Behold, the power of millet

Where does the phrase "Minnesota Nice" come from? I think it comes from snow days and it's an automatic reflex to help each other out of your parking spaces when you are plowed in.

When you're trying to get your car out and the wheels are spinning, people who you have never met or will ever see again will come up and give you a push. When you're walking around the neighborhood and see the same scene you are compelled, as if having an out of body experience to go over and give a push. Where we live, we have what's called a "Snow Emergency". When there is a lot of snow, the Snow Emergency is called and you are only allowed to park in certain areas while they plow the snow out of the way. If you don't move your car, the city will move it for you, as well as giving you a citation and charging you for the tow and storing it in the impound lot. It's not fun. NBB and I decided to try and get a good parking spot early and move the car out of the way before the Snow Emergency was declared.

We were particularly plowed in and required some shoveling to get the car out. Even after a nice guy from our building shoveled us out and tried pushing with Non Birding Bill, our little Saturn still would not budge. I remembered that I had some excess bird seed in the back, so we opened the millet, put it under the tires for a little traction and viola (along with more pushing), out came the Saturn. Woo Hoo. Who knew, millet is great for traction as well as sparrows and juncoes.

Speaking of juncoes, you know these guys are desperate when they are feeding off of a second floor window. Juncoes are almost always feed on the ground, but desperate times call for desperate measures I suppose. I even had a junco hanging off of my Clingers Only feeder, I've never seen a junco cling before. Another case of birds not reading books and being aware of how they are supposed to behave.

The cardinals were not putting up with the starlings. When I was downloading the NovaBird Camera photos, I would get shot after shot of starlings in various states of feeding, then all of them would be gone with one male cardinal sitting on the ledge. Is this the Chuck Norris of birds?

Meanwhile, the starlings tried to thug their way to whatever food they could. The downy and hairy woodpeckers were still able to get in a few nibbles of the suet on the log. I got the weirdest shot of a downy flying away after three starlings descended onto the suet log. It's looks huge and like some weird plane.

After all the snow, we ended with a beautiful sunset. There's kind of a nice clean look to the ally behind our apartment building. Alright, tomorrow, Raptor Center and then off to Eagle Optics.

Sharon's Chronicle of Snow

A snow day has been declared for where Non Birding Bill works, so I will now have him underfoot. I think today will just be me trying to pack and taking photos of birds at the feeder. Now all the birds are showing up. Yesterday you guys were singing your fool heads off thinking about territory, today you're at the feeder.

I've putting some food out for the squirrels as well. This poor guy just looks so bitter, like he woke up on the wrong side of the tree while running late and discovered he had no cream for his coffee.

NBB just informed me of a first, a crow has come up to the window suet feeder. NBB loves crows and this dude must be desperate, they never come up to our windows like this.

Birds As Weather Forecaster

So, I was a little snarky about this proposed snow storm. Yesterday morning, the view from my window looked like this:

I predicted by the lack of feeder activity, we wouldn't get much snow. So, what does it look like this morning?

Birds, you failed me as a weather forecaster! I shake my fist at you! My alarm clock this morning was a cardinal at the feeder chowing down. Often times, pigeons fighting over the window ledge are what wake me up, but they were no where to be seen. I opened the window to top off the feeders.

The snow is coming down and visibility is low. Metro area highways are being closed down, people are calling in to fm107 to report what they're seeing while not moving on the roads. Someone passed two snow plows in a ditch! Snow plows--that's nuts. Fortunately, when not traveling, I work from home, so I should be able to just do what I normally do. Today I need to pack anyway, I'm supposed to head to Madison tomorrow and then off to Kearney on Thursday. Hopefully, it will be plowed tomorrow.

So, what's the lesson for me in all of this? Never trust the birds.

Will We Get Snow?

So, I put the feeder back up this afternoon and what does it say about the weather?
The empty bird feeder in the afternoon says no snow. Non Birding Bill and I took a walk in the neighborhood and heard birds singing territory songs: cardinals, juncoes, hairy woodpeckers and crows. Robins were all over and geese were flying overhead. These did not sound like birds getting ready for a feeding frenzy before a storm.

So, I predict that there will be little to no snow out my window tomorrow morning and it will look very similar to what it looked like this morning:

Snow and eBird

All the papers and news stations are predicting a heavy snow warning for the Twin Cities area. Non Birding Bill and I even cancelled a trip today because of it. However, watching the feeders, I think the warning might be a tad overblown. Usually when our tv stations predict inches and inches we don't get very much and when they don't tell us about any snow, we get slammed. So, I try to use the feeder as an indicator. I'm not getting an increase of activity at the feeder, so I think we might get just a dusting. I've got the usual suspects, but it certainly isn't the feeding frenzy that usually happens before a big snow. The bird above is a male house finch and that is a starling taking a few peanuts in the photo below (because how often do you see a starling in a blog?). Both of these photos were taken by the NovaBird Camera in the morning, I'm going to set it up later in the afternoon to see if there's a difference. If there's no big increase at that point, we're not getting much snow.

Migrants are popping up like crazy in the southern half of the state. Birders have been enjoying the high numbers of greater white-fronted geese on Lake Byllesby in Dakota County and more and more reports of red-winged blackbirds and killdeer being seen.

I'm using this weekend to get all of our tax stuff together--ugh, bleh and barf, I say. I have found a wonderful distraction in the meantime: eBird. I've been hearing about eBird for the last couple of years and have even logged on but just couldn't get excited. I wondered how you could guarantee sighting accuracy and how many people actually use it to make it worthwhile? I'm also not a big lister, so keeping track of what I see here and there apart from the check marks in my field guide, just didn't appeal.

Maybe it's the amount of traveling I'm doing and I'm ready to list or I'm just plain avoiding dealing with my taxes, I'm sucked in. It really does make it easy to enter in your birds and there are cool tracking features that will tell you how many birds you have seen this year, how many birds total, where birds are being seen (that will need more input from birders before that is really useful).

If you have not signed into eBird, give it a shot. Even if it is keeping track of your birds in your yard, it's still pretty nifty and over the years could be part of a good network of research. I kind of use the blog archives for that, it's a nice online record that doesn't clutter up your home or your computer's desktop.

Oil Platform Questions

Here is an interesting article about about oil platforms being a haven for overfished marine life. By law, when the oil supply is gone, the gigantic pumps have to be removed. Could that be in a few years or a few decades? The cost, I'm sure will be astromonical. Now, a marine biologist is saying that these platforms help overfished species and should stay. Is this true or just a front so the companies that own the oil platforms won't have to spend the money to take them down? Does the platform's ability to help marine life out weight whatever damage it may do otherwise if it stays?

I now question this on another level. What about how the platforms impact migratory birds? There was an entry awhile ago in Crows Really Are Wise about researchers studying migration patterns and the birds that pop up on platforms that are too exhausted to go on. Birds die from so many things during migration, one of them being that some are too weak to keep going. Since humans are adding new ways for birds to die like cell phone towers and loss of habitat, what if we try to make up for it by turning the platforms into feeding and resting stations during migration? Yes, some would argue that's helping a weak bird who shouldn't survive keep going and passing on the weak genes, but what good does it do if a stronger bird makes it across the gulf, only to be taken out by a cell phone tower or skyscraper window--no genes whatsoever get passed on?

There's also a tourism aspect of it. How many of us have read the articles about researchers being on the oil platform on a magic night when thousands upon thousands of birds pass by. How many of us have thought about what it would be like to stroll on the deck of an oil platform to find cuckoos, warblers, tanagers and orioles just hanging out?

I wonder how long it will be before the owners of the oil platforms start to use birds, as well as fish as an excuse to keep them up when the oil runs dry?

Going To See Short-eared Owls

I saw five of the reported seven short-eared owls tonight. There's one in the photo at left. Can't see it? It's just down the road a bit. Well, I was a little far away, there's a much better shot of the owl at Ron Green's site.

Oh, there’s nothing like a good stake out bird! Okay, for the readers of this blog that are new to birding, a stake out bird is an unusual or rare bird that has been reported on a hotline or listserv that everyone tries to see. It’s what I call an “X marks the spot bird”. Someone will give detailed directions, you show up and bam, there it is. It can be at a feeder, in a particular tree out in the middle of nowhere, in a neighborhood, anywhere. Tonight, there were at least nine or ten of us out looking for the owls. I would guess more people will show up Saturday evening.

Some feel that stake out birds shouldn’t be countable because you usually don’t have to do much work, just show up. I think this is one of the instances where bird listers got a bad name. They would show up, look at the bird and then leave, often times irritating those who like to stand and watch the bird for as long as possible. It's just personal preference. Personally, I love a good stake out bird. It’s an opportunity to meet people from listservs who are normally just a user name or chance to catch up with a birder you haven’t seen for awhile. I look at it as an informal gathering after work.

That’s not to say that stake out birds don’t come with their share of problems. Because so many people know about the bird, when you first show up there can be a crowd of people, each with their own agenda on seeing the bird. This can be good thing, the more eyes, the easier it is to find the bird. But you have to be aware of where everyone else is and what they are trying to do (are they trying to record it?).

Believe it or not, there is a sort of etiquette for stake out birds and when that etiquette isn't followed, tempers can rise. For example, how close do you get to a bird? If there’s a crowd I keep my distance. You never know who is going to join the group and though you have stood and watched the bird for a half hour, someone may come and want to see it with in the next two minutes. It's generally not a good time to experiment to see how close you can get to the bird for a great photo. You really don't want to be the one who flushes the bird unnecessarily. You could spoil it for whoever arrives later or someone who just got the bird lined up in their spotting scope or camera lens.

Now, there’s new etiquette to deal with. It used to be that you would get a few photographers that would show up. As a birder, you have to be careful to not ruin their shot. Tonight there was a videographer and someone with a microphone trying to record the calls (pictured, right). This gets trickier. A lot of your fancier mics can pick up car sounds and conversation, much to the irritation of the person trying to record the birds. Many people watching birds will sit in their cars, using it as a blind or to stay warm, keeping the engine running so they can follow the birds. Plus, there's a lot of chitchat at stake out birds, all of this can interfere with sound recordings. Another area to try and figure out in this great thing we do called birding.

You can tell Minnesotans are desperate for spring. We were excitedly pointing out grackles to each other while watching the short-ears and when I came home and checked the listserv, someone else was happy to announce that they saw a grackle in their yard. We're happy about grackles for cryin' out loud. I did hear my first killdeer of the season but was still reminded of winter when a rough-legged hawk flew out above the field where the short-eared owls were hunting.

Non Game Checkoff

Many in Minnesota are familiar with the Nongame Wildlife Program, popularly called the Chickadee Checkoff on our tax forms (even though it shows a loon on the form, it's still called the Chickadee Checkoff). Many states now have the program based on how well it has worked in Minnesota. It designed to benefit species that aren't hunted like downy woodpeckers (pictured left), loons, cardinals, birds of prey, herons, you name it, as long as it can't be hunted, it benefits from the program.

Recently, there have been articles in both the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press and grumblings about the removal of Carrol Henderson from the program. This surprised the heck out of me. First of all, Carrol is much beloved by the birding community in the state and why would a major change happen early in the year, when the donation time is underway? The other thing that I thought was fishy was that Carrol is not talking about it, not even saying he can't talk about, he is just not talking about it. I get a lot of great tips and photos of what's going on in the state to talk about in my blog from Carrol, so I was surprised he was so mum with me on this issue.

I sat down with Lee Pfannmuller who is head of Ecological Services at the DNR and now the Nongame Program is in her department. She said that Carrol was removed from Nongame so he could focus on education, which she feels is his forte. I won't deny that Carrol gives great programs and is popular on the lecture series in Minnesota and surrounding states. She has some exciting plans for how the money will be used to benefit birds in the state. There wasn't a clear answer besides, "Carrol is better at education" for his removal from the program so I get the sense that a lot of this is departmental stuff that many of us aren't privy to. Something that looks good on paper but illogical in action.

So, here are my answers to questions that people have been asking me on this issue:

How do I feel about Carrol's removal from the Nongame Program? Disappointed to say the least. I would hope that the DNR would have the good sense to use him as a resource for how the program will be run in the future in Ecological Services, since he has won awards based on his work and other states have modeled their Nongame Programs after what Carrol has done here.

Is moving Nongame to Ecological Services a good idea? I don't know. Only time will tell. Since this is something that all of us donate to, it is imperative that we contact (the public and the media) and ask "Where did the money go this year?" It's our money, that we donate at tax time, we need to stay on top of it and make sure our money is being spent for Nongame and not other projects that are part of Ecological Services. I will say this about Lee, her mentor is Eldon Greij, founder of Birder's World Magazine. That could bode well.

Should I just not donate to Nongame this year? It is imperative that you donate to the program. The money is still meant for wildlife, we just need to be more observant of how that money is being used by someone we are not used to.

Loose Ends

Yesterday, Val Cunningham posted that she and friend Kim Gordon went south to the Minnesota /Iowa border and found seven short-eared owls. I have never seen a short-eared owl, I have handled them at The Raptor Center and have done just about anything you can do legally to them, but I have never just watched one doing its thing out in the wild. I'm trying to tie up my loose ends right now so I can take the two and a half hour drive south to catch them doing their thing late in the afternoon.

Oh, and last week when I linked to this photo of our Ivory-bill Search Team, I got this from Steve Moore:

Sharon,
I visited the Cornell site to see your search picture. After viewing all the photos I believe I have solved the mystery; you are scaring away all the IBWs dressed like that. No more motley a crew have I seen.

So, now everybody can blame me for the lack of decent photos.