Gyrfalcon and the Family

Whoo Hoo, our earliest migrant is back in Minnesota, the horned lark! I actually took this photo on Monday in Connecticut but yesterday while toodling around Dakota County I flushed quite a few flocks along the road.

I was trying to go see the gyrfalcon that has been hanging around south of the metro area. There are a couple of fields where thousands of mallards and Canada geese come in to feed late in the afternoon and the falcon likes to hunt them. There are some great videos of the gyr at the MOU website. One in particular is of the falcon eating a mallard while surrounded by thousands of live mallards. Periodically the gyr will lunge towards the flock, spooking them into the air. I wondered why it would do that, but after watching this noisy flock of geese and ducks yesterday I could see how they gyr might long for some silence while it ate. Incidentally, notice the dark line behind the geese in ducks in the above photo? That's thousands more waterfowl.

I did find the gyr but was not able to photograph it. I saw it high on a power pole off of a busy county road. I pulled over and it kept flinching as ducks flew in--it was hungry and trying to decide on which mallard to take. The gyr had it's wings outstretched and almost looked like a weathervane with an eagle on top of it. Finally, they gyr descended on the ducks, but none would flush, seemingly knowing that if one of them did, they would be falcon food for sure. The gyr flew over the grounded flock, banked towards my car and then flew just on the other side of the road, right at eye level! It was SWEET! That's the closest I've ever been to a wild gyr--well worth the drive down and back during rush hour traffic.

Ah, it's good to be home. Here is my family: Non Birding Bill, Cinnamon, and Kabuki piled on top of the Love Sac watching a Douglas Sirk movie. Good times.

Well, Cinnamon has finally disapproved of the fake bunnies. She has resumed digging in her litter box and ignoring the fake bunnies altogether. If I try to pet them, she lunges and grunts at me, and then hops away with even more grunts. It's as if she's irritated that I'm paying attention to the fake bunnies--don't I know that they aren't real? If I try to pet her after petting the fake bunnies she grunts and spins around. I don't want to irritate her, but I have to admit that I love the sound of her grunting. She's like a cute, little, furry piggy. Grunt grunt.

This weekend is another bunny adoption event at Minnesota Valley Humane Society in Burnsville from 12pm - 4pm both Saturday and Sunday. I'm going to try and get more photos for the book but we have narrow it down to 160 and have all the photos and captions decided and turned in By March 1--ack! Harper Collins moved up the deadline which I'm willing to do since I know that it will take time to get this together and really want the book to be out this fall.

Looking at what is going on with the two different publishers, it looks like the Disapproving Rabbits book is going to come out sooner than my City Birds/Country Birds book. It's very weird to me, the bird related book has been in the works almost a year and a half and the rabbit book was started four months ago and the rabbit book will probably be printed first. Different publishers have different styles I suppose.

Ummmm...

I might need a little reader support for a moment.

I just got a notice from an alert reader that my site is being blocked by SonicWALL. Non Birding Bill did some investigating and discovered this:

The site www.birdchick.com rated as Pornography?? Have I been talking about bird mating too much? We've put in a request for a review of the site, but it may help to have multiple people enter it in to help confirm that this site is not porn but more in the category of Sports/Recreation/Hobbies. If you have a chance and don't mind, go to SonicWALL and enter your email and classification of Sports/Recreation/Hobbies.

Thanks!

Dunkin Donuts Broke My Heart

But has probably saved me loads of calories. Sigh.

One of the joys of travel is being able to eat at chains I don't have access to in Minnesota like Chick-fil-A and Dunkin Donuts. I grew up on Dunkin Donuts, I remember my mom's friend Diana coming over on Friday nights with a big box of donuts and pigging out. My favorite being the chocolate or vanilla creme filled donut--a donut covered in powdered sugar and filled with thick, tooth-numbing creme. That was the embodiment of donut to me.

Last summer when I went to Maine for the ABA Convention, I ate at a Dunkin every morning. WildBird on the Fly and I loaded up a bag and feasted on our way to Acadia National Park--it was a gluttonous heaven. Alas, those days are gone...

Being on the East Coast this weekend I knew I would have access to lots of donuts. Dunkin Donuts started in Massachusetts--I would be near the mother land by being Connecticut. My first morning I stopped at a Dunkin and asked for the creme filled donut. They didn't have it. I figured this was just an irregularity, so I stopped at another less than a mile away and learned the awful truth--they have been DISCONTINUED. ARRRRRRRGH!

I was short on time and needed to grab some breakfast so I reluctantly ordered a box of donut holes to eat. They were not as good--they weren't what I was craving and looking forward to, they didn't stand a chance of being tasty to me. I ate a fair share of the donut holes and realized it was silly to waste the calories and decided to share the donuts with some gulls. Hence all the photos of ring-billed gulls eating donuts from my hand in this entry.

I haven't been this angry and bitter since Caribou Coffee discontinued the North Woods Latte (it tasted like liquid French toast, it was yummy) --yeah, Caribou, I'm still upset about that. I quit going there for almost a year when that happened and go only sporadically now.

I'm trying to tell myself this is a good thing, a way of the universe telling me that I've been doing so well by current healthy eating habits, why wreck it now? It's hard enough to eat healthy on the road, so losing this donut access will only allow me to have better choices.

No, I want my creme filled donut!

We passed this car in a parking lot and thought it was a fun cloud of herring and ring-billed gulls surrounding a car. As we started taking pictures, the car left. Are they ashamed that they feed gulls?

KARE 11 Cardinal

Today was just go, go, go. I got back in from Connecticut late Monday night and had to be at the KARE 11 Studios this morning for my segment on Showcase Minnesota. When I signed in I saw that Jill Spiegel the Flirtologist had signed in before me. It's a party in the green room whenever she is there.

When I finished my segment, Veronica who runs the front desk ran in saying that a cardinal had just flown into the front windows, could I help. I dashed out and sure enough there was a stunned male cardinal in front of the door. I scooped him up, listened to his heart (sounded okay), felt for broken bones (couldn't find any), and checked for blood around his nares (nostrils) and inside his bill (no blood). I had Veronica get me a small box and decided to wait out the rest of the show with the cardinal in the box. If he was just stunned, he would start thrashing within a half hour and I could release him. If he didn't perk up within a half an hour I knew I would have to take him to the Wildlife Rehab Center.

I sat in the green room and watched the rest of the show and sure enough by the last segment he perked right up and started to thrash about in the box. Jill was the last segment and had mentioned when I brought in the cardinal how symbolic cardinals were to her. They are a symbol of good things in her career. I asked if she wanted to do the honors of letting the cardinal go.

Since cardinals are big biters with those big sharp bills, we thought it best that she just open the box instead of holding the bird to release it. We took it out the backyard area of the studio to set it free. I wasn't sure if the photo would turn out:

But look at that. It almost looks like a photoshopped in the cardinal, but that is all from the high speed ability of the Fuji FinePix 900. The cardinal flew back towards the studio instead of the bushes but this time managed to avoid the windows. It landed on the wall and fluttered to the ground. I walked towards it and then it was off like a shot to the bushes--a good fast flight.

Timing is everything, I was glad I was there to help out. And I was glad Jill got a chance to release a favorite bird. Not that she really needs it, but I hope this a fantastic sign for where her life is headed.

Why Can't The Chickies Get Along?

Holy Mackerel, the post about the Colbert Report filming at the Connecticut Bald Eagle Festival has been getting lots of traffic. On Sunday when people found out that the crew had been there the day before, they were very disappointed that they missed it.

I got an email from Caitlin who confirmed that the man in the photos is Paul Dinello and she runs a fan site about him. I gave her all of my photos from the day and she has posted them here. Thanks for the link, Caitlin!

So, I'm a digimiscopin' fool! I was practicing on a hen mallard in Connecticut.

Here she is just kind of chillin' out on a dock post. There were about fifty other mallards and ruddy ducks sitting on the ice and floating on the water (there was even a male and female engaging in "some tenderness" if you know what I mean--mating in ice water out of season--not THAT is kinky).

The hen I was photographing then assumed the bird sleeping position. Even though her head it tucked, I could still see that her eye was open. Good thing too--

Another hen flew in and pushed her off--I can't believe I got this shot digiscoping. I love this new set up!

There stood the new hen, bowing victorious for claiming this valued roosting spot (or just trying to get a closer look at an odd colored spot, wondering if she can eat it).

Newsweek Bites

In the interest of closure here are some follow ups to the Walda Cameron cardinal killing essay. First there is an article by Scott Shalaway in the Sunday Charleston Gazette on his thoughts on the article as well as a few quotes by Senior Newsweek Editor Nancy Cooper.

This week Newsweek printed some letters regarding the essay. They apparently only had the space to print two:

A Gun-Toting Granny

As a wildlife rehabilitator, I constantly field calls from people asking for help with wildlife conflicts. I wish Walda Cameron had asked a professional for help instead of illegally—and cruelly—shooting the cardinal that was bothering her ("Why I Broke One of My 'Cardinal' Rules," my turn, Feb. 12). There are many ways to humanely prevent birds from banging into windows—which usually happens only in spring and summer, when territorial males mistake their reflections for intruders. You can keep blinds or curtains pulled, affix holographic decals, sun catchers, or cut-outs of hawk silhouettes outside windows, or install "invisible netting," which is nearly invisible to the human eye, to keep birds from hitting windows. With a little patience and understanding, it's easy to live in harmony with our feathered neighbors.
Evelyn Flengas
Virginia Beach, Va.

Walda Cameron's essay may have struck readers as simply amusing satire. But many Audubon members and others who care about wildlife are concerned that some readers may miss the satire and be tempted to mimic the proposed solution. We'd like to remind them that some actions are both wrong and unnecessary. Whether one is a bird lover or not, it is not only wrong but illegal to kill a northern cardinal or any species protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. And, in fact, it is possible to prevent bird collisions with windows and other structures by removing the reflection from the places where they peck. This method is most successful when something is put on the outside of the window—a decal, screen, windsock—to break up its reflective nature. Instead of rethinking her belief system, the author could have put more effort into living it.
Greg Butcher, V. P. of Bird Conservation
National Audubon Society
Washington, D.C.

Hopefully this will be the last I have to hear or write about this.

Holy Colbert, Batman!

I think today goes into the top five of one of the weirdest-yet-oh-so-cool days of my life!Who recognizes this guy? C'mon, you know you know him and he's married to that girl (just that girl, not that girl in the photo with him above, that's just me, not that girl...that he's married to--confusing enough?). I'll just let you chew on that awhile.

So, I'm in Connecticut for a Bald Eagle Festival, a very last minute decision and I find myself in the same space as a film crew for the Colbert Report! Where is BirderBlog when you need her?

One of these things is not like the other. Can you tell which one of the people in this photo is in fact NOT a birder but a member of the Colbert Report crew? I'm not sure what the segment is going to be about, but the crew was there ALL day filming all sorts of different segments. Being a ham, I tried to insert myself in the background of some shots, so we'll see if I'm there or on the cutting room floor. The producers said it should air sometime in the next two weeks. We exchanged cards and she said she would try to give me a head's up when it was about to air. The guy in the funky stripy hat is on the Colbert crew. At one point I saw the camera crew filming him in a port-a-potty and he would pop his head out with binoculars to watch for eagles.

Here was another one of the guys that was part of the filming, he was trying to "shoot an eagle" with a gun at the eagle festival. We were all asked to not laugh at whatever he did and to try and look angry, bewildered, confused--anything but laugh. It was hard not to laugh at his antics though, he was funny and weird. Since his bit was about shooting birds, I wonder if there is some chance that this is tied into the whole granny killing a cardinal essay in Newsweek?

Speaking of cardinals, check out the size of this dude I met at the festival along with an eagle. Imagine what it would be like to have this guy fighting his reflection in your windows--yikes! I've read that cardinals get larger the further they are from the Equator--but this is out of control.

I made huge strides in my digiscoping today:

The area geese were not as impressed with the Eagle Festival and slept most of the morning. I was trying to turn the white one into a snow goose, but it was a garden variety domestic.

There were lots of little ice chunks floating along the Connecticut River and check out who is mixed in with these ring-billed gulls--rock pigeons! I've never seen those guys willingly land on ice flows before. They kept creeping to the edge to gulp down some water.

Check out the ring-billed gull photo above! For me this photo was a triumph of the human spirit! Did I really take that? Okay, I know the feet are missing but I was just too close to get the whole body in, but look at that detail. I took this with my Fuji FinePix E900 and Swarovski 80 ATS 80 HD. I know I still have lots to learn, but I feel I had a true break through today. Maybe I'll enter this in the WildBird Photo Contest.

Okay, back to the dude at the beginning of this entry. Do ya' know who he is? If you guessed Phil Donahue, pat yourself on the back for a recognition well done! Gotta love a guy who helps organize and gives lots of generous support for a festival about our national symbol. Hat's off to Phil! He's being interview in the above photo by the Colbert crew.

Now to put an end to this disjointed entry and get to bed.

Costa Rica is a Theme

Can't seem to get away from Costa Rica at the moment! Tonight I met Alex Villegas from Costa Rica who has recorded the calls of 92 species of frogs in that country--and that's not even all of them.

Hawk Owl's Nest has been documenting his recent adventures in Costa Rica. If you haven't seen the photo of his magpie jay, go look now. It's like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy got hold of a blue jay and tweaked it a little.

Carrol Henderson is tempting me to distraction with more photos from his latest Costa Rica trip. Isn't the above black and white owl adorable! If I were a small mammal, I would be honored to be eaten by such a cool looking raptor!

While Carrol was in Costa Rica he saw many birds that breed in the states including this wood thrush. Some of you may know that wood thrushes have been in decline. The most common early theories that I head bandied about were saying that migratory habitat loss and cowbirds were the problem (cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds nest, disturbing the nesting success of of the host species). But Clay told me that John Fitzpatrick gave a talk explaining that acid rain had caused an imbalance in soil, causing a decline in slugs, an important food source for wood thrushes.

I have a special place for wood thrushes. When I was 13, we moved to a house with a good sized yard and a woods next to it. I remember in spring and summer hearing a bird that we could never see. One morning, my mom and I decided that we were going to find this gorgeous singer to identify it. We followed and followed with our binos as the bird kept flying away tucking itself int he canopy. Finally, we caught a glimpse of the white chest with black spots and brown back. We were surprised that such a pretty bird, was fairly brown. It took us a long time to follow it and finally see it, but we always enjoyed listening to him sing. Once I remember waking up right before dawn and hearing hundreds of robins singing and one lone wood thrush making his song known.

You can visit the fabulous Lang Elliot's site here to hear the sweet song of the wood thrush.

Disapproving Bird

Well, leave it to my good friend Carrol Henderson to find a disapproving bird! He went on his 22nd birding trip to Costa Rica and got this photo:

I can't decide between doing a caption contest or an id contest so I will do both! Here are the rules:

There will be two separate prizes, one for correct id of this bird and one for the caption that makes me laugh out loud. It is possible for one person to win both prizes.

Captions can be submitted in the comments section and ONLY comments with a name attached will win. You don't have to create an identity in blogger, but I need a first and last name for a winner.

You can submit as many captions or guesses as you wish.

Keep captions PG-13.

Prizes for correct id are a bag of veggie suet and a Vortex binocular harness.

Prizes for funniest caption are a bag of veggie suet and audio cassettes of 2 Plays for Voices by Mr. Neil.

Birding Projects For The Backyard

Bart sent me this photo of a red-headed woodpecker at his feeder. He took this last week with a WingScapes Camera. He lives in Alabama and these are common feeder birds. My mom reports that when she went to Brown County State Park in Indiana that they saw more red-headed woodpecker than ever before (they were scarce when I was growing up in Indiana). Living in Minnesota the last ten years I've learned that red-heads used to be quite common and are now tough to find and a species of special concern. Are they shifting their range south or is a much bigger problem going on? More observations are needed to know what's up.

Frequently, I get emails or talk to people who wish they could do more for birds, or wish that they could have a job that helps birds. One of the truly great things about birding is that ANYONE can do it. ANYONE can be an expert. Does it help to be an ornithologist and get your PhD? Sure, but it certainly is not a requirement. You can clock a lot of hours in the field and be considered an expert. One of my favorite examples is Arthur Cleveland Bent who wrote/compiled natural histories of birds in North American--which is still used to this day. When you're digging around on BNA or bird reference books, you will find quite a few references to Bent. Was this great observer an ornithologist? No, he was a business man but he compiled on of the earliest and most complete life histories for North American Birds.

Here are some projects that you can be a part of:

1. The Great Backyard Bird Count starts this weekend. Basically all you do is plan on counting birds for at least 15 minutes during the days of February 16 - 19, 2007. Count birds at as many places and on as many days as you like—just keep a separate list of counts for each day and/or location. Only count the greatest number of individuals. So, if you notice at dawn you only have one pair of cardinals and then later in the day when you are doing your official 15 minutes, you notice that you have 8 cardinals, you would count the eight. There's a chance the two you saw at dawn are part of the flock of 8. After you count, you enter the info here.

If you know someone who would love to do this but isn't online, you can get forms from your local wild bird specialty stores (good bird stores are aware of this event and generally have sheets on hand and some will even mail forms in--find out when you stop in to load up on seed).

2. Cornell's Project Feeder Watch is another citizen science project. This project is similar to the Great Backyard Bird Count, only it goes on all winter, not just for the weekend. Like the GBBC, you count the highest number of each species seen at a feeder. You count the birds that appear to your count site that you provided: sunflower seeds, suet, mealworms, birdbath, fruit bearing plants, etc. Sitings are reported to Cornell Lab of Ornithology via the website or snail mail.

3. Another really important tool for recording birds is eBird. Last night, Clay and I were talking about what a great resource this is turning out to be and how can we get more people to submit sightings (our own included). At this site you can use it to keep track of birds you see all over the country but also what birds you are seeing in your yard throughout the year. We can learn a great deal about bird distribution and migratory trends by everyone participating. The people who run it or very nice. There have been a couple of times when I reported an odd bird, and the people who check the observations were very kind when asking if I really meant to check off seeing a buff-bellied hummingbird in Texas (I didn't). I also found out that I have seen some rare birds for areas. When I was doing the ivory-bill search in Arkansas, I saw a small family group of trumpeter swans in the White River area--turned out to be a very unusual sighting, maybe more are on the way.

4. A newer one is PROJECT WILDBIRD sponsored by the Wild Bird Feeding Industry. I saw a presentation about this at Bird Watch America last January. WBFI wants to find a more standardized way to understand bird feeding preferences. Sure we can say that in general there are preferences for black oil sunflower, but this study hopes to learn of regional differences like maybe goldfinches further south in the US prefer sunflower hearts over Nyjer. They study also hopes to learn about bird feeder preferences. Generally cardinals do not feel comfortable feeding off of a tube feeder without a tray, they are larger and it's an awkward position for them, they almost always go to tray feeders.

Well, here's another photo from Bart's WingScapes Camera of a cardinal on the perch of a tube feeder. Is this because cardinals are smaller closer to the Equator so a cardinal like this one in Alabama has no problem with a perch on a tube feeder whereas cardinals in Minnesota are larger and need a tray? Is it nothing more than regional preference? That one of the things PROJECT WILDBIRD wants to find out.

You can participate in two different ways:

1. Watch birds at your feeder and monitor the activity at your feeders for a total of 3 hours spread across a single eight day segment. Each observation period is 30 minutes in length. These observations of the birds by species, the type of bird feeder used, and the feed offered to the birds and submit the total into the PROJECT WILDBIRD database using a simple computer data entry system.

2. This is a cool deal--you have to be good at identifying all the birds that visit your backyard. But you get a feeder set up to try out in your back yard. You get four different poles (with squirrel baffles) and four types of feeders on the poles. You change out the food and the feeders and monitor which birds are coming to which feeder. You can read more about the protocols and feeders you will use here. That looks like a pretty sweet deal to get all the feeders to use in your own yard.

PROJECT WILDBIRD is in dire need of participants at both levels. This started in 2005 and they had very few observers and it really skewed some of the info.

So, if you are looking for ways to help birds, try any one of these projects.