Birds and Beers This Thursday

Thanks to my Google Calendar reminder, I need to tell everybody that this Thursday, March 20 is Birds and Beers at Merlin's Rest at 6pm.

Birds and Beers is a gathering of anyone interested in birds at any level from the hardcore lister to the mildly interested backyard birder. We just get together and talk some birds. If you are interested in birds, you are invited.

And for the record, there is no business behind Birds and Beers. I'm not paid by anyone to do it (in fact, I lose money on this since I like really good scotch). Birds and Beers is an idea that I came up with at the Minnesota Ornithologists' Paper Session one year because I would meet so many interesting people working on different projects and realized that there wasn't any kind of club where birders got together to just talk--especially outside of the Internet. If people are field trip leaders they are welcome to come and promote their services. If people are curious about where to go birding, they can come and ask questions. If people optics, or cameras, or bird feeding, they can come and ask (no guarantees on the qualities of the answer). If someone is working on a research project they can come and share it. This is meant to be fun and a chance for people to socially network face to face.

Making Progress With Mr. Neil's Barred Owl

Mr. Neil has a few owl species on his property. There is a resident barred owl who occasionally duets with a second bird. This bird has been the cagiest of barred owls that I have ever encountered. Most of the time when I walk through the woods where it roosts, it takes off even if I'm far away. A few weeks ago, I found it just across the creek and for once it didn't move. However, I think it was forced to stay in one spot because a few trees away was a roosting great horned owl and if the great horned found the barred owl, it would have been an ugly fight. You can read about that here.

I figured that the barred owl had finally decided to stay across the creek and went walking through the pines where it normally roosts. While exploring the pines and checking out a large stick nest, I had that feeling I was being watched. I turned to my left and there was the barred owl roosting. This was the closest it had ever allowed me to come. Typically, it would have flown off. I didn't have my scope and snapped the above photo with just my camera. I looked behind me and noticed up on the hill was Mr. Neil's writing gazebo. It has a deck and I thought that if I went there, I could get a better view of the barred owl--maybe even be eye level with it. I took note of the base of the tree that the barred owl was roosting on and went back the way I came on the trail and took the long way back to the yard and gazebo so as not to get any closer.

I set the scope on the deck of the gazebo and aimed it towards the owl. Can you see it? It's right there in the tangle of trees. Don't worry, I can't see it either. Here it is through the scope:

There it is roosting in the pines. It stayed all day and later, at around 4pm while I was digiscoping the robins and waxwings, I could hear it call from the pines. This is excellent progress--I think the owl is finally learning that the people who come through that part of the woods for the most part ignore it or just watch it a bit from time to time and leave it alone. Incidentally, this is the same deck and gazebo where I recorded the pair of barred owls hooting a duet.

Birds were moving through Mr. Neil's yard today. As I was photographing this goldfinch, I could hear tons of birds moving through the woods. It sounded like hundreds of goldfinches and some waxwings and robins. I looked down towards the woods and I could see the bodies flitting through the trees.

I went in to see what I could see. Some of the robins and waxwings must have just flown in. You could see some of them tucked high in the trees dozing. One robin had tucked herself into the crook of a branch and a tree trunk, her wings drooping. I didn't have my scope with me at that point, but decided to go up the hills to get it. I had to find a long and winding path down to this part of the woods, with some of the snow melt and refreeze, the hills were slick and not easy to traverse while carrying a spotting scope.

I found a way down but the birds were awake and feeding--above is a cedar waxwing, stretching and getting ready for action. I did see a couple of bugs and I know on a warmer day like this that snow fleas are active. The waxwings were feeding on some kind of flying insect. They would wait out on a branch and fly out to catch something just like a phoebe or flycatcher.

I found a buckthorn tree that we missed and the robins and waxwings were taking full advantage of the food source--perhaps they will replenish all the buckthorn we removed-curses!

Here's a head on shot of a robin and big beakful of buckthorn--noooooooooooooooooooo!

As I was digiscoping the birds eating the buckthorn, I could hear them overhead and I heard rustling all around me. I looked and the floor of the woods was covered with robins flipping over leaves searching for edible bugs and who knows what else. It was really quite something--there were so many robins that it almost sounded like a small herd of deer were moving through.

I didn't get photos, but Mr. Neil still has a common redpoll and a few pine siskins hanging around. Winter is not over yet.

Sounds Of Spring

Spent the day working my mojo with my new digital camera for digiscoping. I took this video through the scope of a female red-bellied woodpecker eating off of a suet log. It's not the most exciting footage ever, but I really wanted to capture the background sounds--some birds were singing territory songs even with snow still on the ground. You can hear a tufted titmouse, northern cardinal, blue jays, and crows (you might also here a few goldfinch chips and nuthatch yanks too).

New Bird Discovered!

This is the kind of story that makes Non Birding Bill shake his head at birders:

From Science Daily:

The announcement of the discovery of a new bird comes with a twist: It’s a white-eye, but its eye isn’t white. Still, what this new bird lacks in literal qualities it makes up for as one of the surprises that nature still has tucked away in little-explored corners of the world.

Read the rest here.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Not Another Nebraska Entry

Hey! If you need a sandhill crane and or waterfowl fix, the National Geographic Crane Cam live at Rowe Sanctuary is up and running.

You're probably asking yourself, "How much longer is this chick going to go on about Nebraska???" This will be the last post and then later this week I'll be opening up the Olga hive and feeding her some pollen and try and figure out my mojo with the new digiscoping camera at Mr. Neil's bird feeders--I know the new camera is capable of sharply focused photos, that Harlan's hawk doesn't look bad. Perhaps it will get better when I get new glasses?

In an offbeat bit of news, an artist did a rendering of a photo that was on Cute Overload and included a reference to Disapproving Rabbits. I love being combined with one of my favorite websites and sometimes it's weird to think that we coined a phrase that's part of the Internet Lexicon.

One of the fun parts of visiting Nebraska this time of year is watching the cranes fly off of the Platte River from one of the crane blinds at Rowe Sanctuary. The first time I was in one of these was about ten years ago. I had no idea what to expect, we went out in the morning to the giant blind, crammed in with about 30 other people. We were given the lecture to be quiet and not use any flashes so as to not scare off the cranes. We walked out in the cold, you could tell there were quite a few cranes on the river. You stood shivering in the dark, mesmerized by the sheer number of birds. As the skies became lighter you could make out bird shapes and see birds standing on islands and suddenly got an idea of how many thousands of birds were in front of you. Eventually, an eagle would fly over or a coyote run through, frighten the cranes and they would lift off all at once, each individual call merging into a gigantic roar--an overwhelming and powerful experience and something I have tried to come back to every year since.

Over the years, I've found other places to watch the cranes. Rowe Sanctuary can sometimes provide a closer view but really, if you know where to go, you can watch the cranes outside of their blinds. The above photo was taken from the shores of the Platte River on Tom Mangelson's cabin. It's interesting that at Rowe you are given all these rules--don't stomp too hard in the blind, don't stick your camera lenses outside the blind, no talking inside the blind, no lights period on the front of your camera, etc. When we were on the shores of Mangelson's property, we weren't in a blind, we talked (not loud), we walked around (we didn't dance or do jumping jacks) and cranes flew in and landed without any problem. There was even a big bonfire going on not too far from us and if that doesn't disturb the cranes, I don't know what would.

Check out the five young thugs (immature bald eagles) hanging out in a tree at Mangelson's--are they thinking what this eagle was thinking? Don't get me wrong, Rowe's rules are important. You have several people sharing one blind and a person could conceivably stick their arm out of a viewing window and cause an early fly off. I don't know, I think that since I've been coming here so long and know places to stay and watch free, I'm getting spoiled about how I view the cranes and the geese.

It's interesting to see how things are changing at Rowe. Something to keep in mind now when booking time in a blind is that tripods are an issue. In the past when I took field trips to Rowe, I always tried to get a blind just for our group--it's never been a problem before, Rowe has many blinds. This was the first year that I wasn't given a blind just for our group (even with the offer of paying extra). The morning our group arrived for our first blind visit, a volunteer mentioned the blind they had us in had limited space for tripods for a spotting scope or camera--and we were sharing the blind with another group. When they saw how many tripods our group had, they ended up giving us our own blind. However, when we returned for evening crane viewing, we didn't get our own blind and since all the windows were sold, we were told that our tripod legs could not fall into the space of the window of the person next to us or you wold have to put your scope and tripod away. Our group lucked out a little because we had a couple of people cancel last minute and Rowe didn't refund the money so we had some extra windows for space.

I think everybody should visit Rowe Sanctuary at least once in their life and it's a great place to start off if you've never been to Nebraska to see cranes (and you can get some fun crane souvenirs) but I'm starting to see the fun in hanging out on the Fort Kearney Hike and Bike Trail Bridge for crane viewing.

And I end with one final digivideo of sandhill cranes (and some geese) flying over Mangelson's.

Not The Binoculars Just My Eyes

I'm having way too much fun with my phone. Non Birding Bill finally figured out how to get my phone to play some of my favorite bird calls as my ring tones. The other day I was talking to one of the vets in the clinic at The Raptor Center when I heard a bird screaming. "You have a goshawk in clinic?" I asked, excited. "No." said the vet and then I realized it was my phone! It also does red-tailed, hawk, Baird's sparrow, western meadowlark, pileated woodpecker, veery, wood thrush, gadwall, and bobolink--sweet.

In the last year or so, I noticed that I could not get my eyes to focus the same through my binoculars, no matter how I adjusted the diopter. I sent them in to Swarovski to have them realigned and there wasn't any change when I looked through them. I also noticed lately that my left eye wasn't focusing the same as my right eye--especially when reading subtitles on movies. I've never worn glasses or seemed to need them but made an appointment with an eye doctor--turns out I have astigmatism. I asked the doctor why I've never noticed before and he didn't really have an answer. But I have glasses coming and I chuckled today when I looked at my receipt for them. It read "Bebe Schatzie Grape Suzette." That looks more like I ordered a stripper instead of a pair of glasses.

So, Bill said that I should have used the following video of snow geese in an earlier post:

Red-tailed Hawk vs Snake

My goodness, the Holy Crap factor is majorly spiking this week!

Thanks to Jennifer who alerted me to a link of photos that her mother took of a young red-tailed hawk that tried to get a snake and things went a bit wonky. Click here to view the photos. There are three photos of the hawk in an awkward position--don't worry, the hawk gets away. Although, if snakes ook you out, you may not want to follow the link.

This is a good example of how young raptors have to learn some hard lessons on not only what to hunt, but how to hunt.

Loves Me Some Minimum Maintenance Roads

Oh, the places we took this bus on our field trip!

Saturday in Nebraska we went to explore other birding areas. We drove by Funk Waterfowl Production Area which in the past few years hasn't been all that great because the cattails had grown up and hidden the ducks. But the powers that be had improved the area for wildlife viewing and it would have been perfect for our field trip--if the water had not been frozen--doh!

So we headed south for Harlan Reservoir. You can take one of the main highways, but we opted to take some minimum maintenance roads towards our destination instead. These barely maintained roads have produced some of our best birding and wildlife opportunities in the past. This time we saw came across a prairie falcon (the blurry bird above). The best part was that this falcon flew right over our group so that we got a chance to see its black armpits (a distinguishing characteristic).

One of the challenges with birding Harlan Reservoir is that you are not allowed to stop your vehicle at some of the best places to watch for waterfowl. This was near the town of Alma, that's mostly cackling geese and greater-white fronted geese in there.

We were happy to see so many geese. One of the volunteers at Rowe Sanctuary said that there wasn't much at Harlan the day before, just some diving ducks. We decided to drive the length of the lake and headed east. We found tons of robins, bluebirds, rough-legged hawks, bald eagles and gulls.

There were quite a few redhead ducks and I took an opportunity to try and figure out my mojo with my new digiscoping camera. While I was photographing the ducks, I noticed a strange sound. I had a tough time trying to determine if it was animal or mechanical. When we scanned the other side of the lake with my scope, we could see thousands of gulls, but it didn't quite sound like a flock of gulls. I decided that it was some sort of farm machinery and didn't give it much thought.

We continued driving and stopped at Republican City to have lunch at the prairie dog town--always a crowd pleaser.

I noticed a new addition this year to the prairie dog town. See the large stick nest in the above photo? Let's look through the scope and see who is nesting inside:

There we see a red-tailed hawk head. What smart hawks...and what unfortunate neighbors for the prairie dogs! Ah well, that's the food chain for you. Amber and I had birded here before, but Stan had not. We told him that if we went a few blocks away we had a pretty good chance of finding a great horned owl nest.

Sure enough, there it was. It's so weird to me that Amber and I know this area fairly well just by birding here one a year for the last several years. I think the red-tails switch nests with the great horneds from year to year. I wonder if next year the owls will be in the nest over the prairie dog town?

Even still, a red-tail right over the town and a great horned a mere few blocks away...it's a good thing prairie dogs breed like...prairie dogs.

As we continued around the reservoir we found this rather cooperative hawk in a little marina community. It had such a tiny little head I almost thought it was some weird dark morph broad-winged hawk, but it was a red-tailed hawk. Now we just had to figure out what type of red-tail. It's a dark morph red-tail, but is it just a dark morph or is a dark morph Harlan's red-tailed hawk? It had some white on the chest...

It had some what on the scapulars, and no red on the tail. The striping looks like the striping you would see on an immature red-tail. We came to the conclusion that is was an immature dark morph Harlan's red-tailed hawk. And when I checked my Wheeler books at home that seems to support the id, but if anyone cares to add their two cents worth, please feel free. We don't get too many of this type of red-tail in Minnesota.

As we worked our way around the lake, I told Stan to stop the bus and let me out. I looked at the lake and asked, "Is that ice?" If you look in the distance of the lake, you can see a long line of white. I looked through my binoculars. It wasn't ice. It was all snow geese. I felt kind of like Sam Neil's character in Jurassic Park when they first saw the dinosaurs. We had seen strings and strings of snow geese flying over all day and didn't realize they were heading towards Harlan. We decided to drive closer.

We kept taking minimum maintenance roads to see if we could get closer and we finally found a road that let out on a hill. We stopped to see if we could get out and get a clear view of all the snow geese.

I got to the top of the hill, I saw this view to my left...

And this view to my right. The snow geese just went on and on and on and on. We estimated the flock to be a mile wide and two miles wide. The sound was unbelievable and remember how I said that I heard some unidentifiable sound earlier? I now realized that I had heard the ginormous flock of snow geese.

More still came in and the flock seemed to be in a constant state of flux, rearranging itself on the water. When we later told some of the volunteers at Rowe Sanctuary they said that the day before the lake was devoid of geese and that this was the third round of snow geese to come through on the reservoir--wow.

Here is our field trip group in front of the geese. Nebraska is known for its cranes, but in some ways the geese are even more spectacular. I wonder how many Ross's geese were mixed into that flock? As amazing as the geese were to watch, we still needed to get back to our crane blind and had to keep going.

Talk about your roads less traveled! We started to go off map at this point. We had an idea of where we were but didn't know for sure. Some of the road zigged and zagged but we felt that if we went on, we would at some point reach the other end of the reservoir and a major highway to get us back to Kearney. I think we made a couple of people nervous with our exploratory ways, but Stan whipped out his iPhone and we found exactly what road we were on and were able to figure out an alternate route when the road became too muddy to continue.

One of the great things about traveling with Stan is that he knows a lot about all sorts of stuff and he is easy to egg on. My favorite things to do on a trip with him is point out a hole and tell him to stick his hand in there...sometimes he sticks his whole body! Most of the time he can id it, I think this hole was some sort of fox.

We continued to find all sorts of gems like this opossum. We also found pheasant and a flock of about 50 wild turkeys. We finally made it back onto an actual road and Stan I noticed that the signs telling use the miles to the next town specified that they were in Nebraska.

Then we passed this welcome to Nebraska sign. Somehow we had taken the minimum maintenance roads into Kansas. Who knew?

Then we passed a speed limit sign and saw this bird--can you tell what it is? If not, no worries, it was most cooperative. We pulled ahead and got out to put the scope and cameras on it.

Check it out--an owl on speed! Seriously, this is a short-eared owl perched on a sign. Its back was to us and then it turned it After we got a good long look, we loaded back into the bus and continued on our way, it took off and we got to watch its bouncy flight over the fields.

What an awesome day of birding! I think its one of the best I have ever had in Nebraska. And to give you a hint of what all those snow geese sounded like, here is a mini video that I took: