Mr. Neil's Showy Mountain Ash & Fuzzy Leaves

Hey, any readers have any idea what this fuzzy stuff is on a leaf. I found it on several leaves of the same plant. It was on the underside of the leaf and the fuzz balls appeared fixed to the spot. Is this some type of gaul? Insect egg sac? Fungus? Alien life for that will take over my body and cause me to point and scream a la Donald Sutherland in the 70's version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Inquiring Birdchicks want to know.

Mr. Neil has a show mountain ash or rowan tree as he likes to call it. The berries are ripe and the birds are ready to pluck. This young robin spent a good chunk of Sunday in the tree. Amber was with me and she pointed out that every time the young robin was around, a young rose-breasted grosbeak was nearby. If the robin flew away, the grosbeak soon followed. We wondered if the robin and grosbeak were forming their own mixed flock and figuring out this whole survival thing together.

Waxwings, like this young cedar waxwing were getting in the berry action as well. I wish I had more time to digiscope them. While watching their antics in the tree, a ruby-throated hummingbird flew in and systematically tested all the berry clusters for nectar potential. It flew away disappointed but would periodically return--how could something that bright not have any nectar? Must be hard for that tiny brain to process.

Oriole Still Around

We did some bird banding at Mr. Neil's this weekend. Lorraine did a great job of keeping the feeders going before hand so birds would be around and my buddy Amber and I arrived early and topped them off before the nets went up. Amber found an oriole and I asked if it looked disappointed that the jelly feeder was empty and began rummaging through the fridge looking for some grape jelly. She said it was spending a lot of time on the suet feeder.

We filled the jelly feeder, but all day long, the male Baltimore oriole ate off the suet feeders. A chill has joined the wind in our neck of the woods with a strong reminder that fall is just down the street. Insects are disappearing, so it makes sense that the oriole would prefer the cashew suet feeder. I'm not sure how much longer this male will be around, but it was nice to get one last look before he left. I just realized it will be a good 8 months until I see one of these guys return to the yard for nesting.

Marathon Birding & Banding Weekend

Just came off from a wild weekend of banding. I'm feeling as rough as this mid-molt robin looks. We did a little bit of hawk banding and a whole lotta songbird banding. Here is a tiny video of a kestrel that we got into the nets. She was very fascinated with my purple nail polish:

Ducks Eating Snails

Check it out: a presidential sandwich--George Washing and Abe Lincoln!

I finally have a day off from all the CivicFest and RNC madness. Civic Fest is supposed to be non partisan and some of it is. The history displays, especially about the Continental Congress are fascinating. And the First Lady Dresses--Mary Todd Lincoln had a dress make of purple velvet and black lace that today's got teenager would love for her senior prom. However, all the gift shops are all Republican, all the time, which surprised me because we have a lot of Democrats in this state and Ralph Nader and Ron Paul are here for their own respective conventions.

I'm assigned by the park service to go to these events and tell anyone that I meet about how to enjoy the Mississippi River while in town. Quite a few people (of all political backgrounds) are here and are birders. I'll find myself engaged in a great birding conversation and then at the end, finally notice they might be wearing a button on a certain political issue that I highly disagree with, but for a few minutes, we can have a common bond over our love of birds.

I will say that if you are opposed to the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act, what an opportunity to talk to people involved! A lot of senators and Department of the Interior staff are milling about the Twin Cities and easy to talk to. I'm not allowed to talk about that with them when in ranger uniform, but once I de-ranger, I can chat away.

I can't wait until the ducks get out of their eclipse plumage. Not that I don't love a good brown bird, but they are so much prettier. For non birding, ducks go into an "eclipse plumage" when they are flightless. They molt their feathers and tend to resemble female ducks. Since they can't fly, they need to hide from predators and being brown helps you hide a lot better in vegetation. Above is a female mallard with her brood of young mallards.

Here's a male mallard--note the bill color difference...and the large snail is his about to swallow?

All of the mallards were hunting snails and swirling around each other and on top of each other to get the food.

The younger mallards were not quite as successful as the adults. They didn't come up as often with a snail and half the time they would drop it back into the water.

The adult female had her technique down--check out her bulge right after she swallowed.

This is like one of those awful shots that someone gets of you when you are mid chew--ducks lose some dignity when mid snail swallow.

Marsh Wren Madness

How about a little cleansing--both figuratively and literally. I've been so busy with the state fair, the RNC, and CivicFest I've barely had time to do some digiscoping. I was able to sneak out for a few hours but felt like my mojo was a little off.

I went birding to a place I use to go to all the time but haven't been to in ages--The Old Cedar Avenue Bridge. I got a reminder why during my outing. There's a trail that's loaded with rails and soras. The above photo is not the best ever photo of a sora, but it certainly is a true to life one--isn't this how you normally see them--shrouded in vegetation. That is, if you see them at all.

The most interesting part of the morning was some odd fluttering I saw on the boardwalk trail. At first I thought it was injured and flailing a bit on the boardwalk but I changed my position and discovered something really cool.

It was a juvenile marsh wren. Check out the little bits of yellow in the corners of its bill.

It had what looked to be a small ant in its bill and it would alternate between preening and stretching out its wings on the boards. I think it was trying to figure out anting. For non birders, anting is something some bird species have been observed doing. Birds take ants and either place them on their feathers or sometimes will lie near an ant mound, allowing ants to crawl on them. It's believed that they acquire defensive secretions from the ants (formic acid) and that it's possibly used as a supplement to the bird's own preen oil.

In this shot, the young marsh wren is totally spread eagled (or should that be spread wrened?) on the boards and is even exposing its preen gland--that's the little pink spot right above the tail. All birds have this, they squeeze it with their bill and excrete oil that is then rubbed all over their feathers. Imagine having a large gland right above your butt that you would squeeze to get some body oil to run through your hair to keep it shiny and strong?

The young marsh wren continued to preen with the wings out, although I couldn't see any more ants around it at this point. It didn't appear to be bothered by me at all, I thought I would try to get a video.

I did, but you can hear me yelling at some bike riders in the background. One of the reasons why I don't go to the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge anymore is that some of the trails are narrow and only meant for foot traffic, but many bike riders like to bring their mountain bikes onto the trail--creating a dangerous situation for both the rider and the hiker.

As I was taking the video of the wren, I saw some bike riders approach. I tried to hold up my hands indicating for them to stop but they didn't understand. I then started saying "No bikes." and explaining the trail rules. However, by the time they stopped, they were right next to the wren and it disappeared into the reeds--doh! I think they thought I was some nutty woman and turned around more to avoid me than to follow the rules of the trail.

They claimed they didn't see this sign that shows this is a hiking only trail.

But, I'm forgetting the purpose of this post: the cleansing of the cute, young marsh wren in its preening glory must out weigh idiots who ignore signs putting themselves and others at risk. Here's a link to the marsh wren video. I recommend clicking on the "watch in high quality" and also hitting the mute button.

Birding the Minnesota & South Dakota Border

Don't worry, this post isn't all shorebirds.

On a Friday I was watching these little semi-palmated plovers squabbling on a beach and then the very next day, I'm watching them on a mud flat in western Minnesota...

And getting prickly pear cactus paddles stuck on my leg--owie. Yes, we do have a couple of cactus species growing in Minnesota, you can see them at Big Stone NWR. I went with Stan Tekiela and a group from Staring Lake Outdoor Center in Eden Prairie. These are fun, low key trips where we see some great birds...

...and local color like the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (if you're wondering if this is the famed ball from Weird Al Yankovic song, it is).

We also stopped at the headwaters of the Minnesota River. Which was chock full of American white pelicans.

They were fishing right at the dam--I think I have a video of it, I'll see if I can dig it out of the external drive and load it later today. These were some urban birds. They did not care about us coming too close at all.

Usually white pelicans around the state are a bit cautious of humans, but these dudes just didn't care.

The fishing must be that good...and hopefully not too polluted right at the headwaters, unlike some of the other parts.

I got a kick out of seeing a band on one of the pelicans, perhaps this is a bird that I banded? If I didn't do it, I'm sure it's part of that same colony, it's very close to the Minnesota Headwaters.

We were hoping to find some shorebirds while we were out here, since Amber and I went on the shorebird workshop and had a great time last year. The weather had not been as cooperative this year. There was a big storm a few days before we arrived and all the prime mud flats were now ponds--not the best stopover for migrating shorebirds. We did find some like the least sandpiper above. The storm damage was incredible. The locals said there were 80 mile an hour winds and it showed in shredded corn fields, barns missing chunks of roof, and LOTS of trees down.

We went to Salt Lake right on the Minnesota/South Dakota border and found more shorebirds there like the Wilson's phalaropes (and lone pectoral sandpiper) in the above photo. It had the best and most accessible variety of shorebirds on the trip including short-billed dowitcher and stilt sandpipers.

This group wasn't all about shorebirds either, and we found black terns and a single Forster's tern (above).

The big stars of the show for the group was the massive amount of swallows around Salt Lake. I tried to get a video of this, but it's so windy and shaky that I think people would get motion sickness if I put it up on YouTube. But see this little section of swallows, it went on for as far as you could see the fence line. There were literally hundreds of swallows of various species. We found bank, barn, tree, cliff, and northern rough-winged swallow all hanging out and staging on the fence.

There was also a family group of savannah sparrows on the fence too. They appeared to have one fledgling with them--go native sparrows! Squeeze in one more brood before you migrate south!

We were seeing quite a few flickers as well and there was a family group with some fledgling flickers too. Young flickers begging always throw me. Yesterday, I was biking a different trail and I heard some begging at first I thought it was a raptor begging, until I saw the young flickers. I have to say, if you are in the Twin Cities and like to bird and bike--the Cedar Lake Trail is GREAT right now. I can't believe the diversity of species right on the edge of downtown. I found a fledging red-shouldered hawk, an adult Cooper's hawk, a pileated woodpecker, red-eyed vireo, indigo bunting and I got dove at by a male bluebird guarding his nest box--it wasn't my fault, someone put the bluebird box right next to the bike trail. It was also encouraging to see another species going for the gold with a late nesting.

Now, I just need to find a way to attach my spotting scope to my bike handle bars so I can digiscope--then I'll be unstoppable!

Getting To 499

Hey, on Monday at 3pm, I'll be on Twin Cities Live talking about attracting birds to your yard and the City Birds/Country Birds book signing on August 23, 2008 at Cardinal Corner:

August 23, 2008: Cardinal Corner in West St. Paul Store (651-455-6556) 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Cardinal Corner in Newport (651-459-3880) 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.

Don't forget, Cinnamon fans, the Queen of Disapproval will also come and hang out at the signing too.

Okay, so I think I'm going to finally finish up my Swarovski Blogging Event posts...oh wait, no, I just realized there's one more thing I can talk about after this, but I have to wait a few days longer before I actually talk about what we got to play with. But back to Cape Cod birding--I gotta a couple more lifers bringing my list to 499. So close to 500, yet so far away.

One was a roseate tern--this very light colored tern with a mostly black bill. That was pretty exciting. Terns are amazing creatures. If I ever transition from point and shoot camera digiscoping to SLR digiscoping, I want to try and capture terns fishing. Terns are such dainty and elegant birds in flight and when they dive into the ocean, it's like watching a delicate piece of origami smacking onto the surface of the water. Loves 'em.

Nice scope posture there, Corey! Corey and I each had a few lifers to catch up on. We both needed roseate tern and we also needed arctic tern. The group watched for them, but at the same time we loved getting photos of all the birds on the beach--dead or alive. I was standing with Corey and Ben from 600 Birds. They had spotted something dead further down the beach. It first glance, we got the impression that it was a dead black-backed gull...but when you looked through the scope, the bill looked all wrong. I wondered if it was a dead gannet. All three of use lit up with excitement and hurried off towards the carcass. As we closed in, Clay called from off in the distance, "Aaaaaaaaartic tern!"

Corey and I stopped, Ben who already had an arctic tern said, "Uh-oh."

Corey and I wavered, we were so close to the gannet, could we get photos of the gannet and make it back in time for the tern, or would the tern take off.

Ben, sensing our indecision said, "Gotta make a choice, dead bird? Life bird? Dead bird? Life Bird? Dead Bird? Life Bird?"

Corey and I finally made a rational decision that between the two birds, the dead gannet was guaranteed to stay in one spot, while the tern was not.

So, here is an arctic tern (masked in some major heat shimmer and non breeding plumage). This is an intense little bird if you think about it. This species breeds around the Arctic Ocean--as far north as Greenland and then winters on pack ice in Antarctica. This bird is about the length of a blue jay and flies pole to pole--that's over 24,000 miles round trip. Then when you look at things like banding records and find that in ten oldest birds found on record--the arctic tern comes in at number seven--a bird documented to have lived for 34 years! Imagine living 34 years and making that trip every single year--that's insane. This may be a small somewhat blurry photo, but the amazing potential in this bird deserves a little attention and was well worth abandoning a dead gannet. It was a good thing too. Not long after Corey and I joined the group, a family coming down the beach frightened the flock of terns and the arctic tern disappeared from view.

And then we hightailed it back to the dead gannet. Based on plumage, it looks like a first year bid. You just can't get close to gannets--they're amazing to watch in flight, but this dead bird was a treat to really look at some of its features up close.

The feet were incredible. They were webbed like a duck but had large white claws on the tips--they nest on ledges of cliffs, in the direction of prevailing winds, perhaps that's why they need the claws for gripping?

Who knows how this bird died: disease, poor hunting, poisoning, eating plastic--tough to say but I appreciated the chance to admire that long, tough bill.

Banded American Oystercaters

While birding at South Beach in Cape Cod last week, we found some banded American oystercatchers. Above is number 52. At first, I was going to enter its information to the Bird Banding Lab (where one typically submits found band numbers), but the yellow tags with fairly easy to read numbers usually means there's a specific study. Sure enough, I went to google, entered "banded oystercatcher" and found AMOY Banding--someone is doing a specific oystercatcher study! Based on the yellow bands, I was able to figure out that this bird was banded in Massachusetts. I submitted my siting and today got this info from Shiloh Schulte of the Zoology Department of North Carolina State University :

"The bird you saw was banded on South Monomoy as a chick in July 2004. This bird overwinters on the west coast of Florida near Cedar Key. This is the first report of the bird on the breeding grounds since the year it hatched. Reports like yours really help us understand how oystercatchers move and use habitat throughout the year. Please let us know if you see more bands!"

Looking over my photos, I now see that more oystercatchers were banded, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to read the bands--at least three birds in the above photo are banded. So, if you see any oystercatchers, double check to see if they are banded. The colors are not just yellow, there's green, blue, red, and black as well.

Loves Me Some Ruddy Turnstones

When Swarovski took us birding out South Beach in Cape Cod, I made a beeline for ruddy turnstones. LOVE those guys. They're shorebirds which give them a kind of Dr. Seuss look and they are so flashy looking. Attention must be paid to a turn stone. They are opportunistic and feed on rocky and sandy beaches during winter and on migration, by turning over rocks and pebbles (oh hey, a bird living up to it's name--shocked, I'm shocked I tells ya'). They'll also turn over seaweed, shells, and even garbage. Traditionally, I think they ate invertebrates and tiny fish, but I've seen them around carrion and once watched my father-in-law feed them oyster crackers. I just read on BNA that they will also go for other birds eggs...hm, I wonder if people will dispise them as much as blue jays now?

There were some people digging up clams while we were birding along the beach. When they would leave, turnstones would run over and see if they could find any left overs. Click here (click on the Watch In High Quality link) and you can watch a digivideo of the above ruddy turnstone feeding on clam bits in a shell (keep the volume low, the wind is kind of loud).

And they fight! This is part of the brawl that's in the video I posted earlier (click on the Watch In High Quality link). Now, BNA reads, "Less aggressive during nonbreeding season, though extremely territorial when feeding in flocks." What are they like in breeding mode when they are more aggressive??

I think we can see who had the upper beak in this shot. Check out the dude on the right--completely on its side-belly facing the camera. With that sassy plumage, they could qualify for the WWE.

Swarovski's Bird Blogger Event

So, about a month ago, I got an email from my buddy Clay about inviting some bird bloggers to the Swarovski Optik headquarters in Rhode Island. I wasn't sure what exactly it was going to be about, but I figured Swarovski wanted to find out about this whole blogging thing. That was half true, but in the afternoon they pretty much let us loose to just talk amongst ourselves and the meeting ended up being beneficial to bloggers as we talked about everything from why we blog to tips for increasing traffic and dealing with trolls.

The roster of bird bloggers included myself and:

One third of 10,000 Birds
600 Birds
Adventures of Bird Girl
Bird Freak
Born Again Bird Watcher
Julie Zickefoose

Some I knew from the bird festival circuit and others I met face to face for the first time. So for me it was part friend reunion and a chance to connect with some of my favorite blogging colleagues. We talked about how different our blogs were and how we each had aspects that we envied of each other like having a team of bloggers, or being married to your in house tech guy who runs your site, or those who have a knack for editing, the ability to interact well with their commenters (I'm such a non commenter, I don't mean to be, but I am) etc. I have to give Swarovski props for wanting to learn more about bird bloggers and they are certainly ahead of the curve on this compared to most other birding companies.

This is Albert Wannenmacher the CEO of Swarovski Optik in North America proudly displaying the Digiscoping Plaque that Clay and I won at the World Series of Birding this past spring. Swarovski has been great to me, they have given me tremendous support that allows me to blog as much as I do and they invite me to tag along at bird festivals and events. You read about other types of blogs and how companies send them press releases or invite bloggers to visit and meet and create mutually beneficial relationships. The birding industry has been slow to catch on. Publishers (though not all) like Houghton Mifflin have been great as has birdJam by involving bloggers with press releases, but many bird related companies are still quite befuddled by the Internet. I've had some companies accost me at trade shows, "Hey, Birdchick! Why don't you talk about me?" to which I answer, "Because you don't tell me anything."

I'm not saying that blogs need to be all about advertising, but let's face it, bloggers want to provide great content and to that you need time and in some cases money. The dream is to find a way to work with a company you legitimately like and find ways they can help you provide some good content. And there are lots of companies out there that are very involved with conservation projects and have contests. I would love more of them to toot their own horns and let us know about the projects they are funding, both because the projects are often cool and it's nice to know which companies are out there helping birds and not just selling product.

I actually arrived a day early and spent some time in the optics repair department. Above is Kyle and if you have a pair of Swarovski ELs and have sent them in to be repaired or upgraded, this guy has worked on them. Talk about a perfectionist, he walked me through a whole upgrade on an EL, up to and included replacing the casing on the outside--I saw naked binoculars!

It's not every day you get to see a man skin a pair of binoculars or all the components that make them work.

Oh, and ladies, a piece of advice: if you wear cosmetics while birding, take a make up wipe to your eye cups from time to time--especially if you're sending them in for repairs. All that dirt and old make up can't be good for your pores anyway.

Kyle also gave my 8x32 ELs a once over and we took my focus wheel apart. He showed me how it all worked and it was just fascinating to see the gears and grease and all the places my barrels are sealed to keep them waterproof. He showed me one part of my focus wheel that's called a "Flip Flop"--seriously, that's the actual technical term. I looked at him skeptically and he assured me that something just gets lost in the Austrian translation.

The next day, the other bird bloggers arrived and got a similar tour. I love this shot of Corey from 10,000 Birds. I took this photo through one of the prisms that would go into an EL. That's Ben from 600 Birds off to the left. Julie arrived with some ELs to upgrade and I offered to take care of them for her since I learned how to do it the day before. She got all huffy and said I would just get Cinnamon's fur all over her binoculars. I retorted that I don't see how rabbit hair is much worse than Chet Baker slobber. Albert and Clay had to separate us after that.

But of course, being birders, you can only sequester us indoors for meetings and tours for so long before we get antsy and must go outside. They ended the meeting early and took us out for some light birding. We didn't see too terribly much but I did get a fun head shot of a herring gull head. The real birding was to be had the next morning...(more on that later).

One thing I've noticed with Swarovski is that if they invite you to dinner--GO. They always know the best restaurants. Above, I'm sharing a moment with Ben of 600 Birds as he samples his very first lobster.

Part of the fun of eating a lobster is getting to tear it apart. This place was so fancy that the waiter would don rubber gloves and take apart your lobster for you. Not sure I was classy enough for this place and Non Birding Bill suspects I freaked out Helena of Adventures of Bird Girl with my table manners.

It was an interesting group and if you can believe it, some of us were super chatty and had a lot to say, others of us were quiet and listening, soaking the whole scene in. I think we all know which category I fall into. The bird blogging crowd is an interesting mix.