Birdchick Blog
You need some bees off your frame? Try Mr. Neil's excellent Bee Flicking technique. Also a handy way to distract enemies should they surprise you in your bee yard. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/29454801[/vimeo]
No bees harmed in the making of this video and most were scooped up off the ground and gently placed back in.
It's the special news report everyone is waiting for--The Winter Finch Forecast! Will you see finches this winter? Operation Migration has a web cam that live streams flight training for young whooping cranes. Check it out (in daylight hours).
NPR wants to tell us about a bird we've never heard of...though many birders have--the bar-tailed godwit. It's a good story about migration and be sure to check out the matching cartoon.
3 words: Bald Baby Penguin. Below is the before and after:
Full story here.
Want to run away from life this winter? Check out this opportunity! For more bird jobs, go here.
JAMAICAN FIELD ASSISTANTS (6) Not looking forward to cold weather, 6 hours of light, and watching the bird feeder? We have the answer. Be a field assistant on research studying American Redstarts in Jamaica. Project begins approximately January 10th and continues until mid-April (~1-2 positions) to mid-May (~4-5 positions). Assistants can expect long hours in the field, six days per week, walking in mangrove forests inhabited by crocodiles and maneuvering through dense second growth scrub. Being flexible with working conditions, schedule, and living situation is absolutely key to success at this position. Competitive applicants will be very self-motivated, have the ability to re-sight and follow small (6g) color-banded birds, and extract songbirds quickly and safely from mist nets. Experience collecting foraging behavioral data on small songbirds and banding and bleeding experience are all preferred, but not required. This is an all-expenses paid volunteer position (i.e. no salary, but travel to and from Jamaica as well as home-cooked Jamaican food and comfortable sea-side lodging are provided). Send an email with the subject “Jamaican Field Assistant”, a cover letter, CV, and contact info for 3 references to NATHAN COOPER (EM: nathanwands AT hotmail.com).
Hello all, NBB here. We're still dealing with the issue of our site being hacked. The nature of the problem is that when a search engine accesses the pages, it serves up spam along with the actual text of the page. The site may be down briefly later today as I reinstall the blogging software. Please bear with us. Bill
Non Birding Bill and I were over at Mr. Neil's to do some fall beehive prep (for those who follow, the bees seemed to take my Ned Stark speech well and all but one of the hives actually bumped up production). After we finished checking the hives we were back in the house surfing the net, dealing with emails when I heard a heard a sound. "Distressed woodpecker sound," my brain noted as I read an email. Then my brain kicked me, "DISTRESSED WOODPECKER SOUND! RAPTOR! ALL HANDS ON DECK!"
Then it sunk in--"Holy cow, look out the window, stupid!" I turned to look out the window and saw a small raptor gliding away with a red-bellied woodpecker. I figured the raptor was most likely a male Cooper's hawk or a female sharp-shinned hawk--both a fairly regular bird in Mr. Neil's yard, especially during migration. I dashed to the front room and was shocked to see...
...a small dark falcon killing a large woodpecker. "Holy crap! It's a merlin," I shouted...well, I'm sure there was more profanity than that but you get the idea. Falcons have a notch in their bill that they use to sever the spine from the head and kill prey fairly quickly. The merlin went in for a bite, but she had to go in for a second to really put the woodpecker out. While she did that, I scrambled off for my digiscoping equipment.
Look at that face! She's so adorable--Nature's Perfect Killing Machine! You can even make out those little malar stripes under each eye that all falcons have! I digiscoped this photo of her after she killed the woodpecker. It's not as in focus as I would like, but I was shooting through an old farmhouse window and my scope picks up imperfections in window glass. I didn't want to open the window because this small falcon had worked hard for her kill and I didn't want to risk flushing her off her food. This is the first time I've seen a merlin in Mr. Neil's yard. This bird is possible for the area, but mostly as a migrant. If she was on a long journey to migrate south, she needed a good hearty meal and my need to get a perfectly in focus shot was not as important as her need to get nourishment.
She was fairly close to the driveway with her kill and I noticed a car coming down. She mantled a bit over her kill but didn't fly away from it. I heard voices and noted that Non Birding Bill, Mr. Neil and the newly arrived Steve Manfred hadn't followed me into the front room to watch the merlin. I shouted, "Hey, you guys really need to come see this, this is a really cool bird!" Again, the "really" in the previous sentence was most likely profanity. They soon followed and had to concede a merlin with a red-belly was pretty badass. Cameras started clicking and both Neil and I got photos. I immediately called this bird a "she" and Neil asked why. First, in raptors females are larger than males. Based on this bird taking out a red-bellied woodpecker I knew she was female. Now, merlins are one of the few raptor species where you can tell male from female apart based on plumage. Females are brown on back and males are blue:
These are a couple of males that we trapped up at Frank Taylor's banding station in Duluth. See the blue on the wing feathers? That's male. This gets tricky in young birds. Merlins hatched this year will be brown on back--both male and female. That's where size comes in handy.
Here's a shot that Mr. Neil took of the merlin. Note how all the feathers on the back are uniform? They all look like they grew in at the same time--that's something you would only see in a bird hatched this year. Adults would still have some molting going on and you'd see worn, older feathers mixed in that would be a slightly different color. The tail has some light colored bands through it. The look tawny or buff. If this were a male, those bands would look gray. Again, females are larger than males and this small falcon took out a red-bellied woodpecker--it's large, she's female.
This is another shot Mr. Neil got with his camera. I had to chuckle because the woodpecker looks almost "cartoon dead." See the tongue hanging out of the beak? The only thing missing is the little "X" over the eye. Note the size of the red-bellied woodpecker next to the merlin--I've had both in hand and always thought of them to be similar in size. I decided to do a little digging on the Internet on merlin size vs red-bellied woodpecker size.
According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds red-bellied woodpeckers are about 9.4 inches long, have a wingspan of 13 - 16.5 inches and weigh about 3 oz.
Interesting...do satellite transmitters harm birds? Bald eagle rehabbed by The Raptor Center was banded and the band was recovered, giving a clue as to how birds fare post wildlife rehab.
Bald eagle that was injured and is now used for public programs flies into a window at a football stadium causing public outcry from animal rights groups and highlights how dangerous windows are.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgF6UJ5UgUs[/youtube]
Meanwhile San Fransisco approves guidelines for new construction to include bird friendly.
Terre Haute, Indiana has a Crow Committee.
Ducks Unlimited is asking hunters to purchase 2 Duck Stamps this year. Will birders purchase 1?
I was out and about doing bird surveys yesterday and I got to watch an interesting interaction between a small falcon and a large woodpecker.
Here's an American kestrel, minding her own business, hovering and looking for mice with leaky bladders or whatever to eat.
There were lots of northern flickers moving through during my survey. Most tried to avoid predators. Multiple visits to Hawk Ridge during the hawk migration has taught me that at the end of the day, flickers have a body built for food that many hawks like to eat. I guess this flicker was feeling his Wheaties and went in to hassle the hovering kestrel, vengeance for fallen and eaten brethren?
After getting properly buzzed, the kestrel did an about face and went for the flicker. Both are about the same size and I think if the kestrel had been a Cooper's hawk that the flicker wouldn't have engaged in any mobbing shenanigans.
Again, these aren't the best shots in the world, I digiscoped them at 400 meters. But had fun watching the behavior. The birds chased each other for at least five minutes (could have been longer, but I had to move on to my next survey point), sometimes the flicker was chasing the kestrel and at other times, she was chasing the woodpecker. Periodically, both would perch on the same wire--sizing the other up?
NBB here. We're fighting off a hack in the RSS feed. Our apologies. The site may be down for a few hours while I try to fix this. UPDATE: I believe I have corrected the problem. The our site had been hacked and altered in such a way that the spam was only showing up when accessed by search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. This made it hard for me to trace the problem until I had found the file. The problem should be corrected now, but may take a day to clear out of Google. If you continue to experience these problems, please let us know in the comments or by emailing Sharon. Please be sure to include what service/URL you were using when you found the spam.
Again, our apologies.
NBB
This can only mean Winter Is Coming:
I've been in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia which puts on an awesome little bird festival. I stayed at the Manor Inn and if you are ever there, I highly recommend it. Feathers in amber.
Minnesota man named Craig Staloch accused of destroying 75% of pelicans nests that were on land he was leasing for farming.
Bird watcher dies trying to photograph a peregrine...let this a lesson to all of us.
24 Nihoa Millerbirds have been moved to a different island to prevent extinction.
Kind of a bummer for migration. Whimbrels--are really awesome type of shorebird have been fitted with satellite transmitters. One even went through Hurricane Irene. Alas, 2 of them have been legally shot, story here and here. It's legal on this island to shoot shorebirds, they are not part of the Migratory Bird Treaty. News that record numbers of birds of prey poisoned in Scotland.
Birds that were pets and released in their native Australia are teaching their wild counterparts human words.
Download the podcast theme song, "The Cinnamon Funk."
