding Bill can't stand to be in the same room when I'm watching those shows and thinks I'm nuts.

Connecticut Audubon Bald Eagle Fest Report

Photo by Clay Taylor

Yesterday, I woke up to 50 degrees and heavy rain. Today, I woke up to -4, but at least it was sunny.

Photo by Clay Taylor

This entry is going to have a combination of photo from both Clay Taylor and myself. Clay is playing with some mad new digiscopin' skillz. For example, he took the above photo using a Pentax K100 attached to a straight angled Swarovski scope and he hand held the whole system!

Photo by Clay Taylor

Clay even tried this technique while leading one of the river boat tours at the Connecticut Audubon Bald Eagle Fest and got the above photo of a rough-legged hawk.

Photo by Clay Taylor

I love this shot of the rough-legged hawk while it's in mid-hover, intently searching the ground for some unsuspecting small mammal. What a cool looking hawk. There were three hanging around on the Connecticut River--two light ones like the birds in these photos--and one dark morph.

Photo by Clay Taylor

Here are some great cormorants that Clay got on the boat--note how birds are still roosting despite the Nixalite placed on the rails? Birds always find away around that stuff.

So, I was haning out at the Swarovski booth for the festival, but the added bonus for me was being next to one of my favorite bird photographers--Jim Zipp (the dude with the beard on the left--that's Clay in the back in the green coat and hat). If you have any bird magazine subscriptions, you have more than likely seen some of Jim's work. As a matter of act, his blackpoll warbler is on the cover of the current issue of WildBird Magazine.

The temps Saturday and Sunday were in the twenties and thirties in Connecticut and if you combine that with being right on the river and standing in one spot all day--it gets chilly. But I get spoiled rotten with Swarovski. Clay and his wife Debbie have a heater that keeps the booth (and our feet toasty). This year there was even power in the booth, so we brought a hot pot and had hot tea and hot chocolate (I had some powdered miso soup and sipped on that). Combine that with the fresh waffles Clay make in the morning and the spaghetti dinner Debbie made at night, I was a well fed booth worker.

There are no shortage of characters at the eagle festival, here's a lady sporting a moose hat--I bet her head was nice and warm. She was tame compared to the woman who walked by wearing a fur coat dyed bright neon yellow toting a tiny dog with a light green fur trimmed dress. Another highight at the festival was getting to meet MsGeek--a blog reader and commenter--it's always fun to meet a blog reader face to face.

Taking photos of this ring-billed gull, I was reminded of my Dunkin Donut heartbreak of last year--none of the DDs in Connecticut make the creme filled donut that I used to get when I was a kid. We tried another DD and no, the vanilla creme donut was not available. Sigh.

I did see one interesting ring-billed gull feeding along the Connecticut River. It was a juvenile bird and had red patagial tags (I wasn't able to get a photo). The bird was far out and I thought I could read the number 41 on the tags. I can't find any info on tagged ring-bills apart from a study on gulls in Chicago--they may have to start sort of population control of the gulls. However, those birds don't have numbers on their tags. I emailed the Bird Banding Lab and am still waiting to hear if they know of anyone tagging gulls.

Photo by Clay Taylor

Speaking of tagged birds, when I was going through Clay's photos, I noticed one of the adult eagles had bands on both feet. Here's a closer photo:

Photo by Clay Taylor

See the tags?

We may not have see great numbers of eagles at this festival, but there were a couple of nests across from where the optics booths were set up. The nest in the upper right corner is the original nest--the male flew up at one point to feed. The nest in the lower left corner is the newer active nest. If you look close at the above photo, you can see a small speck of white--that's the female incubating some eggs.

Right next to the booths was the Connecticut River Museum. We ended up purchasing a day pass to the museum so we could use the restroom. There were port a potties in the parking lot, but when you're working out in the cold all day, that's really the last thing you want. The museum had volunteers stationed all over and were very strict about non paying members using the restroom. And at $4, it was worth it to have an all day pass for a warm restroom. I took a few moments to check out the actual museum and they had a cool HO train set on display on the top floor.

The best part of the display was the camera train. One of the cars had a remote live feed video camera that would transmit its signal to a tv, so you could see the minature town from the toy train's perspective--it was really, really cool. I could have spent hours watching this. Alas, I could see myself really getting into this hobby if I didn't have twenty million other things occupying my time at the moment. Life is just too full of fascinating projects and places to go.

Photo by Clay Taylor

And I wrap up this entry with one final photo of the really cool rough-legged hawk. Thanks, Clay, for the use of your images.

Harbor Seal or Harp Seal?

Hmmm, well we may have a mammal misidentification in the blog. The seal that I blogged about on Saturday night and said was a harbor seal, may be a harp seal (lifer mammal for me). In the past when I have been at this festival, we have seen a harbor seal swimming in the Connecticut river--one year it was very close and had a fish that a bald eagle kept trying to swoop down and steal from it.

This year we watched a seal on a very distant log across the river. It was entertaining to watch it roll around and slide onto the log and slide off. We kept noticing when it rolled that we could see white and that it seemed to have a dainty nose.

Turns out that a harp seal was spotted about ten miles up river from the festival at the East Haddam Bridge. Could this be the same harp seal?

Any seal experts who can discern harp from harbor with our distant photos?

Oh, and an FYI to readers who want to do a google image search: harp seals are the ones who get clubbed, so if you are squeamish, search carefully.

Sometimes Being Hard and Bulbous Can Be In Your Favor

All the photos in this entry are courtesy of my buddy, the digiscoping pro Clay Taylor.

Well, I had timed my trip in Connecticut to have Monday free to do some birding, but a hard and windy downpour has put the damper on that plan (har har). Instead, I'm catching up on some work and playing with some of Clay's cameras, looking ahead for when my Fuji FinePix finally falls apart (a point and shoot lives the life of ten cameras in one year with me).

Clay does digiscoping with both a point and shoot (like I do) and with an SLR camera. I was playing with his Pentax K100 and downloading photos when I came across a series of ring-necked duck photos that he took at Santee Lakes during a digiscoping workshop at the San Diego Bird Festival:

Here, the mighty ring-necked duck pursues its quarry.

He gets hold of his prey--a large snail.

Now that he has the seemingly defenseless snail in his grasp, how long will it be before he can consume the slimy contents?

His hunger relentless, he finds himself surprised that he has captured a large and nourishing meal, but alas, unable to swallow the snail.

No matter how wide he spreads his beak apart, the snail will not budge any further down towards his crop.

He makes another adjustment to try and swallow...

He tries gently to flip the snail around in this bill, careful to not lose his intended meal...

And he tries to incorporate his tongue into the process...

One big gulp and he should have it...

And with a final pitooey, the ring-necked duck releases the snail who slowly oozes away victorious.

Disapproving Sparrow

I have arrived into Connecticut safe and sound. I spent part of the afternoon digiscoping in my friend Clay's backyard. I was loving the forty degree temps and all the white-throated sparrows. For some reasons, they made me miss Cinnamon.