Donate for Injured Great Gray Owls

The University of Minnesota's Raptor Center has admitted over 90 great gray owls this winter. The owls are coming from collision injuries with vehicles as opposed to starvation and the average cost of a surgical patient at TRC is $1500. Typically this time of year is slow at TRC but with the unusually high patient load, the center is facing some financial constraints.

The Kathering B Andersen Fund of the Saint Paul Foundation is offering a 1:1 matching challenge grant to The Raptor Center, so any money donated right now will be matched dollar for dollar.

If you have been enjoying the great gray owls this winter please consider making a donation. The Raptor Center receives more than 50% of it's budget from contributions. They take in a lot of birds and none of them have health insurance. You can call in or donate online at The Raptor Center website.

Blackbirds are moving in

Migration is really kicking in. We started last week with a couple of red-winged blackbirds behind the store. Today when I came into work we had a flock of about twenty and two mourning doves were under the feeders. I haven't seen any mourning doves behind the store since last December. This means that grackles aren't far behind and sales will be picking up at the store because people will either go through more seed as a result of the ravenous blackbird throng or switching to safflower with is more expensive than oilers.

Non-birding Bill had a scare with Cinnamon this weekend. It started when Bill and some of his friends had a bad movie night party in my absense and Cinnamon refused dried banana. Bill felt that she quit eating, which resulted in Bill taking her to the vet emergency room and being sent home with bunny antibiotic and a powder to mix with water for force feeding if neccessary, even though they couldn't really find anything wrong with her at the Vet ER. Of course as soon as I came back from Nebraska she started eating normally.

It's best to err on the side of caution with rabbits, things can go downhill pretty fast if something goes wrong with their digestion., but I have a feeling that this was more of a bunny protest gone wrong. Since I was in Nebraska, Cinnamon was away from the store for three days where she's spoiled rotten by my employees and customers who give her loads of dried banana, raisins, dried cranberries, cashews and Deer Mix. I have one customer who gave her a bag of fresh parsley for Christmas. I think after being at home for three days she decided, "Hey, I'll quit eating the boring hay and pellets at home and then dad will freak out and take me to the bird store and I'll get my own dish of Deer Mix!" Alas, her plan went awry when she ended up crated and sent to the vet where she was poked, prodded, needled and whatever else goes on in the back room. Then to add insult to injury she was force fed two kinds of medicines and sent right back to the boring old apartment.

For the last two days at the store she has been very demanding of treats so I think she has learned her lesson not to freak out poor Bill anymore.

Today was an exciting day, I got a love sack off of overstock.com and it's now sitting in the living room morphing from and uncomfortable lump of polyurathane foam wrapped in denim into one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture I have ever sat on. Cinnamon is very curious about the whole business. She keeps climbing the lump to explore it. Just a second ago she did this thing (that is supposed to be a sign of bunny relaxation but looks frightening) where she will fling herself over on her side or back with all four paws in the air. It's looks like she either was just shot or had a heart attack. Anyway, she just flung herself up against the sack, so I think she is as excited about the new furniture as I am.

Okay, I am officially using this blog to avoid finishing my first draft of my book. I need to get to work.

Spoiled Rotten in Nebraska

As always, watching sandhill cranes and snow geese on the Platte has moved me deeply. I just came home and am exhausted from spending a fun and birdy weekend with Amber, Lori and Johnsgard.

Johnsgard made arrangements for us to stay at a place he referred to as Tom's cabin which I later learned was Tom Mangelsen's cabin for professional photographers. For it being a guy's cabin without any women to give it that "special touch" it was a nice place. Guys were in and out throughout the weekend, but everyone treated us with such hospitality, like we were just part of the regular gang. It was definitely and outdoorsy cabin, here was the view above my bed:

I love visiting Rowe Sanctuary and encourage people to do it in spring. If you are reading this and saying to yourself that you have never visited Rowe Sanctuary in early March through late April--get your butt out there, it is one of the top five birding experiences you can have in the United States. It's such a spiritual experience watching thousands of cranes and sometimes millions of snow geese coming in to roost at night or taking off for the day in the morning. This year we were able to sit out with Johnsgard on a secluded river bank and watch the cranes come in from all around us on the river. It was chilling watching them fly right over our heads--an experience you don't really get in the blind.

This time of year it becomes a bird rush hour on the Platte River. At certain times there can be a million birds in front of you consisting of sandhill cranes, snow geese, cackling geese, white-fronted geese, pintails, wigeons and mallards. Some of the smaller species will get spooked by juvenile thug bald eagles that take pot shots and into the air a few thousand will go. Some will climb high into the air and others will remain lower, all kind of spinning in a vortex or bird cyclone. When these flocks circled us overhead, we laid on the ground and watched as different smaller of flocks of birds flew in various directions above and below each other. It was mesmerizing watching so much activity.

One minor bummer was that the area has been in a draught for the last six years and so lots of the places we had previously explored for waterfowl were dried up. At certain points on our trip I felt we spent a lot of time in the car for very little birds. I also was sorry for ducks coming in and not being able to find staging areas they had previously used. But the surprise number of snow geese more than made up for it. Saturday night after we watched the cranes come in we started to head back towards the cabin. In the dim dusk light Amber pointed out droves and droves of snow geese pouring in. They eventually began to settle on a sandbar, but more followed behind them. I was so grateful for my new binoculars and I really saw the difference between these and my old pair. My new Vortex binos really let in a remarkable amount of light and we were able to watch the geese descend into the river. I passed my binoculars around for the others to use since theirs couldn't see that far in the dim light. It was amazing. Any problem you might be having in your life can really be put into perspective when you watch over 500,000 birds come into roost in the span of 15 minutes.

I'm still processing the trip and I still have a head cold I'm recovering from, but I'm very excited. When I get my voice back into shape I have some great recordings on my iPod for my next Birdzilla segment. But I'll end with a flock of snow geese we found in a corn field:

Out of the Blogger

I'm off to Nebraska to party hearty with Amber, Lori and Paul Johnsgard at some photograhpers cabin. So unless Non Birding Bill comandeeers my blog there will be no updates until Sunday night.

NEW BINOCULARS!

I can't believe my luck! I just got my new binoculars in the mail just in time for Nebraska. They are so cool, they are the Stokes Binoculars made by Vortex and I got the 8X42s. I'm having a tough time concentrating on work at the store and not playing with the new binos. I feel like I just got a new fashion accessory!

Disapproving Cats!

My mother's (indoor) cat, Copernicus

"It's time to go to the mattresses!!"

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, some zealot in Wisconsin wants to make it legal to shoot feral cats by putting them in the catagory of an unprotected species (along the same lines as house sparrows, starlings and rock pigeons). This will no doubt set the Cats Indoors! campaign back a good five years. Cats do kill millions of songbirds every year, but many cats are wonderful companions and shooting them is not the answers. This is a touchy area that requires tact and patience not guns. Cat people think bird people are weird enough (and vice versa). Now instead of gradually getting people to see the benefits of raising cats indoors we have some "let's just shoot it out of our way" attitude introduced as legislation which is just going to lead to arguing and name calling and quite frankly no one really listening to each other.

The cats killing songbirds is not an issue that will be solved overnight and no amount of legislation is going to heal this issue. It will take gradual change. I've known birders who have cut ties with friends and family over this issue and I don't think that's worth it. I try to give the facts and let my friends and family do with it what they will. People love their pets and want to try and give them as much love and freedom as possible, but songbirds do pay the price. I find that most cat owners love their cats and would prefer to keep a blind eye as to how many birds their cats kill than keep them indoors, kind of like parents not wanting to admit their teenagers are drinking or smoking pot. Ultimately they love their cats and I can't fault them for that. If I cut off my friendship with someone because of their cat killing the occasional bird is that going to make them change their minds? No, they will think I'm crazy in the bad way and not in the likeable way. All I ask is that friends and family at least make an effort not to have their cat kill birds in front of me and so far that arrangement has worked. People should also remember turn about is fair play. I do have a friend whose cat survived a great-horned owl attack when it was very young.

My big concern is that someday in the near future we might see vigilanties "getting rid" of free roaming cats. Years ago before I was even aware of the Cats Indoors! campaign I knew someone whose cat was poisoned by a neighbor that didn't like other people's pets on his property. That was enough to convince me never to leave my pets outside unsupervised. I hope we can find a common ground on this issue but I think it is a long way down the road.

More writin' less birdin'

I am knee deep in work. I'm in the middle of the Michigan Birding Calendar for 2006 edits, the book and a couple of articles that will be due at the end of the month. Where does the time go, it seems like only last week I was brining in the new year and now here it is well into March.

I'm working like a fiend to get everything done because Amber, Lori and I are heading to Nebraska for the crane migration. I can't wait to be bundled up in my toasty warm hunting pants, with Hot Hands tucked in my gloves and socks, and buried under five layers of clothing to watch sandhill cranes on the Platte River.

Since I'm sitting so much now and doing more writing when not at the bird store I've started going to the YWCA for an hour of activity. I am really enjoying this thing called and elliptical machine that makes you feel as though you are bouncing in place. Non-birding Bill got me a set of back issues of Birding from the ABA so I've been reading those while bouncing in place. I was reading an article on reverse sexual dimorphism (an article about theories of why in some species of birds females are larger than males). As I was reading it the Big Butt song came up on my iPod. I suddenly had all these images of male sharp-shins flying around to this catchy little rap ditty looking for large female sharp-shins perched and shuffling their tails as they normally do. I thought to myself, why can't they make bird tv shows with this type of humor? I love Attenborough's Life of Birds, but there has to be more out there than that.