Rainy, Dreary and BRRRRRR

The weather is kind of crap here in Indianapolis. I found a fledging robin outside of Mom's condo. What bummer weather to learn to fly in!

We went to Eagle Creek Park yesterday and didn't do too much birding because it's cold, rainly and drizzly. I was going to do some, but Mom really wasn't prepared for the cold. We did get a great tour of the Nature Center when we first arrived. A volunteer named Kevin showed up some of the education birds they use. In conversation, Kevin and I learned we had a connection, the crew from Eagle Creek got their training in housing and using raptors for education at The University of Minnesota's Raptor Center where I do programs. They have some great programs birds at Eagle Creek including a turkey vulture, a saw-whet owl and a red-tailed hawk. All of their ed birds were in great feather condition, which is a sign that their handlers work well with them and keep them in good housing so the birds don't trash their feathers.

Kevin took a lot of time telling us where to look for birds and even though Mom and I were out that long we did see a northern parula, orchard oriole and Forster's tern. I love going out with my Mom, she's not that much of a birder, so pishing REALLY impresses her. If the weather is nice, we might go out for the bird walk that happens every Sunday at 9am. Hopefully I'll get some better bird photos. It's been too messy to even put out the NovaBird camera. Actually, I could put it out, the birds are so drenched, I just don't want to put pictures of them looking like that on the internet.

Today we are going to my sister Terri's graduation. She's such a type A personality, she even decorated her own party. Non Birding Bill and I were half tempted to go out and buy some decorations and redo it in our own special, tacky way, but we would like to head back to Minneapolis without broken bones.

Cinnamon’s Rampage At Grandma’s

I think for Cinnamon, my Mother's condo is the happiest place on earth. Everything except the kitchen is carpeted so she can run like the dickens all over the place. You will periodically see a streak of brown out of the corner of your eye accompanied by the pitter patter of her tiny feet. When she's too tired to run, she conducts experiments on Mom's cats.

The cats appear to be oblivious as she stalks them (above, she's stalking Copernicus in the distance on the right). I think the cats have chosen to just ignore her hoping this problem creature will go away.

Cinnamon is fascinated by their tails. She keeps creeping up behind them, sniffing and almost nibbling. Instead of sensibly giving her a bap on the nose with their front paw, the cats swish their tails back and forth further intriguing Cinnamon. Eventually, the just run and cower in a closet in fear.

Mom's other cat, Sappho tried sleeping on the couch as her defense, but even she was not safe from the siege of the lagomorph. At first we all thought (oh dear, I just used "we all", yes ladies and gentlemen, I'm back in Indiana) Cinnamon was just trying to check out Sappho, but Sappho grew tired of this invasion of privacy and evacuated the couch. I though for sure Cinnamon was going to chase after her like she does with Copernicus, but it became clear what Cinnamon's true intent was:

Here she is, Cinnamon Triumphant. She apparently wanted the couch for herself. The really weird thing is that we are having a tough time keeping Cinnamon away from the cat food. I could kind of understand Cinnamon's interest in dry cat food--it's so processed, it kind of resembles a pellet or some type of treat, but now she's going for the wet food. What's that all about?

Hangin' At Mom's

The bird in the above entry is a distored blue jay that flew in front of my motion sensitive camera and not an ivory-bill.

One quick note: The current, I and the Bird is up at Bird DC Blog. Word is that if you can id all 27 birds pictured in the carnival, Nick will give you a Peterson Field Guide. I would argue that if you could id all those birds, you wouldn't need a Peterson Guide.

Today, I set my Aunt Lorelei up with a Raven Scope and Radian tripod. For anyone interested the Raven is on special with a free tripod. We did this earlier this year for a little while and now we're running it again. We'll do it until we run out of Ravens, which with this special will probably be soon. If you were thinking of getting one, I would decide soon.

I set up the NovaBird Camera at my Mom's house with some peanuts. Not only did I get a blue jay showing up right away, but I also got footage of a robin. When I first saw the robin hop up on Mom's deck I thought it was odd. It was fighting with the blue jay. Now, I didn't put out anything fancy, just some peanuts in the shell and a mix of peanuts out of the shell, sunflower hearts, raisins and cracked corn. Robins are not what you would call a traditional feeder bird. They have been known to show up for mealworms, grape jelly, dried fruit and in harsh weather conditions they will eat sunflowers out of the shell. Still, this is not something you see every day.

When this dude hopped up I was so excited as I watched it ravenously eating the peanuts out of the shell. When I downloaded the photos, I noticed in one that it was a decent photo, but the leg was out of whack. At first, I thought this was just an oddity picked up on the camera.

Sometimes, when the birds move too fast, they will get distorted and you get these great Salvador Dali looking birds, like this photo that I got of a female boat-tailed grackle in Virginia (pictured above). But every photo of the robin that I have from today had the same distortion on the foot, even if other parts were blurry. I grabbed my binoculars and sure enough, this guy has a deformed foot, it almost looks as though it has broken and healed oddly. The bird is thriving well on it's own, and this probably explains why this bird is eating around my Mom's feeders, it's an easy reliable food source. The robin is big enough that the house sparrows can't give it any grief and the starlings appear to give it plenty of space. Blue jays rarely take crap from anybody and they seem to keep the robin off. But otherwise it appears to be doing as best as can be expected.

My Mom's cats are not thrilled with Cinnamon. It doesn't help that they are wussies to begin with--when it comes to bravery, they are certainly not a credit to their species. They are twice Cinnamon's size and run like...well, like "fraidy cats" when she even looks in their direction.

Above is one of the cats named Copernicus, right after he ran and hid behind Mom's DVD player on Cinnamon's approach. I can't even say he's disapproving of Cinnamon, but more terrified than anything else. Cinnamon has decided to compound their indignity by eating their Meow Mix. Non Birding Bill and I are NOT amused, as we are not sure of what the effect of cat food will be on a rabbit. We've already called our vet who gave us a standard answer of just watch and make sure she eats and poops normally over the next twenty-four hours (basically, they don't know the effects of Meow Mix on the non-meow crowd). Bunny-butthead.

"I disapprove of being punished for eating tasty dry Meow Mix. It was just laying on the floor waiting for someone to eat it. Ce n'est pas ma faute!"

And, I have to show you this! This is some framed art my Mom has hanging in her bathroom.

For anyone who has ever wondered how I learned to be so classy, there's you're answer. I kind of invited my boss to dinner at my mom's when we all come to Indianapolis in June for a Wild Birds Unlimited Convention...maybe I should rethink that invitation.

"Cats are wussies. I can take 'em."

Tomorrow, I go to Eagle Creek park with Mom (Non Birding Bill and Cinnamon will be elsewhere). I haven't been there in ages. Way back when--when I was a single gal, I would get guys that wanted a date to take me there. Can't wait to revisit it.

Where's Birdchick?

I'm in Indianapolis visiting my mother. Indiana birding adventures coming soon.

"Wait, we have to come too? We disapprove of visiting your mother!"

Big News: As of May 20th, I can publicly talk about my experiences on the Ivory-bill Search Team with Cornell and if anyone on my team did or did not see an ivory-bill last December. Cornell will also be announcing their findings on that date. Should be a hoppin' time on bird listservs and blogs.

Loose Ends To Tie Up

First, my review of the bird flu movie is up at TV Picks. Check it out before you choose to view this film.

Next, remember that beautiful birds meme that was going on? I think over thirty different bird bloggers participated and you can read the complete list here.

Third, the Satellite Sisters are going to talk the New York Times writer who says he saw an ivory-billed woodpecker. He'll talk about his article and the controversy surrounding the ivory-bill. Satellite Sisters are broadcast in several cities across the country, if you don't get them in your town you can listen online at fm 107 (keep in mind that the time listed on the site is Minnesota time so adjust your listening time accordingly). I alas, will be on the road and probably won't get to hear it.

Knowing My Limitations

Today was one of those days.

Fortunately, I got to work with one of my favorite education birds, Ricke (pictured left) the great horned owl. So named because humans raised him illegally and fed a poor diet of hamburger, bread and vegetables and now has rickets as well as being imprinted.

I have bazillion things to do before we head out to visit my mother. To top things off we had a huge group coming to The Raptor Center for programs early, so I had to be there by 8am. When I arrived, I walked out of the parking ramp and there was an adult rabbit on the sidewalk. She hesitated and then slowly hopped to some nearby bushes, leaving something behind on the sidewalk. I walked over and discovered a palm sized young rabbit. It didn't move and looked barely alive. I picked it up and something felt wrong. I could see some scraping marks and heard a crow nearby. I figured a crow had started to attack it and maybe the female rabbit was trying to defend it. People who had also noticed the rabbit were gathering, trying to figure out what to do. The obvious would be to take it to the Wildlife Rehab Center, but I knew this rabbit was too far gone to help, it was either leave it for the crow to finish or put it under. I love crows, and I know their part in nature is to eat other creatures but it's not the prettiest way to go--not quick death like with a peregrine falcon or great horned owl. The worst part was that I could see the female rabbit spying on us from across the street behind some bushes. Since I was on my way to The Raptor Center I said I would take it with me and the staff would take care of it there (and I don't mean feed it to any of the birds there).

I searched out Jane, one of my favorite vets and asked, "Jane, I hate to bother you but I have a huge favor." I held out the young rabbit and she looked weary, ready to send me to the WRC, but then she picked up the rabbit and felt the hindquarters. Just like I knew she would, she understood the situation immediately and put the rabbit down. I knew the back end of the rabbit didn't feel quite right but don't have enough of a medical background to know what the exact problem was with its legs. Later Jane told me that both the back legs were broken, almost crushed. We wondered if someone had stepped on it and that was what caused the crow to step down. When I was leaving TRC I noticed the lawn around the parking garage was freshly mowed. Perhaps the young rabbit got its hindquarters crushed by the mower or by one of the cars leaving the garage.

Then, I headed into downtown Minneapolis to meet Non Birding Bill at work and he asked, "Wrens are small and brown with a long bill, right?"

I answered, "Usually. Why do you ask?"

"There's one in the bush by the door.” he answered.

I looked at him and he knew I would have to investigate. It was a marsh wren (pictured right) that looked pretty scruffy. We've had some pretty significant night migration here so my guess is that this exhausted guy may have hit a window or was just too tired to fly a few more blocks over to Loring Park. It was trying to eat small insects around the windows. It couldn't fly far, not because of any obvious injury, but it just looked really tired. NBB and I made a few attempts to see if we could catch it to drive it to the park, but it was strong enough to avoid us. Gauging the situation: it could fly well enough to just barely evade us, it had access to some insects and a full blown operation to retrieve it would have more than likely driven it into heavy downtown traffic killing it or just plain exhausting it to death as it tried to evade us. We decided it best to leave it be. Sometimes you just have to know that you can't help everything out there and you're not personally responsible for every creature. Or at least that is what I tell my brain when it gets too anthropomorphic.

One for the Cinnamon Fans

Non Birding Bill and I spent a relaxing afternoon at a nearby park with Cinnamon. I would like to say it was splendid day of cuteness.
Cinnamon loves her dandelions. How could anyone think Chet Baker is cuter than she? Alas, that was a brief moment in the afternoon. Here are her true feelings about me trying to turn her into a flower child:

"Get this frickin' flower off of my head, you stupid hippie!"