Winter Species Around Mr. Neil's

This morning, Non Birding Bill and I headed out to do some bee stuff at Mr. Neil's. When we were turning onto the final stretch of road, I noticed a lump in the top of a tree and told NBB, "Sorry, if that's what I think it is, I have to get a photo."

Can you guess what it is? It's a raptor...it's a hawk...can't tell? Don't worry, it's hard in that photo. Here it is through the scope:

It's a rough-legged hawk. Something about the lump in the distance just said to me, "Hey, I'm a buteo, but I'm not sitting quite like a red-tailed hawk."

This is the first time I've seen one so close to Mr. Neil's home. We get them in our neck of the woods in winter, but fun to see a rough-leg on patrol so close to his house. Is it me, or does this bird look like it's wearing more eyeliner than Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean?

Meanwhile, pine siskins are still on the rampage at his finch feeders. Between the siskins, the rough-leg and the snow, it's winter!

Friday Banding & Birding

It was jam packed at Carpenter Nature Center banding on Friday. It was the day after Thanksgiving and many people stopped by--including a hilarious 4 year old named Dylan. She kept asking to band a bird herself. I was doing a junco when she came to me and said, "I was going to do that one!"

I asked if she took the banding class. She looked to the side and back at me and said, "Yes." Can't blame a girl for trying. My favorite part was a the end of the morning, she was leaving and we said, "Bye, Dylan, it was nice to meet you," and she replied, "Yes, it was."

The big excitement of the day was getting one of the oodles of pine siskins around the Twin Cities. Tom Bell banded this bird and he noted how fine their bills are--perfect for going into those thin slits on finch feeders.

The yellow is subtle on these little birds, mostly in the edging on the primary wing feathers and the tail feathers. I don't think we were able to determine the sex of this bird, but we did determine that it was a hatch year bird.

Ecobirder was also there, he's going to help Carpenter a bit with their website. When we were finished, I drove over to Douglas Point and found him taking photos. I left him peace, I know how I am when I get in a good groove. The weather was so warm, it was 40 degrees that I decided to go for a bike ride when I came home.

I decided to go over to Lake Calhoun to see if I could get a photo of the long-tailed duck in better light. Plus, I've been curious if I could take my whole digiscoping setup with me on my bike. Non Birding Bill and I were both feeling the effects of eating too much and he also joined me for the ride (as long as I promised not to spend an hour trying to get the perfect photo of a duck).

The light was awesome and waterfowl like Canada geese and hooded mergansers were up close...but not the long-tailed duck, it was WAAAY out on the lake and not worth digiscoping.

The light was so perfect that I hated to waste it and took a few photos of geese. I could hear joggers behind me say, "Why would you want to take photos of those ducks?" I wanted to turn around and point out the scaup and goldeneyes and say there's more out there than just mallards and geese, but did not. And of course, since I was birding in a public place, someone came up to me and said, "Hey, is that bald eagle still over there?"

"I don't know," I said, "I'm not looking for that."

"It was over on the north side, in that tree, the lighter one on the left there." He paused and I could tell by the look in his eye that he was waiting for me to move my scope on it. The eagle was out further than the long-tailed duck. I was not on the clock and I was focusing on a shoveler, I didn't move my scope.

"It's right over there," he pointed. "I saw it when I was jogging over there. It was just sitting there."

"That's awesome," I said, "I'm glad you got to see that." I could see NBB in my peripheral vision over by our bikes. He was grinning that someone was pointing out an eagle yet again when I'm after something else.

I showed him the shoveler in my scope and he showed about as much interest in the northern shoveler as I was in his eagle. I explained about the long-tailed duck and he seemed even less interested in that. Finally, he moved on.

It was fun to squeeze in another bike ride in early winter and it was fun to look at the waterfowl and I was only a tiny bit bummed at missing a good photo of the long-tailed duck. When I checked my email this morning I found this report from yesterday about the long-tailed duck from local birder Terry Brashear:

"The Long-tailed Duck was seen at 2PM close to the west shore, but an adult Bald Eagle came by and the group of Hooded Merganser and Common Goldeneye it was with took flight. It spent the remainder of the day out in the middle of Lake Calhoun till I left at 3:30PM."

Which was about the time NBB and I were biking around the lake. That stupid bald eagle that dude was trying to point out is the one that moved the duck so far to the center of the lake.

I'm shaking my fist at that bald eagle and saying in a tone like a villain at the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon, "I would have gotten that photo too if hadn't been for that meddling eagle."

Happy Naked Thanksgiving!

There are updates at the end of this post!

Non Birding Bill and I are celebrating our usual day long date that we call Naked Thanksgiving. One of the many things I'm grateful for is just some time with each other. It was suggested that bird bloggers post photos of turkeys today. I'm not sure if everyone is going to do it, but I have turkey photos:

Lovely! Although, I took this photo last March when males are in their mating mode. I think they have to puff of those feathers to distract from this:

What female turkey wouldn't want a piece of that?

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you have a great day...and if you don't celebrate, I hope you're having a great day too. I'm grateful to everyone who stops by here from time to time to take a look. I'm grateful for my family, for NBB, for having a roof over my head, for our crazy pets.

Update 1: The above is a female, but based on the comment hilarity, I'm keepin' it! And honestly, the males really don't look better than that. And if you would like to see an actual tom head, check out Bill of the Birds. He's got it goin' on!

Update 2: I found more turkey photos. Here's cute turkey photo sent to my by April Grunspan:

And I noticed PicusBlog has a cool turkey blog entry up too.

Update 3: Birding Bev has graciously compiled the turkey photos and offers a most succulent bird in her post.

Mischief On Twitter

Some of you may have noticed on the blog page that I have a Twitter Update. If you are not familiar with Twitter, it's a form of micro blogging. I can send a one or two sentence update, it cannot be any longer than 140 characters. Sometimes I type an update in from my computer and sometimes I send one from a cell phone via text message.

If you wish, you can get a Twitter account and follow anyone you know or find on Twitter. For example, you can follow people like friends or bloggers you know like Born Again Bird Watcher or Picus, or you can follow celebrities like Stephen Fry or Jonathan Coulton, or characters like Darth Vader, companies like Dunkin Donuts, your favorite news organization like I follow MinnPost, or just the plain bizarre like Bacon Friday. I use mine to test out ideas for future blog posts (is this link appropriate) or if I'm busy at a bird festival then I will type in quick updates. Non Birding Bill used it for me when I had to work the RNC as a park ranger. He was able to follow the rioters twitter feeds and let me know where tear gas was being sprayed.

The other day I was at the Minnesota River Valley Visitor Center just doing some digiscoping. I find it relaxing when I'm stressed and now that I have my favorite digiscoping camera (the Fuji FinePix E900, thank you National Camera Exchange for digging one up for me) I just love playing with it.

I joke when I give digiscoping programs that you suddenly find yourself with a renewed interest in common species like house sparrows and starlings. Isn't that a pretty house sparrow? I know, I know, bluebird people are reading that last sentence and think that my choo choo has really gone round the bend. But there were other cool sparrows too:

We still have some fox sparrows hanging out in MN! There were about four working the grounds underneath the visitor centers feeders. I wrote a text on my phone to Twitter that I was seeing fox sparrows.

There were quite a few house finches around too. This was one of the healthy looking ones. There was one male who looked rather puffy and spent too long at the feeders when everyone else would fly away. It looked sick. It didn't have the eye disease you typically see with house finches, but it didn't look good.

Soon, many of the birds left and I noticed this one lone downy woodpecker doing her best to blend in with the column on this feeder. I figured that there must be a Cooper's hawk or sharp-shinned hawk perched nearby, but could not see it. Suddenly, there was a flash of gray, black and white. I first thought "mockingbird" but remembered I was in Minnesota so it must have been a northern shrike. That id was confirmed when Mr. Gray, Black & White took off in hot pursuit of the sick looking house finch. I wrote a text to Twitter:

"A northern shrike just tried to nail a house finch at MN River Valley Headquarters."

To which Born Again Bird Watcher responded:

"@birdchick Oooh, kinky!"

And then PicusBlog adds:

"@birdchick @babw The end result of the aforementioned act might look like this."

Apparently, my texting is just chock full of double entendres and now I know what a house shrike would look like.

Can't Stop Blogging About The Rio Grande Valley!

Can you believe I still have blogging to do about Texas?? It really is one of my favorite birding trips I do all year. I love the organizers, the birds, the food, the temperature--it's tops. Check out this altamira oriole that was just cleaning itself off after using a bird bath at Laguna Atascosa NWR.

I think I have finally caught up from all my traveling. I was trying to catch up all last week from being in Ohio, New Jersey, and Texas. I was home between those trips, but only for brief periods. In that time, the apartment had exploded into a chaos world of bunny fur, cockatiel dust, and hay. Books were staging some sort of coup and weren't returning to shelves, my suitcase refused to unpack itself and a glacier of laundry was moving out of the bedroom. Amid trying to work and catch up on the blog, Non Birding Bill said those magic words: "I'm taking Friday afternoon off, let's go see the new Bond movie!"

But late Sunday, well into Monday and Tuesday I went into a cleaning and organizing frenzy. Interrupted briefly by a one way conversation with my stomach Tuesday morning. Still not quite sure what that was about. Was my stomach getting into the spirit of my apartment purge? I didn't feel sick which is completely out of character when I throw up. I suspect it had more to do with a bad combo of coffee and omega 3 fish oil gel caps.

But back to talking about Laguna! I love the trails and I love the wildlife drive. I took almost a full day to creep along and look for birds to digiscope. I was hoping to get some great shots of a caracara.

But had to settle for the Dr. Seuss stylings of a long-billed curlew! I was showing this photo to a non birding friend of mine (even more so than Non Birding Bill) and he looked at the photo and asked, "What the hell does it use that for?!" The beak is a little striking. I checked out the always fabulous Birds of North America Online. It said that the long decurved bill is used when foraging earthworms or shrimp and crabs. BNA also suggested that the long bill is used mainly when feeding on their wintering grounds as opposed to their breeding grounds. Basically, observers see curlews probing more in winter on the migratory habitat and see more pecking on the breeding grounds. Interesting to have a bill like that and only need it for part of the year.

Osprey were all over the place. The above bird was trying to eat its fish in peace, but had an audience:

This young turkey vulture (it's young because the head is still dark) was biding its time on the side lines, trying to work out a way to sneak in and steal a few bites for the osprey. This bird must really like fish because there's an abundance of fresh roadkill in the Rio Grande Valley. Why didn't the vulture just for that instead?

Laguna had signs posted warning of you alligators. The first gator I ever saw in the wild was at Laguna. I did see a few on my drive:

This one was right off the road. I got out of the vehicle to digiscope it. I took a couple of images through the scope with my phone and sent them off.

Here's a digiscoped image. I have to say, there were a couple of points where I felt like I was in the Blink episode of Doctor Who. When I turned away, it almost seemed as if the alligator was closer. It wasn't long after I took this photo that I looked to my left...

...and found another alligator lounging not too far from me. I digiscoped it too:

Well if that just isn't the most contented looking alligator ever. Realizing that I'm rather short, there are warning signs, and having two alligators near me, I hightailed it back in the car. I love a little adventure in my birding. I love going to places where there are animals that could knock me off a rung or two on the food chain.

Pine Siskins and Bonfires and Bees

Just a reminder: The next Birds and Beers is this Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 6pm at Merlin's Rest.

This weekend was kind of a blur, I'm still trying to catch up. This early winter weather is just perfect for a one last hurrah before the hardcore cold temperatures force us inside. Non Birding Bill got Mr. Neil to host a bonfire gathering.

We had a great bonfire going and we burned some unusable beehive frames which made for some spectacular pyrotechnic effects with the old wood. Speaking of frames, we still have some frames full of honey to extract and a big fancy extractor. I thought that maybe we could do some extracting at the bonfire gathering--lots of friends over, "Hey, don't you want to be a junior beekeeper and extract some honey?" We could all take turns, running the crank. Alas, much like all the beekeeping equipment out there, NO INSTRUCTIONS (beekeeping equipment manufacturers--that sucks and makes me not like your products and is off putting to new beekeepers).

So, little was extracted and we now have a fancy extractor that we are not real clear on how to use. Lorraine has gone to the cheesecloth method for some of our frames.

This morning we woke up to a dusting of snow and LOTS of finches at the feeders--the long tube feeder almost had all 20 perches were full. Non Birding Bill and I headed out to our remaining hives we are going to over winter--Kitty and Kelli. We were going to screw in the metal entrance reducers so the girls would have less area to defend and to also keep mice from moving inside.

When we arrived, we found paw prints which looked remarkably like skunk at the entrance of both hives. This snow fell in the early morning hours. That jerk skunk had just been there a mere few hours before NBB and myself. Skunks knock at the entrance of a hive. This makes the bees angry and they come out to attack, the skunk eats them, apparently unfazed by the stinging. We have carpet tacking around the entrances to prevent this (when the skunks come knocking, they get pricked by the nails), but it's gotten strewn around this past bee season. So NBB and I rearranged it to give that skunk a few good pricks if it comes back. Hanz (the guy who does yard maintenance) built our bees a wicked bad electric fence to keep bears out, Lorraine is going to ask him to add one more line of electricity, closer to the ground and closer to skunk height to encourage the b@stard to look for food elsewhere.

NBB and I put our ears to both hives and heard contented buzzing from within each hive. Love that!

Early plans for next season--six hives! We'll divide Kelli into 2 hives (cause she's gonna swarm and if we divide her, we can control the swarm), 3 new hives, and Kitty...well, that's our angriest hive and we're just gonna let her do whatever she wants to do. If she wants to swarm, then she can swarm. I'm not gonna argue that hive.

There was a constant flow of goldfinches all morning. None of them were banded, so it was just a steady stream of hundreds visiting. The day before, I had noticed a couple of pine siskins and the more I watched the goldfinches...

...the more I would see streaky pine siskins mingle in among the flock. Which is right on target according to the Winter Finch Forecast: "A conifer seed specialist in winter, most siskins should leave the province this fall because the spruce cone crop is poor in the boreal forest. It is uncertain whether the huge white pine seed crop will keep some siskins in central and northern Ontario this winter."

I put some fine ground sunflower hearts and thistle on the tree stump. Goldfinches flew in for it, as did juncos and (of course) pine siskins. In the above photo, you can see some of that yellow edging on the wing feathers of the siskins. If you have goldfinches in your yard and you've never noticed a pine siskin before, take a closer look at your finches. Pine siskins can be easily mistaken for goldfinches in winter plumage. But look at the breast. If it's clear, it's a goldfinch, if it's super streaky, it's a pine siskin.

Once two or three siskins were on the stump, more moved in. It wasn't too long before the siskins outnumbered the goldfinches! I didn't get a photo of it, but we did have one crazy pine siskin going to the no melt peanut butter suet. I'd never seen a siskin on suet before, I thought they were strick seed eaters.

All Over The Place Post

Here is a yellowlegs that WildBird on the Fly and I observed at one of my favorite digiscoping spots, Estero Llano Grande. She and I went there a couple of times and I tried to get some lifers and do some digiscoping. I discovered that I need to focus on one thing at a time. If I'm after a lifer, I should concentrate on that, if I want to take pictures of birds, I should focus on that. If I try to do both, I don't know where to focus my attention and I miss good shots and I totally miss birds.

Estero has several different trails and the boardwalk around the ponds is usually a good place for shore birds, like the above solitary sandpiper (who is actually living up to its name, it's by itself).

We some colorful birds too like this little blue herons,

black-necked stilts--love those guys,

least grebes (check out that crazy yellow eye),

and a young male vermilion flycatcher.

We even did our good deed for the day by rescuing a dragonfly (although, after reading Born Again Bird Watcher's post, maybe we should have left it). Amy notice this dragonfly on its back in the water. I couldn't reach with my arm, but used my scope's tripod to fish it out. We took a few photos and then set it down on the board walk to finish drying out.

I generally do not take field guides with me. It helps you focus on the bird in front of you rather than spending too much time with your nose in a book. It kind of forces you to pay attention to field marks. Like the above shorebird. It was tiny, kinda brownish, and the legs were a different color than the bill--that's a least sandpiper.

The other reason why I don't bring a guide is that someone on field trips always has a book, I know many birds and what I don't know, I can usually digiscope and id later, or I'm almost always out with someone who knows the area better than I do and will confirm id for me. Well that bit me in the butt.

We got to a spot with some kingbirds and I wasn't sure what type we were seeing, but I figured I would digiscope it and then look it up later. I have it narrowed down to either a tropical kingbird or a Couch's kingbird. I thougt I would go over to BNA and see if I could work out the difference. Here's what Cornell had to say:

"Couch’s is most similar to the Tropical Kingbird and these species are often difficult to distinguish in the field by appearance alone. In the field, adult Couch’s is slightly larger, with a proportionally shorter bill,"

Hmmm, that would be difficult, the bird's bill is facing right at the camera, can't really tell proportions. Let's try the next one:

"and more olive-green back than adult Tropical, but the back fades to grayish during the breeding season making this character unreliable."

Well, again, the bird is facing me so I can't really see the back.
"The plumages of juveniles are inseparable in the field, and only extreme specimens can be identified in the hand (Traylor 1979)."

Wow, that sounds like I'm totally hosed on the id. Wait, there's a little more to read,

"Vocalizations however, may be used to separate these species reliably in the field. The slowly repeated pit (or kip) and pitweeeer of Couch’s are easily distinguish-able from the rapidly repeated, metallic-sounding pit calls of Tropical Kingbird. The dawn songs are also distinctive. Although T. couchii is probably more vocal than T. melancholicus, silent birds cannot therefore be positively identified as the latter."

Yeah, I totally did not pay attention to the calls and did not take any video. I will have to chalk this bird up to some sort of Tyrannus.

There were some great birds being reported around Estero and they had a great little kiosk in there from ebird called Trail Tracker. You can use it to find out which birds are being reported and where they are being seen. The observations also become part of eBird and includes photos, audio, video and life history information for the birds seen. I tried to use it to find some cool birds being reported like a rose-throated becard (didn't see it) and a paraque (looked at it, but didn't see it, but Round Robin got shots of it).

Skywatch Friday, In Transit From Texas

It's Skywatch Friday again! If you have a blog with a photo of sky, you can link your post up to Skywatch Friday and share the beauty. I thought I'd share one of my "in transit" days.

I never cease to be amazed at the ability to change time and temperature with our ability of global travel. I marvel at my Monday this week. I woke up in south Texas, in Harlingen, near the border. I'm surrounded by warm weather and exotic species.

Not just blue jays here, no, crazy birds like green jays (above), curlews and kiskadees. When I boarded my plane in the morning, it was sunny, windy, and temperatures were in the 80s.

The view of the sky from the plane was an intense palette of blue and white. The sky, so clear and so blue, pushing down on a thin layer of clouds.

Take in that blue for a moment.

The clouds had some fluff but were mostly thin. It's so strange and such a privilege to get to see clouds from above. I try to concentrate on them as opposed to my fear of flying (or rather, crashing) in a plane.

As the clouds gave way, I could see some of Minnesota below, my final destination. The land had been dusted with snow. How strange to start a morning with humidity and 80 degree temps and then end the afternoon in 30 degrees with snow. I never get tired at the wonder of travel and where you can find yourself in a day.

The Heart Breaking Aplomado Falcon

One of the fun parts of visiting the Rio Grande Valley is the chance to see an aplomado falcon. One of the best places to look is Laguna Atascosa NWR. Two years ago I got the chance to chase one down (it practically took half the bird festival to help me get it). The aplomado falcon in this area is a reintroduced species, their populations have been affected by pesticide use and the Peregrine Fund has been releasing captive raised birds in an effort to reestablish the population. They eat mostly small birds and insects.

On Sunday morning, as I was driving into Laguna Atascosa, I noticed a car pulled over ahead of me, I slowed to find out what they were looking at. It was an aplomado falcon perched on a fence post about 30 feet from the road. As I slowed, the bird took off, but then perched again on the fence further down the road. Both the car in front and I approached slowly. It was painful. I had all my digiscoping equipment next to me in my rental vehicle, but I knew if I got out to set it up, the falcon would fly off. I so wanted to get an awesome photo for the blog, but rather than spoil the perfect view, I decided to just enjoy the bird in front of me. When I reached the visitor center at Laguna, I took photos of their stuffed bird for the blog entry. It was a kick ass look.

As I birded some more around Laguna, another aplomado falcon flew over my vehicle and landed in a far away palmetto. Such a pretty bird, but gone in a flash. While I was out, I ran into Sam Crow and Hugh Powell who do Round Robin Blog for Cornell. Hugh showed me his photo of the aplomado, they had come across the bird on the fence earlier (I now wonder if they were in the vehicle in front of me). They got a good shot and it was painful for me to see. You can view the apolomado photo over at Round Robin.

South Padre Island Birding

Amy, Clay, and I had great looks at other birds besides the osprey starting a nest. We started the morning at the jetty where many fishermen gather, as do birders. We saw so many dolphins, it could have qualified as a starling flock. But we were not after marine mammals, we wanted to scan the birds. Now, here's an interesting trio. Three different birds, can you tell what they are? I'll save identifying them until the end of the post in case you would like to try and figure out the id yourself. These were three common birds loafing on the beach. Warning, clues will to the id are ahead, so if you want to try and figure out the id, grab you field guide before going any further.

While we were watching the birds on shore, Amy noticed a hitchhiker on my scope--why it was a honeybee. How fitting that she decided to hang on my scope. She was slow and lethargic. I was not sure if she was just at the end of her foraging life or chilled from the cool winds. If you look at the wear on her wings, I think she's old and at the end of her life.

Clay was very excited to see caspian terns (the tern on the right). They are big and flashy terns, with a noticeable red bill. We see them in Minnesota during migration. They are so large that even Non Birding Bill has commented on them when we saw some flying over nearby Lake of the Isles. This tern was next to a royal tern (the tern on the left), a slightly smaller tern compared to the Caspian. And if you ever are feeling bad about your bird id skills, take heart in knowing that even John J. Audubon himself had trouble telling these two species apart! According to Birds of North America Online:

"In his monumental Birds of America, Audubon depicted neither Caspian nor Royal, but instead what he called a Cayenne Tern, Sterna cayana — mostly Royal, but with some ad-mixture of Caspian features."

As we continued on, we found both brown pelicans and American white pelicans. I've seen both, but never together. I knew American white pelicans were huge, but it never occurred to me that they are twice the size of brown pelicans--crazy.

We headed over to the convention center where we found a fun little water feature. You might hear and read that moving water is the best way to attract birds to your yard, that is put to good use in many of the parks and more birdier areas you can visit in the Rio Grande Valley.

At one point, this little water feature had about a dozen orange-crowned warblers coming in for a bathe. They moved so quickly and were so spread out, I couldn't get more than three or four in my view finder at one time. I got a small video of the bathing warblers, it's best viewed at YouTube and if you click on the "watch in high quality" option.

And in keeping with my goal of showing that not every photo comes out great, I'm posting a rather out of focus shot of a black-throated green warbler. There were a couple who flew in to join the orange-crowned warblers, but they were too quick for me.

Just as I got the scope focused on the black-throated, the little terd hopped behind a rock to bathe. Grrr. Curse you, black-throated green warbler, and everything you stand for! I did manage to get the back of the bird's head in focus. Well, it's a start. No one ever said that digiscoping warblers was ever easy.

And now for the id of the three birds: royal tern, Caspian tern, and laughing gull. How did you do?