Fun Stuff

If you've been following Brood XIII, check out Bird Freak's entry about watching birds eating cicadas.

And here's a great article about a blind Bangor man who leads bird walks--with other blind people.

And remember Becky Fields who got the incredible photo fo a gosling in an osprey nest? Well, she wows us again:

With a great blue heron getting the what for from a red-winged blackbird. Don't feel to sorry for the heron--it probably had it comin'. Herons will eat eggs and chicks from nests tucked in reeds.

Even as I'm typing this entry, Becky has sent another incredible photo of weird natural moments--I'll save it for later. She has a knack for being at the right place at the right time with her photography. Don't forget that she has a showing going on at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts through June 9, 2007.

Memorial Day Bee Update

The bees are plugging along!

Here's a photo from the back side of one of our frames. You can see some of the pollen stored on the other side. Such beautiful colors.

During our last visit to the hives, we had added another brood box because the bottom brood boxes were about 80 percent full. The Olga hive was a full 80% filled and Kitty was closer to 75% filled but we added another box to her as well. When we checked on Olga, she had barely begun to draw out any comb whatsoever in the new brood box. Kitty who was a little behind Olga and filled up one full frame already and was well on her way to filling the second. I wonder why the shift production?

Both hives were feeling less tolerant of us today. Above is Lorraine scraping off some irregular comb, while Non Birding Bill smokes the bees. (Mr. Neil was not around today, so we made sure to document the adventure). A smoker is one of the most important pieces of beekeeping equipment you'll need. My bee instructors said that they would rather visit a hive without a bee suit than without a smoker.

Here is a video demonstrating "smoking the bees". Watch what happens when NBB puffs some smoke on the workers:

Did you see the workers go down? The smoke makes the bees think that there is a forest fire and instinct tells them to go down and eat honey, don't bother to try and drive out the big thing taking apart your hive. Now is not the time to fool with that.

Above is a photo of the bees eating the honey. If you look closely, you can see their little tongues in the cells lapping it up. This was a part of some burr comb that didn't have any eggs or larvae in it, so we took it out.

What's interesting is that my bee instructors told us that if we got stung, to immediately smoke the area. When a bee stings you, it releases a pheromone to get other bees to come and attack. If you puff smoke on it, the smell of the smoke masks the pheromone. While working with the Olga hive, I saw a bee sting my glove--I didn't feel it, but I saw what happened--as soon as the stinger went in, five bees were on my glove in a split second. I had NBB puff my glove and all but the stinging bee left the glove. The stinging bee did get loose and I didn't see that she left her stinger--I wonder if she survived?

Brood has definitely hatched! We actually found some drones today. In the above photo you can see one of them, he's circled--you'll notice his wide, blunt rear end. Drones are the result of an unfertilized egg laid by the queen. They require larger cells than the female larvae in which to pupate. Drones pretty much eat honey and make flights out of the hive to find other queens to mate with. Once they mate with a queen they die. They don't help build comb or gather pollen or make honey. Some people get rid of drone cells--who needs 'em, but I'm hoping some of our hygenic drone genes make it out to other queens and maybe slow down the verroa mite in the US bee population.

On our last inspection we found Queen Olga but not Queen Kitty. This time we did find Queen Kitty, that's her circled above looking for cells for egg laying. It was so exciting to watch her in the Kitty hive as she was crawling over a clean frame of comb which two weeks ago was chock full of capped brood and now it was empty since our brood had hatched. Whoot!

And like a proud mom, I have a video of both Queen Olga and one of the drones:

The grow up and move so fast!

We still have a little bit of funky frame building, but this time it was very minimal in each hive. We've been using a frame spacing tool and that really does seem to be help the situation. It's not as easy to use as it looks, the propolis keeps things a bit sticky and I feel like I'm really wearing out my welcome with the girls--they start bumping our helmet and that's the final warning before they sting.

After we finished the Kitty Hive, the bees were all over in the air. I thought I would lay on the ground and get a video of the bees flying above us. It's just hypnotic:

Did you happen to notice NBB saying "Are we done yet?" That was a running theme today. The bees were anxious to have us away from the hives and NBB doesn't want to risk any of them getting killed by stinging us to get us to leave--gotta love that guy.

Anyway, I think this is my favorite video, you'll see why at the end of it...

Again, did you hear NBB, "Are you done?" My little broken record! We have one more video, but I'm having trouble getting it to upload properly. Hopefully we can get that up in the next day or so.

Friday Birds

A quiet day of banding at Carpenter Friday morning--I keep hoping for a big warbler wave in the nets but the timing has been off when we are banding. Some birders are mentioning that they aren't seeing warblers like they normally do this spring, but I think they are there. We had one heck of a leaf out in early May and most the warblers have been hidden. Much my warbler enjoyment this spring has been by ear.

We did get a ruby-throated hummingbird stuck in the nets. We don't have any equipment for banding hummers so when they are in the nets, someone takes them out and we let them go. This girl needed a few minutes for recovery and we got to get a good look at her feathers.

As Jim was getting her out of the net, we noticed that her throat was tinged a light golden yellow. I wondered if this was a plumage variation--the older the female she gets some coloration on her throat? We looked it up in the Pyle book and on BNA Online but could find not mention of gold throats on males or females. The only explanation we could think of was pollen dusted onto her throat from foraging on flowers. Has anyone else seen anything like this before?

The peony garden at Carpenter was loaded with pollen. The gardens are gorgeous right now in various reds, whites and pinks. If you are a fan of the Hoosier state flower and live near Carpenter Nature Center, I'd stop by this weekend.

I did get a chuckle when I found one of Carpenter's honeybees gathering pollen in the peonies. Who knew I'd be paying attention to bees in flowers? Am I losing my birding edge?

Since the banding was slow, I thought I would take some time to try and digiscope some kingbirds with Larry around the property. While walking, I noticed some monarch eggs. Above is a monarch egg on the bottom side of the milkweed--that's my big ole honkin' thumb next to the egg for size comparison. Ah, it's getting to be monarch ranching time. If you would like to learn more about raising native monarchs indoors for release, I'll be teaching a Monarch Ranchin' workshop at Staring Lake Outdoor Center July 7, 2007. Contact Staring Lake for details.

We did find some kingbirds on our walk. Not the best photo ever, but you get the idea. It was so cute, while I was away at Detroit Lakes last week, I could tell Non Birding Bill missed me--he was noticing birds. He sent me a text message on my phone that he had seen a kingbird in Loring Park on his way to work--I didn't even know he knew what a kingbird was.

On my way back to my car, I found myself being spied on by a thirteen-lined ground squirrel. Sometimes they snarf up the spilled seed under the bird feeders.

Larry had posted on the listservs this week that he'd seen dickcissels in Dakota County already. I usually don't see those guys until June. So I drove over to my favorite spots for dickcissel in Dakota County at the Empire Substation on 210th St. There's a small tree farm, power station and Buddhist temple surrounded by farm fields which is great for sparrows and meadowlarks. I didn't find the dickcissels but I did find chipping sparrows singing on territory (above) and lots of singing clay-colored sparrows.

As I was driving home, a sparrow popped up on a tree on the side of the road--a grasshopper sparrow. I pulled over and set my scope on my window mount tripod--which isn't easy to use for short people, but fortunately for me, the Swarovski eye piece rotates around so I can kind of use it with the window mount--it still takes some contorting on my part.

The grasshopper sparrow was incredibly accommodating. It stayed perched in the open even though it took me a few minutes to get the scope up and on it. Maybe this sparrow is ignored so much, it was happy that someone wanted to digiscope it?

Boy, you can tell this has been a good birding month, not many entries on the antics of Cinnamon. She disapproves of her lack of exposure in the blog. Okay, now Non Birding Bill and I are off to celebrate the Holiday Weekend, enjoy the outdoors, irritate a disapproving bunny, grill up some meat, bake some rhubarb pies, and I have to finish up a couple of deadlines. The rain is supposed to ease up tomorrow and I'll try to get out to the beehives and take some photos--our first batch of new workers should be hatched--whoot.

Hope you guys have a good time and enjoy birds where ever you are.

Bird Guide Workshop

Explore Minnesota is offering a workshop for people who would like to be bird guides or have already started and might want to learn how to increase their business. This is not a workshop on identifying birds, this is a workshop on organizing trips, customer service, and networking and promoting yourself. The goal of the workshop is to give you tools to be successful in business. It's for people considering bird guiding or who have already started and would like to increase sales and make new contacts for guiding services.

The workshop is part of The B&B&B Pilot Project put together in partnership with Explore Minnesota Tourism in partnership with MOU, Audubon, Minnesota DNR non-game, Minnesota Bed & Breakfast Association.

Here is how it works:

A select group of Bed & Breakfasts ( B & Bs) in Minnesota will develop packages that will include guided birding trips for their guests. These packages will be advertised by the B & Bs and will be listed on Explore Minnesota Tourism’s web site. Guides that participate in this training will be matched with B & Bs in their area to provide birding trips for a fee to be retained by the guides. Two training sessions for the B & B owners and the guides will be offered in June of this year to help make this pilot project a success. Following the training sessions there will be a “practice” field trip for the B & B owners where the guides will practice their guiding skills. Once the training is completed the B & Bs will be designated as “ Birder Friendly”, and the guides will be partnered with the B & Bs.

Training for the guides will include:
Explore Minnesota’s data base and why it is important.
Customer Service training.
Basic First Aid.
License & Liability.
Landowner Concerns.
Logistics of organizing a field trip.
Family field trips w/children.
Plan B…for when the birds don’t cooperate.
Value….it’s OK to charge for your services.
Plus a Questions & Answer period.

Training sessions will be held June 20, 2007 at the Log House and Homestead Bed & Breakfast near Vergas, MN. and on June 27, 2007 at the Auf Deutsche Strasse Bed & Breakfast, 404 South German Street in New Ulm, MN. Bed & Breakfast owners from around the state will attend, this a great time to connect with the owners who can help get you more clients as a bird guide.

Cost of the training sessions, including lunch and the joint field trip will be $25.00 for guides and will be due along with your sign-up form by June 1, 2007. Questions? Contact project coordinator, Dave Vogel, Explore Minnesota Tourism at 1-888-975-6766 or via e-mail at dave.vogel@state.mn.us .

Brace Yourself For Bobolink Goodness

Well, since I've had such great luck getting shots of other birds when I try to photograph orioles, I thought I would go out for orioles yesterday at Mr. Neil's.

And instead of orioles, I got one of my all time favorite singers: a male bobolink--the coolest blackbird in North America! The field where our honeybees do most of their foraging is fallow this year making it a great nesting spot. A large flock of male bobolinks has been hanging out for the last week and a half. You may recall I attempted a photo when I first heard them May 13 (that was the start of my oriole luck).

This bird was skylarking around the field and bouncing from some telephone wires to the highest perch in the field which at this point was low vegetation. I took a broken branch out of the woods and set in the field and after a few minutes he landed. If you look at the above photo, you can see he is still molting. Look at the tail, two deck feathers in the center are just growing in. There's another one on the right creeping in as well.

Here he is mid song--you can see his little throat puffed out. I tried to find a sound file on the Internet so those who have never had the joy of listening to bobolink could hear it. I found a sound file at Whatbird. You'll have to scroll about halfway down the page to just above the range map. It's one of my all time favorite bird songs. I think I might go back this weekend and just sit out there for an hour taking in the bobolink song.

In this photo you can really see that it resembles a blackbird. Bobolinks are in the Icterid family that includes red-winged blackbirds, grackles, orioles, and cowbirds--the head shape and bill on the bobolink looks really similar to the brown-headed cowbird. Checking over at BNA Online, the bobolink was one of the first species in which multiple paternity (females laying a clutch of eggs sired by more than one male) was documented. I didn't see any female bobolinks, but considering how different they look from males, I may have just not paid attention.

And if you haven't noticed it in the earlier photos, check out the claws on the tips of those toes--they are really long. But I guess you need those if you are going to be clinging to long prairie grasses. If you've never had a chance to look at a bobolink, find out if they are in your state and go check them out. They really are a cool little bird.

Bee Movies...Har Har

We are getting a ton of strong thunderstorms in our neck of the woods. I'll check the weather map and as soon as we get suited up to check the hives, a storm begins to rumble from the west.

Today we made a mad dash to the hive but as soon as we opened the top of Olga, it began to pour down rain. We decided to let building bees draw out comb. I did take a couple of videos with the camera to give some audio and visual impressions of our hives.

Below is a 12 second video of bees entering the Kitty hive:

Below is a video of bees returning right before storm. It's about 30 seconds long. Right about second 13 you'll see one poor girl bounce off--not as smooth at landing as some of the others.

And finally is a video from a week and a half ago when Non Birding Bill was out with us. We had top open of the entrance reducers, so NBB is widening Olga's entrance. Right at the beginning you'll see a forager return with large baskets of pollen on her back legs.

Speaking of NBB, he has some photos up at his blog from when he was in high school in Ohio and from when I was in high school in Indiana. Would we have dated if we knew each other back then? Warning: there's some big hair in those photos.

Detroit Lakes Bird Festival--Felton Prairie

Last year, the Felton Prairie was a magical field trip: the sun made the prairie glow, you could hear a symphony bird songs: marbled godwits, chestnut-collared longspurs, bobolink, western meadowlarks, etc. It was chilly but not bad. This year, it was cloudy, cold, and windy. I was totally unprepared and forgot my gloves. The birding was still great. Above is a large flock of Franklin's gulls rolling across the prairie in front of the giant windmills.

We had much better views at prairie chickens here. There were quite few, at point several were flying on either side of the bus. With the wind they were laying low, but a few testosterone laden males were still trying to out dance each other.

We found two western meadowlark nests. Mostly because they were close to the road and we flushed them before almost stepping on the nest. I took the above blurry photo because we had just flushed the female and the whole group wanted to see the nest. The chicks were just hatching and it was WAY too cold for the female to be off the nest--the ethical thing to do was to leave so she would go back and incubate. With the photo all 54 participants could take a look. It was touch lumbering the large group away, great birds kept coming into the area like an orchard oriole and a lark sparrow. But we did get away and the female went back. Whew.

Here's the second western meadowlark nest. Can you see it? It's right in the middle. If you look close you can just make out the eggs.

Okay, here's a closer (and in focus) view of the nest. We flushed it as we were on way to board the bus, so I'm sure she made it back in plenty of time to keep them warm.

Here are some cliff swallows hunkered down on a power line. The swallows were definitely feeling the cold. Barn swallows circled the bus like crazy as we kicked up insects. Northern rough-winged swallows circled our group as we walked in the grass--I suppose we were kicking up bugs much in the way cattle would. Tree swallows were swarming low over any body of water.

Here's a loon with a swallow zipping into the shot.

Even the pelicans seemed to be feeling the cold. They just hunkered together with an expression that said something along the lines of, "Craaaaaap, it's sooooo cold." Look at their bills, many of them are sporting the knob on the upper bill that they get during the breeding season.

And no birding trip would be complete without a snipe. We could here these guys winnowing all over at Agassiz, but didn't see them. This Wilson's snipe was hanging out on a fence post.

Of course, a big part of the fun of birding at Felton Prairie is the herd of cattle that follows you around. Just like last year they were very curious about our group and came in for a closer look...sometimes scaring off prairie chickens and longspurs.

I did get a kick out of this brown-headed cowbird actually mixing in with the cows--actually doing what its name implies--go figure. Apparently, the cows had so much fun with us that they didn't want us to leave and tried to block the road. Our very intrepid bus driver proceeded carefully. I caught it on video:

Detroit Lakes Bird Festival--Rothsay Prairie

When I drove up for the Detroit Lakes Bird Festival, it was very hot and warm. Friday while birding at Agassiz, it was cooler, but by afternoon it was very hot. That night some incredible storms moved in. Jeff Bouton and Ben Lizdas and I headed to Hamden Slough for a scan of birds and could see some powerful lightening coming our way in the distance. That night the lightening flashed like crazy. One interesting note was that Jeff discovered a couple of tundra swans mixed in with trumpeter swans. Above is a photo of a trumpeter on the left and a tundra on the white. Note how the tundra swan has a slightly thinner neck and the dainty look of the bill. You can't see it in the photo, but through out scopes you could see yellow on the bill.

The next morning it was cold and windy at Rothsay Prairie. Not the best weather for listening for those quieter prairie sparrow species like Le Conte's sparrows but we did see some other species. Above is a swamp sparrow that was fairly accommodating.

Clay-colored sparrows were also lurking about in the grasses. I love that little buzzy call they give.

And of course, bobolinks were all over. We saw large flocks of males flying up from the roads--they are so pretty and hypnotic with the bold black and white coloration.

Of course, the fun of the prairie are the shorebirds. Here is a marbled godwit that we found working the road. The bird appears to have an injured foot but was able to fly and find food. I love how birds are still able to survive and function even what appears to be a tragic injury.

We saw some more phalaropes. Above is a male Wilson's phalarope--these guys are interesting because the females are more colorful than the males and after she lays eggs, leaves the male to incubate and raise the chicks.

We had so much fun at this particular pond. The bus pulled over and Doug Buri and Bob O'Connor stepped outside to scan it for interesting shorebirds. They thought they saw a Hudsonian godwit. I remained on the bus with the rest of the passengers. Being on the bus, we were higher up and could look down on the shorebirds. Suddenly people started asking me, "Hey, Sharon, what's that yellow shorebird?" I scanned the water and found it right away--it stuck out like a sore thumb. The color was kind of yellow, kind of orange, but the bus windows and cloudy day was probably distorting the color. I stuck my head out the window and shouted, "Hey, Doug, Bob, what's that yellowish bird--buff breasted sandpiper?" Well, they were on the ground and could only see the head being lower than we were. They both looked at the head and said, "We're not sure." I got back on the bus and announced, "It's gotta be good, the experts don't know what it is!" Everyone on the bus got a great look at it. I started running the little hamster in my brain--"What shorebird would be yellowish? Yellow...yellow...well, actually it's salmon color...I remember reading a book about researchers in the 1970s and 1980s coloring shorebirds to study migratory patters...what birds were those...shorebirds...they were red knots...WAIT! RED KNOT!!"

I stuck my head out the window and both Doug and Bob looked at me and we shouted at the same time, "Red Knot!" We had all worked it out in our heads simultaneously. The bird was going into breeding plumage to get that red color and that's why it looked salmon-ish (something we're not used to in Minnesota). As we were getting people off the bus the knot took off with some short-billed dowitchers, but at the point everyone had been watching for awhile. It was so windy, we tried to follow it, but the wind could have blown it into Canada. We made an immediate call to our inside man at the MOU to let him know what we saw and where. When our field trip returned, we gave out directions and maps but the knot was not seen for the rest of the festival. It was interesting, the shorebirds at that pond were changing all day, so with the wind I'm sure many birds were just passing through.

Rothsay is known for it's prairie chickens--we saw some, but they were hunkered and way out in the fields. Above is a shot of the giant prairie chicken in the town or Rothsay. Doug didn't want to stop and look at a big plastic bird but there was some mutiny on the bus and he lost. He didn't hesitate to tell us how ridiculous it was that we made a point to see it.

I love heart Buri.