Shorebird Workshop

Because I am in dire need of improving my shorebird id skills, I'm taking a weekend workshop with one of the best shorebird guys in my area, Doug Buri. Doug Buri has a BS degree in zoology. His interest in shorebirds has led him to pursue them around the globe on five different continents. The shores of Hudson Bay, the mud flats of coastal Columbia, the great rift valley of Ethiopia, and the marshes of central India all attract shorebirds. Doug followed them; intrigued by the challenge of studying and identifying this avian group. He was involved for many years in a multi year research project on Big Stone NWR studying Least Sandpipers and Pectoral Sandpipers. Doug has acted as an identification consultant for the study collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and for the Peabody Museum at Yale University in New Haven Conn. In other words, he knows his stuff.

It's a limited group--only ten people are going but I just got word from Doug that he has three spaces available. I know this is last minute, but if you have this weekend free and have wondered if you would ever figure out these little guys--this is the workshop to take. Doug says that his number one goal is to get the group up close looks so you can learn to tell a white-rumped from a pectoral. I just got this in an email tonight:

"My number one priority is to get very VERY close to the birds. Actually I had Least Sandpipers 12-15 feet from me yesterday -- which I consider to be normal. I hear that some people use a spotting scope for shorebirding, but I'm sure it is just a vicious rumor perpetrated by those evil optical goods sellers."

The workshop starts this Friday at 9am in Milbank, SD and runs through Sunday 12pm. It'll be a good time and you'll be able to wow your friends with your mad shorebirdin' skillz. The workshop is $100 plus a $25 non-refundable registration fee includes the entire weekend workshop. It does not include food, lodging, or other expenses. If you are forced to cancel, the registration fee can be applied to future workshops.

If you would like to sign up, contact Doug NOW at dougburi@tnics.com.

Minor Notes To NBB's Guest Blogging

For the record, when Non Birding Bill offered to take over the blog when I had to leave town, I did leave him some photos to use in my absence to help him out, like the one above. Why, my goodness, what is that? Why isn't that a colorful bird on that bird feeder? Is it me or is that bird bright yellow and not brown? Right before I left, we had been at Mr. Neil's and he had tons of young bird coming to the feeders, learning how to eat at the big kid table. Here's a young downy woodpecker--his red cap on the front of his forehead distinguishes him from an adult male who would have the red on the back of the head. Oh, look at that--red and not brown. Harumph!

I even told NBB that he could do a post on all the young rose-breasted grosbeaks hanging out at the feeders. Look, another bird with some color, oh my. Here's a young male fresh from the nest. These guys were just thugs. Perhaps their larger size and demand for food made them so formidable to the other birds at the feeding stations. Titmice, nuthatches, and finches flew away on the young grosbeaks' approach.

Here is a young house finch minding its own business while feeding. This bird is fresh from the nest as well, not the yellow gape on the beak. Anyway, this guy was just feeding on a lower perch, there were plenty of other feeding stations around, and this finch even took the lowest perch--the least desirable to adults who would prefer to be higher up.

But, in flew a young grosbeak to the lower perch and the young house finch flushed. The grosbeak stayed on the perch where the finch had been, but then flew up to one of the higher perches and began to feed. The young finch watched and waited for the grosbeak to feed so it could have access to the food source. I think the adult grosbeaks were no longer feeding the young ones, and they began to feed themselves. They seemed to watch other birds feeding and when they noticed a species eating, they flew to where it was to try the food out. Their larger size flushed the smaller birds. Thugs.

Even though there were tray feeders that had large platforms to fit a grosbeak, all the young came to this tube feeder. Above is young female--now, unlike what NBB asserted, she looks very different from a house finch, she's larger, has different striping and look at that distinct eyebrow.

See how she bends and curves? It's interesting how in some yards, birds won't go the extra mile to feed out of a feeder that is too small, but in other yards they will.

Anyway, I do appreciate NBB filling in for me while I was away. He is a very talented writer and funny, and I'm lucky to married to such a man.

More Honey Extraction From Our Bees

It was time to check on the progress of the bees once again, so Mr. Neil, Non Birding Bill, Cabal, and I headed to the hives. Last weekend, NBB checked on the hives and found that the bees were still not using our new comb honey supers. The instructions that came with our Ross Rounds supers led us to believe they were already fully assembled. Well, I did some digging on the Internet and found that they were supposed to have wax foundation on the inside of the rounds to get the bees started. GRRRR. I emailed NBB from out of town and he did some digging. Fortunately, the boxes that the supers arrived in hadn't been recycled yet, so he found the foundation. WHEW!

He put together one of the supers and replaced it with the one that was already on the hive. We're supposed to take the brown plastic pieces apart--they just snap apart easily. Well, even though the bees hadn't been filling that super with comb and honey--they did manage to propolis the crap out of it. But, NBB and Mr. Neil managed to pry them apart with the aid of the hive tool and get the foundation in, so it will be ready if we need more supers this summer. Our goal with the inspection today was to check on Kitty's progress and see if Olga was finally filling the Ross Rounds with the foundation.

Kitty's buzz is much improved. Before, when we would open the hive, it was very quiet and if you did some digging you would find the bees, and there would be a quiet general hum, but here and there would also be a weak solitary buzz. Today the bees just sounded more contented and industrious--they sounded like they had a purpose.

The larvae from the new queen hasn't emerged yet, but I'm not too worried, there are massive amounts of honey stored for the time being (that's the workers eating some of it above), so if there is a shortage of foragers for a small period of time the girls have reserves for the next week or two. Some workers have finally started drawing out comb in top box--that's the box they need to fill in order to make it through the winter. It's the beginning of August so there is still time. OK, maybe I'm a tiny bit concerned, but we'll do what we can when we can.

Olga is in mass production mode. When we took her roof off, we found lots of propolis, these girls are really going to town. I wish I had such a great fix up tool. Got a hole or crack, got a dead mouse? Just cover it with propolis--it prevents the spread of bacteria, plugs up holes, and keeps everything together.

We checked the Ross Rounds and found some very exciting activity. Each compartment was jammed packed full of workers drawing out comb, soon to fill them with honey--WHOOT! Finally, they are using the super! They are also sealing all the frames together with massive amounts of sticky propolis.

Here's a little video:

NBB asked me last night what I enjoy most about bees, and I think just watching their industriousness. They each have jobs and those jobs change over time, they always have something to do, some place to be.

We found that the empty frame we put in the brood box was once again chock full of capped honey for us to harvest. I'm wondering if push comes to shove with the Kitty hive and she doesn't have enough stores for winter, if we can replace some of her empty frames with honey frames from Olga? Of course, that means less honey for us this year, but next year we'd have two hives that would produce nothing but honey. We'll see how things are at the end of August.

Here's another video of some general bee activity while we're getting the frame ready to take back with us:

Did you notice Mr. Neil using the bee brush in back? We're gently brushing off the workers from the frame with the honey. We're taking them off, so we don't take them back to the house with us. Thinking back to the Ross Rounds, we suddenly began to wonder, how are we going to get the bees out of the super when we are ready to harvest it? The frames are all wedged together (and now sealed with propolis), we can't really get a bee brush in there. We can't smoke the frames, that affects the flavor of the honey and also the smoke calms the bees and makes them eat honey, which doesn't help the situation. I've heard of some chemical methods, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm going to have to google that a bit to find out how we harvest the honey.

On the bottom of the frame, the workers had made more comb, but they made larger cells--we know what that meas--drones. The whole bottom of the frame either had squishy larvae or capped drone brood. It was easily cut away from the honey were going to eat, but it got me thinking: The queen has been up here sometime in the last week or two. We did have a queen excluder between this box and our other honey supers to prevent the queen from laying eggs in the Ross Rounds but we took it out when the workers weren't drawing out comb in them, thinking that was preventing them from working in the supers (plus many beekeepers are anti excluder). We also reversed the brood boxes, which gets the queen to start in the third brood box and work her way down to lay eggs. But larvae this small means she's been here in the last two weeks. Is there any possibility she has gone up to the Ross Rounds to lay eggs? I don't want to use the excluder now on the off chance she is in the rounds and that cuts her off from the rest of the hive. Oh well, only time will tell and this year is supposed to be a learning curve.

One thing I am really encouraged about with the beekeeping is that even though this is our first year and I've made some mistakes, we've still managed to get honey for ourselves. Last time we harvested we got seven boxes of frame honey, and on this run we got six boxes of honey--a total of 13 boxes so far and things looks promising that we will get more.

Oh! Here is something interesting. Some say that in nature you never find straight angles--check out what I found in the Olga hive entrance. I think that's propolis on the floor that may have dripped down, I'm not sure, but it's in straight angles. What are the Olga bees up to? Are they defying nature? The Olga bees, always leaving me with more questions than answers. Perhaps that is why I love them so.

Bald Cardinals and Other Bald Birds

All of a sudden in the last two weeks, I have been getting comments to an old post from July 25, 2005 (way back when I worked at the bird store). The post is about bald cardinals.

Every year about late July and early August there are questions from people asking about black headed birds, miniature vultures or bald headed feeder birds. Most of the time, people are describing cardinals without any feathers on their heads, but I've also had reports of bald blue jays and grackles.

While I was down in Indianapolis, my mom had a bald cardinal coming to her feeding station. So, what is the dealio? No one knows for sure, even Cornell Lab of the Big O admits that the case of the bald cardinal is not well studied. There are two possible explanations. Number one, this is the time of year when many songbirds (including cardinals and blue jays) are molting (shedding old feathers and growing in new feathers). For some reason, the birds drop all of their feathers on their heads at once. I've seen this with captive birds like great horned owls and even our education screech owl at The Raptor Center. The birds are healthy, they just molt everything at once (interesting to note that all of those species mentioned are tufted: cardinal, blue jay, great horned owl, eastern screech owl--hmmmmmmm).

Alas, my mom didn't have just a bald male cardinal, she also had a bald grackle (so much for the only tufted bird theory). This grackle was much more wary than the cardinal and this was the only shot I got of it. The bird seemed to sense the spotting scope and flush right as I was about to take a photo. I don't blame it, the bird kind of looks like a Skeksis, I wouldn't want my photo taken either. This bird leads me to the number two reason birds can go bald and that is that they can get feather mites. Generally, birds can use their bills to remove pests like mites when they are preening. However, they would be unable to get to mites on their heads and so the mites eat away the feathers. It's tough to say what really is going on, without trapping the bird and looking for the mites, you really can't tell for certain if it's molting or mites causing the lack of feathers.

There was another grackle coming to mom's feeders that was starting to lose its facial feathers. Interesting to note that the cardinals are dark skinned under the feathers and the grackles are light skinned. Since my mom had at least three birds that were either bald or starting to become bald, I wondered if this was a case of mites being passed around. The birds appeared in good health and were eating well, looking alert--all good signs. And mites don't usually kill a bird. Annoy it and make it look grotesque--yes, but kill birds--not so much. Check out the video I got of the male cardinal eating a berry off of mom's fuschia plant:

Did you note how he scratched the back of his head? That also makes me wonder if mites are the cause. Although, I would bet a bunch of pin feathers growing in at once would be rather itchy.

By the way, don't feel too bad for him, he's still gettin' some play. Not long after I took that video, this female flew in and he jauntily bounced over to her and fed her some of the fuschia berries--very clear mating behavior. She didn't seem to mind his bald pate one bit (perhaps she likes that Christine Lavin song). Although, if you look right behind her eye, there's a small bald patch--mites? Will she be bare headed soon as well?

As I was watching the cardinal, I noticed something new. Check out where his ear canal is. Do you see it? It's that large hole right under his eyeball (there's a small red feather over it). How cool--who knew that their ears were just below their eyes...and about the same size. I wonder if anyone has done any studies and the hearing capability of cardinals? So much we don't yet know...

And just for comparison and to not leave you with grotesque cardinals, here is a photo of a proper male cardinal. Whether the birds in the other photos have mites or an odd molt pattern, don't worry too much. In most cases, the feathers do grow back in plenty of time before the winter sets in and all will be right with the cardinal world once again.

First Bird Blogging Confernce!

Calling all bird bloggers, calling all bird bloggers:

The first ever Bird Blogger Conference will be at Cape May Autumn Weekend October 26-27, 2007! What does this mean--well, a lot of bird bloggers in one place at one time to meet face to face, share ideas, and maybe even watch some birds! Bird bloggers are eligible for a discount and must sign up through me. Here are the qualifications for the discount:

1. Your blog must have been started sometime before January 31, 2007.
2. Your blog must have regular updates at a minimum of four times a month.
3. If your blog has been inactive for more than 30 days, it will not qualify for the discount.
4. You must promote the Cape May Autumn Weekend and the 1st Birder Blogger Conference periodically in your blog--not every day or every week, but periodically remind your readers that you are going and that it would be great if they came along too.

Speaking of readers, this is a great chance for all of you to come and meet some bird bloggers out there. So, start signing up for Autumn Weekend now.

I'm thinking about organizing a Birds and Beers night there on the evening of October 26. Any natives have a good recommendation for a place for birders to get some beer and talk some birds, let me know.

Bloggers who would like more info on the discount rate, please email me at Sharon at Birdchick dot com.

35W Bridge, Who Knew?

Well, this was supposed to be returning to the usual blog antics, but I just don't have it in me to post on some bald birds today.

Before.

After.

Here is a link to a flickr account of a photo series of the bridge collapse taken from a boat on the Mississippi River. A friend of NBB's sent the link. They were having their company party and taking a boat ride along the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities. They were 15 minutes away from being right under the 35W bridge.

My heart and thoughts go out to people still waiting to hear information on loved ones, and for the injured and dead. I think of all the construction workers who have been walking the bridge, wondered how they are from the fall. The number of dead is remarkably low, especially when you think about the bus that was full of 60 kids coming back from a summer field trip. I'm proud of all the Minnesota spirit. So many acts of heroism, especially the people who came from their own wrecked vehicles and ignored their own injuries to get the children out of the bus.

I think so many of us in the Twin Cities are shell shocked about the bridge because it could have been any of us or our friends and family on the bridge at that time. One of the advantages of where our apartment is located is that we are right next to major highways to get anywhere quickly. I used the 35W bridge daily--sometimes several times a day to get to The Raptor Center, to go to Hawk Ridge, Target, my friend Amber's home, Bill used it just 24 hours before it collapsed to visit our buddy Jody the librarian. It never seemed like a bridge--it was a four lane highway, you never really thought of it as a bridge--it was big and safe. It had one of my favorite views of downtown Minneapolis, and I remember once driving over on a winter night and the crow roost had been disturbed. It was 10pm and the overcast sky was kind of purple from the reflection of the city lights and you could see thousands of crows swirling over the bridge in the night sky--an owl must have flown through.

Yesterday, I was taking a long drive home from Indianapolis. It had not been a pleasure visit, and I was chewing on unblogable events on the drive home. I approached a highway bridge in Illinois that was having some construction done, it was very high above a large river. Panic suddenly bubbled up from inside me, I had sense that I could fall off at any moment. My hands were shaking, my heart pounding in my chest. If there had been space to pull over, I would have. There was no place safe to pull over, and I tried to get hold of myself, "What is this? You drive over rivers all the time, you are safe. You already hate to fly, you're not going to be afraid to cross bridges."

The panic passed, and I focused on the birds flying over. This has NEVER happened to me before, I've never been afraid of falling off a bridge. I attributed it to stress from the visit. I entered the Twin Cities at 6pm. Nearing my home, I put in my ear piece and called my mom to tell her that I had made it back to the Twin Cities safely. As we talked and I was on I-94 approaching 35W, I saw news helicopters circling close together. I thought that it was odd, but just thought that there must have been a bad accident. As I passed the exits for 35W that dump onto 94, I braced myself for the stand still traffic that comes at that exit at that time of night. There was no traffic and I made it to my exit with ease. As I hung up from my mom, I thought how odd that I got through rush hour traffic so smoothly, but remembered that lots of construction had been happening and 35W and maybe traffic had been rerouted while I was gone--that would also help explain the news helicopters.

I still had my ear piece in and called out to my phone to call Bill to warn him that I was five minutes away. The phone didn't dial. I tried it four times, each time, the call didn't go through. Finally, the fifth time it went through and I gave him the warning. Finished with my calls, I turned on the radio and heard the unfamiliar voices of tv anchors on my radio station. I came in during the middle of the report. From what I gathered, there was a fire on 35W, several cars involved, sounded like ten cars. Also, it sounded as if part of the 35W bridge had collapsed. I thought, "Well, that explains the helicopters, there's a really bad accident and perhaps with the construction some part of the road fell in the river."

We came in and turned on the tv and saw that the whole bridge fell in the river, during rush hour. I had no idea of the magnitude of what happened. We immediately tried to call friends and family to touch base, and couldn't get our calls out. The news said cell phone companies said to clear the lines, emergency calls weren't getting through, so I put the notice in my blog--which I'm so glad I did. This morning I'm finding all kinds of cell messages that I didn't get from family and friends who couldn't get hold of us last night.

I thought back to my panic on the highway bridge in Illinois earlier in the day. I'm not big believer in psychics or esp. But the coincidence does have me thinking--was it some kind of sixth sense triggering a warning. Probably not, but it was strange nonetheless.

Now the magnitude is really setting in. This was a major connection between Minneapolis and St. Paul, it handled a huge amount of traffic, it's going to take time to figure out new routes. Early reports say that we won't have a new bridge for year...I think it's going to be even longer than that. I'm thinking that we are a few years away from having a bridge again. Authorities have to figure out what happened and then there has to be a redesign and then construction, it's hard to wrap your head around this one.

We Are O.K.

For those who may have just learned about the horrible bridge collapse on the I-35W bridge near our home this evening, Non Birding Bill and I are both safe and were not on the highway at the time.

We're trying to get hold of friends, but as you can imagine cell service is spotty and the media is asking that we not use the phones unless it's absolutely necessary. Friends, please feel free to leave a comment to let us know that you too are okay and alive.

I was driving into town when this happened...