Bowlin' For Birds

I was stepping into the shower this morning and found a squirrel spying on me. Yeah, it's as disturbing as you might think it is to have a squirrel giving you the hairy eyeball right after you undress.

So, for some reason I have it in my head that when I'm not traveling I have a ton of time. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...ha.

This morning when I walked into The Raptor Center, I saw one of the staff running around like a chicken with her head cut off. She started out having a great morning and then things went haywire and she had to rush rush rush. I chuckled and was relieved that wasn't me...oh my how that worm turned on me.

It now turns out that Eagle Optics will have a team at the Xcel Energy Raptor Bowl. I had to corral some people at the last minute and guess who I roped in? Non Birding Bill! I think I lured him with the promise of fish and chips available at Brit's Pub where the fundraiser is being held. I also roped in an old co-worker by the name of Denny Martin to help out. I need a third team member and I have called everyone I know and asked, "Hey, you want to skip work tomorrow afternoon and play a type of bocce ball and have beer all while raising money for The Raptor Center???"

How could people resist an offer like that?

"You're going to wear that?"

If you're in the downtown area tomorrow, stop by and say hello to me and NBB. Cinnamon will not be along, she disapproves of 90 degree heat. I'm trying to find hats and shirts for us all to wear so we'll look corporate like everyone else. I'm tempted to wear a tank top since it will be so hot, but Cinnamon is greatly disapproving of that (note her reaction above).

Tomorrow is just going to be crazy busy and fun. First I have KARE 11, then I have to get the binoculars to the TRC gift shop at Raptor Bowl and then I have to lawn bowl. I'm tired just thinking about it. I'm supposed to do more osprey banding on Thursday, but I may have to bow out of that.

Don't forget there will be celebrity judges at Raptor Bowl...mostly sports types so I can't remember their names.

My other big project this month is getting my book off the ground. It was supposed to come out this spring but I was swamped getting my footing with the new job and my editor had other projects so we both decided to wait until we had our full attention ready to devote to it. Now is the really exciting part where we are deciding the design and the photos.

I'm going to put part of the process in here because I had no idea how books come into bloom and this is a really fascinating process. I gave all the text to my editor a few months ago and I have an idea of how I want it presented--based on books I enjoyed when I first got into birding and based on what books sell at bird stores. Gretchen is doing a great job of interpreting what I'd like and making it come together. I have notes in my text of "chart here" or "graph there" "bird doing this here" and when I go into meetings, she has a draft with what I had in mind.

What's really cool, is that I'm being allowed to have more input on the design than I ever would have imagined. For some reason I had it in my head that once you sent the text in, that was it--the design was at the mercy of your editor and publisher. I think I had this idea from the many misidentified birds and mislabeled captions I've seen in books--I didn't want to believe the author would let that happen, that obviously had to be someone else's fault. Now, I feel the pressure is really on because I have to make sure every bird is correctly identified in the book and makes sense for where it ends up on the page.

I'm so excited, I'm going to have an ISBN number. When I think back to how much I hated writing in high school and how I could never imagine anyone doing it willingly, let alone for a living, I'm shocked to see that's me.

The hard part right now is finding photos. I need photos of birds where you can see buildings and evidence of human habitation. Many photographers tend to try and get shots with as little evidence of humans as possible. I know some photographers photoshop their images like crazy to get the shot to look totally natural. I wonder if I will have to resort to photoshop to edit the people evidence back in?

You Won't See This At A Bird Convention

Here we have a person dressed as a Klingon, dressed as Elvis eating from a chocolate fondue fountain from one of the party rooms at CONvergence. You know, I think every person should visit the parties at a science fiction and fantasy convention at least once in their life. You meet such interesting and free spirits and might I just say, they really know how to cut loose. I met Miles Teves who has done art and visual effects on just about any movie you could imagine.

Amber and I did our bird program from The Raptor Center at CONvergence on behalf of MISFITS a non-profit organization which promotes literacy, community service and community building (and promotes the appreciation of science fiction and fantasy too). I've got to hand it to MISFITS, they sponsor visits to local and area schools by educators from TRC with live birds. Besides TRC, they also bring robotic and reptile programs to schools as well. I like how this organization works to keep geeks in shape with their Geek Physique Program--this is one well organized, civic minded group! TRC got a very generous donation from MISFITS and CONvergence attendees on top of our programming fee. Thanks, guys for helping those raptors out!

After we finished our program, Non Birding Bill and I visited the rest of the convention.

At sci fi and fantasy conventions, there are programs, lectures and panels during the day on topics from birds, women's images in Star Fleet to poetry reading. At night, there are the parties in different hotel rooms. The party rooms are generally hosted by organizations that put on other sci fi conventions, groups of specific genres like people interested in anime, or dealers like local comic book shops--all of them have a theme. Some of the parties at CONvergence included Galactic Geisha's House of Tea, Hoth Beach Party, Xenavirsity, Middle Earth's House of Chocolate and Source Party. When you arrive at the hotel, flyers are posted everywhere advertising where the best parties are:

This is Captain Kirk's House of Ill Repute hosted by some other con organizer. We visited this and there really wasn't much debauchery going on. There were other themed rooms like the House of Toast. My camera couldn't really capture the magic of this room. All the furniture was removed and the walls were covered with foil. On top of the foil were red neon tube lights, zigzagged to look just like the heating coils inside a toaster oven. The party served a huge variety of toast and you could get ANY topping on there you could think of: marshmallow, peanut butter, sushi, pesto, mace.

The parties are all located around the pool area of the Sheraton and everyone mills about. There's a masquerade and everyone comes dressed up in anything from a character from Star Trek to cartoon characters to just general goth apparel or regular street clothes--all are welcome in any form and half the fun is trying to recognize the different characters.

So, below I will show photos from CONvergence and photos from bird conventions. Can you tell the difference?

Okay, I generally have a fear of the Burger King Mascot, but after trying something called Romulan Ale, those fears kind of went away. You will note, I opted for the general goth attire for the convention...you know what they say, "When in Rome..."

I wonder if bird conventions will ever cross the line into something like sci fi conventions? Could I talk my boss into hosting a karaoke party room at a bird convention? Could you see a local wild bird specialty store hosting the Murder of Crows Roost? Will birders start showing up in bird costumes? I'd love to see someone dress up as a dickcissel! I think that just might be a pipe dream on my part.

Again, not something you would see at a bird convention.

Celebrity in the Audience

Amber and I did our Raptor Center Program at CONvergence today. Check it out, Wonder Woman was in the audience...and yes I mean Wonder Woman as in "in her satin tights, fightin' for our rights and the old red, white and blue (insert piano solo)". Aparently, when not using her lasso of truth on deserving criminals and Nazis, she likes to learn all she can about birds of prey.

Retrapping Banded Birds

So, why is this bird so exciting? What is this bird's id? If you don't know the id, they eyes of this bird should be a hint--note the red eyes. Now is it clicking in? It's a red-eyed vireo. And this particular vireo was in the blog not too long ago!

This bird was banded at Carpenter Nature Center on May 26 and had its photo in the blog May 29th. I was told that the same vireo was netted again at Carpenter in June while I was away, and now here it showed up for a third time in the nets on July 7th. Every now and then I meet people are against banding birds, that it is too cruel and that banders are traumatizing and scarring these birds for life if not out right killing them. If that's the case, why is this vireo showing up in the nets once a month? This bird has made an informed decision about where to set up it's territory. The nets are set up in the same spots when birds are banded, if the bird was so traumatized the first time it was banded, it would have gotten the heck out of dodge and set up a nesting territory elsewhere. At the very least it would have avoided the area where the nets are. And this vireo isn't the only retrap, many species end up being retrapped at Carpenter, it's a helpful tool in determining how long certain birds live in the wild. I'm not saying that a bird's favorite activity in life is to be handled by humans and to be banded, but birds are not as traumatized by it as some would believe. Think about what a bird goes through on a day to day basis: constantly on the lookout for Cooper's hawks, foxes, cats, snakes, never knowing where that next meal is coming from for sure, defending it's territory--violently if necessary from rivals or other species, sitting out storms, getting up and doing it's job every single day--regardless of how it feels--now that's a work ethic. Birds are hardy, tough, resilient creatures. Five minutes of banding is not going to wreck them for the rest of their life. It certainly does far less damage than someone who finds a young bird of prey and feeds it only hamburger and chicken breasts or a young robin and feeds it only bread and milk.

Since the vireo had posed so nicely with a song sparrow in May, I tried photographing it with a nuthatch for comparison this time. Nuh-uh, that nuthatch was not going to have any of that. The nuthatch trashed and snapped and made such strange catcalls that we decided to let it go. When both birds came in the nets, they were fairly low to the ground--the vireo surprised me, that's a bird I tend to associate with the tops of trees and here it had flown into the net only three feet from the ground and about the same time as the nuthatch--hm, I wonder if they were chasing each other?

I was the one who got the white-breasted nuthatch out of the net. I had to stifle my chuckles while I removed her. First she did her caterwauling, but then she started doing that usual nasally nuthatch "her her". I could feel her body vibrate in my hand while she made her yanking calls. Very cool.

Other birds we got in the nets today included a very tiny house wren--we had heard a winter wren that morning and were hoping for one, but got the boisterous house wren instead. It's so hard to believe this tiny guys make such a loud call.

We also got in SEVERAL recently fledged red-winged black birds. The young blackbird pictured above was so fresh from the nest you could still see the edges of the gape that baby birds have.

On a side note, Non Birding Bill just informed me that the Disapproving Rabbits pages are getting more traffic than the blog...Cinnamon is demanding an increase in her parsley allowance and is threatening to hire an agent if we don't comply.

Preview for Next Entry

Isn't this just a sexy looking bird? It took this photo this morning. Can you name the species? It's been in the blog before...and I don't mean this species, I mean this exact bird! More later.

I forgot to include in the Appearances page that my friend Amber and I are doing a couple of Raptor Center programs at CONvergence on Saturday. Maybe I'll get some fun photos of sci-fi fan birders tomorrow.

My Week Is So Off Kilter

So, for some reason I thought that the Raptor Bowl Event was today, when it is in fact next Wednesday. Non Birding Bill has helpfully updated my appearances page to help me manage where I'm supposed to be over the next few months--note that in November I'll be going to Harlingen for the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest. If you can only afford to do one bird festival, I highly recommend going to this one!

Part of me was very excited that I would have a second whole day at the office this week to catch up on work. I was just setting down to start a blog entry about the dickcissel and bluebirds that I found on my lunch break at TRC yesterday when it suddenly hit me that today is Friday--banding at Carpenter. This holiday week has me so off.

In the meantime, check out the one year anniversarsy issue of I and the Bird--the whys of bird bloggers.

Osprey Banding 2006

It's that special time of year again...osprey chick banding! After all that travel and then time off for the holiday weekend, I should have spent this morning scheduling meetings and catching up on paperwork...but I'm just a girl who cain't say no to biologists and researchers when they ask if I want to come along banding. It balanced out though, I ended up selling a couple of digiscoping adaptors and maybe even a spotting scope--whoot!

We had lots of kids and young people along this morning as we banded birds from three different locations. One of my favorites was bander Mark Martell's son Chris (or Mini Mark as I like to call him). Look at that hat! Don't you just want to eat him up? Chris is holding up one of the bands.

I love this photo, father and son banding together while an osprey waits its turn in front of them. Chris looks like he's supervising his dad. Mark needs all the suprevision he can get.

Speaking of young people, this was Elizabeth with bander Missy Patty. Elizabeth has a growing interest in biology and banding. I started listing all the great places Elizabeth can go. I'm not sure her mother appreciated all the advice, if I had kept going, I would have had her driving young Liz all over the state and even suggested that she skip school in the fall to go to Hawk Ridge on days when there's a northwest wind. There are so many opportunities for young people to get involved now, especially in Minnesota. Elizabeth is well on her way and has already volunteered with Featherfest at Waldorf Schools. Elizabeth, come to banding on Fridays at Carpenter, you know you want to! All the cool birders are doing it.

And I wonder why more people don't let me around their kids.

"GRRRR! I'm so fierce! Fear me and let me crush you like the bullhead you are!"

Now, on to gratuitous young osprey photos. The birds in these photos are around five weeks old and won't be flying for another three weeks. They're so funny at this age, they are just starting to learn what they can do with their feet and aren't very agile.

Missy Patty said that their muscles aren't strong enough to hold up their wings yet, so they just kind of hang on the sides. Doesn't this kind of take you back to eighth grade and all your adult body parts are coming in and you're growing and not used to taking up so much space? I feel for ya' dude. Instead of acne, these guys have to deal with all their feathers growing in at once. Feather quills coming in all at once have got to feel strange.

This bird was Mr. Bitey McBite Pants. It was the oldest and put up the most struggle. Since it didn't quite know how to use its feet yet, it bit everything--including its own toe! Toe biting with talons just doesn't work well at all and sure enough this bird got a minor puncture wound--man that's gotta be one heck of a canker sore. So, to keep the chick from biting itself anymore, Missy sacrificed her finger. It actually didn't hurt that much--with birds of prey, the talons are always what you worry about, not the bill.

"Wait, what do you mean you need a blood sample?"

Mark and Missy also took blood samples for all the birds for DNA testing. I'm not sure where that goes, but it's smart to start that now and keep track of bloodlines. It would especially be important if ospreys ever need to be bred in captivity again. Osprey reintroduction has been a smashing success in Minnesota. The most successful nest in the Twin Cities is at a private residence. Mark calculated that this particular nest has successfully fledged 33 birds since 1991--including three today.

One bizarre thing that young osprey do as a defense mechanism is what's called pancaking. You can see a young osprey doing it in response to my hat in the above photo. When the young birds hear the warning call from the adults or fell threatened, they kind of flatten out and tuck their heads down. What purpose could this serve? Are they just fainting and pretending to ignore the danger? No! Check out what they look like from above when they do this:

Kind of brown and nondescript. That blends perfectly with the inside of an osprey nest. So, if a potential predator is flying over, at first glance the predator may not notice any young in the nest with their white faces tucked away. Very clever.

I actually got to help and hold one of the young ospreys today. In my excitement and eagerness to help, I forgot to unclip my binos from the harness. When I was finished, they were a little messy:

Look at all that dander, shaft flakes and bird oil (that smells like fish because that's all the birds eat)--thank goodness for lens pens! Glad the talons didn't nail the lens--although, that would have been covered in the no fault warranty and I could have got them repaired.

Here we have a frog who made a cameo appearance during the banding--so tiny! I at first thought it was a spring peeper, but Missy and Mark thought it was a wood frog and with that mask I agreed. However, my Reptiles & Amphibians of Minnesota Field Guide suggests that it is a western chorus frog. If there are any frog experts who disagree, feel free to drop me an email. Whatever it was, it was teeny.

Osprey, a fierce fishing machine and yet goofy looking all at the same time.

Balanced Breakfast

Looking for video of Birds vs a Tree? It's here. The video is from Scott Fraser.

If you didn't hear the Ian and Margery Show this morning, be prepared. Ian is going to try and arrange an interview with someone who has seen one of those thunderbirds/giant owls and have me on at the same time. It's odd, I believe the ivory-billed woodpecker, but I don't buy the giant bird theory--mostly becuase I've seen the video from the 1970s and the bird filmed is clearly a turkey vulture.

I also forgot to mention that Friday when I was on Showcase Minnesota, one of the hosts, Rob said, "Hey, Sharon, I saw a pair of robins rubbin' cloacas the other day!" How does he know what a cloaca is?

Bunny Loaf!

Due to popular demand, a third page of disapproving rabbits has been added.

"I disapprove of being called bunny loaf!"

It Was Nice To Be Missed

Holy cow! How much was I missed from my last trip? So much so that Non Birding Bill went with me to the location pictured above to find a brown bird (Henslow's sparrow) yesterday! We heard the sparrow more than we saw it, but we did see lots of swallows.

Here's a fun shot of a pair of tree swallows on the left and a pair of barn swallows on the right. I was trying to point out the differences between the two species to NBB. I said, "Notice the forked tail on the barn swallow?" He asserted that both had forked tails and I didn't know what I was talking about.

It's been nice to have this holiday weekend to recover and try to get my routine back. Although, it's very hard to get your routine back when you suddenly realize that you didn't have much of a routine to begin with. The first thing I needed to do was cut back on coffee, I didn't realize how much of it I drink when traveling--sheesh. I've been trying to drink tea when the coffee urge strikes and I think I'm finally making progress. This morning I didn't have a cup until after 12 noon. Hooray, triumph!

Sunday night Bill and I went out did something we haven't done for awhile, a pub quiz. We used to go to Molly Quinn's but that pub is closed so we heard a rumor that friend John Dingley continues the quiz at the Lake Street Garage and sure enough we found him.

Dingley (pictured above administering the pub quiz) gets around and I have met people from so many different social circles who know him: birding, falconry, renn fest people, science fiction people--he's even acknowledged in one of my peregrine falcon books! He has a beautiful tenor voice, can deliver a fine pub quiz, has done so many different lines of work, it makes my head spin and loves to talk peregines and swallow-tailed kites. Bill and I did fairly well (for us) on the quiz, we got 21 out of 25 answers right.

I got an email from Sam de Beer whom I met at the ABA Convention. He sent me a photo of the catamaran that we rode on for the pelagic trip to see all the shearwaters, puffins, razorbills and petrels. I heard that people who are used to riding on a single hulled boat often barf on catamarans because they aren't used to the movement of the double hull. I lucked out and didn't barf. One of my favorite moments was riding on one of the hulls and feeling it ride up and down, with the wind hitting my face.

I though Sam had a great name, Sam de Beer means Sam the Beer, right? No, he told me that where he's from that Beer is Bear and so he's actually Sam of Bear. Still a great name and fun guy to pal around with. He also sent the above photo, it's very relaxing and makes a great desktop.