Camouflage

One of the joys of migration is that you never when something is going to show up. When I'm out doing my surveys, I have my usual suspects of species but every now and then a surprise hits.

As I was driving between survey points, I passed this field and a small flock fluttered away from the road towards the center. I knew they were shorebirds, but not exactly certain what they were.  I pulled over and got my scope out.

It was a flock of plovers in non-breeding plumage. And when they flew, there was no black in their "wing pits" that you would see on a black-bellied plover in non breeding plumage, so these were American golden-plovers. The birds soon hunkered down into the the soybean stubble and it was amazing how well their plumage mixed in with that. I wondered if they just blew in from their northern migration the night before and were hoping to catch a nap. The above was a shot taken with my iPhone 4s with my spotting scope.

This was taken with my Nikon D40 SLR and spotting scope. Some of the birds were still on high alert. Not the bird in front with a cocked head towards the sky? I looked up and that plover had its eye on a passing Cooper's hawk, high in the clouds.

These birds have one of the longest migrations out there. According to Audubon, American golden-plovers fly offshore from the east coast of North America and travel nonstop over the Atlantic Ocean to South America. Individuals may go more than 3,000 miles in one flight. Juveniles and birds blown off track will move  through river valleys and I wasn't too far from the Mississippi River when I got these shots. Amazing to think about how far these birds will go.

Bee Escape Board

We did a honey harvest last week. One of the challenges with that is getting all of the bees safely out of the honey supers so you aren't carrying a few thousand angiry bees back when you go to extract the honey from the frames.  We've tried a few things to get bees out of honey supers to varying degrees of success. Neil found something called Bee Escape boards or Bee Mazes as we call them and they work like a charm.  We ordered one and then Neil's groundskeeper Hans built one for each hive.

Essentially it's designed so bees can crawl out but find it undesirable to crawl back in. Above is my friend Brie who had visiting a bee hive on her bucket list, so I incorporated her enthusiasm into our honey harvest plans. She's holding the Escape Board so you can see all the bees that have exited from the honey super.

The board should go between the smaller boxes called honey supers where bees store excess honey (the stuff you harvest) and the larger brood boxes where they raise young and have honey stores for winter. You set the Escape Board so that they bees will leave the supers and crawl down into the brood box.

One of our hives had some feral comb between the brood boxes and honey supers and the excess wax blocked the exit holes in the maze. The workers didn't vacate the the honey supers, they got blocked in!

Then Neil had the brilliant idea of setting the honey supers chock full of thousands of bees on a table near the hive and placing the Escape Board on top of them, as if it were a ceiling. Sure enough, the girls began to exit immediately through the top and fly back to their hive.  It was so hypnotic, I had to get a video so you could see how quickly they were getting the heck outta Dodge:

 [youtube]http://youtu.be/Ba2w_giooss[/youtube]

Random White-throated Sparrow

As sparrow migration is blitzing around the US, I thought I put up these images of a white-throated sparrow chowing down on a snowy mountain ash. Even if you can't have bird feeders, sometimes having the right kind of trees can be very beneficial to migratory birds.

I got these images during a digiscoping workshop I gave at Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN.

If you are curious, hawk migration is still going on at Hawk Ridge and there's plenty of time to catch some hot accipiter action.

Focus On Diversity Conference, Be There!

If you are within a day trip of the Twin Cities, you should put this on your calendar. If you remotely work to promote the outdoors with the public, you should attend this event!

The Focus on Diversity Conference is coming to the Twin Cities October 13, 2012 at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington, MN (right next to the airport).

The objective of this event is to promote effective outreach to more diverse audiences with birding, outdoor recreation and conservation messages.

We all know how homogeneous birders can look on the trail, we need to change this and we have some great thinkers coming together to try and tackle this issue. Enjoying the outdoors shouldn't be just a "thing white people do."

The forum and discussion will include Dudley Edmondson, Flisa Stevenson, Dr. Drew Lanham, Kenn Kaufman and even Duck Washington (if you've been to a Birds and Beers, you've met Duck). Put this on your calendar now, be a voice, learn, engage in this discussion.

There will also be a special Birds and Beers Friday night before the conference at The Corner Bar inside the Embassy Suites in Bloomington near the Refuge.  Birds and Beers starts at 6:30 pm.

Blogging From The Field

This post is more of a test to see if I can use the voice to text feature with Wordpress and blog while I'm doing a survey in the field.

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Above is my current office view. I really love being able to work outside especially during spring and fall migration!

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Large flocks of song birds are around me every day right now. The diversity of bird species in the cornstalks around me is amusing. Above is a Nashville warbler. It's so weird to see warblers and corn.

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Here is a swamp sparrow that I was able to pish up out of the corn.

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And wherever you have migrating songbirds you're sure to have migrating raptors to follow. This female merlin got my attention when I saw her sitting on top of one the telephone poles in my survey area. She was just finishing up eating a small bird.

Okay I've told my phone everything I wanted to say let's see if this actually posts.

Also all of these photos were taken by using my iPhone and with the bird photos it was my iPhone along with my Swarovski spotting scope.

Honey Bee Nursery

I know I don't do as many bee reports on the blog as I used to but in a lot of respects our bees do the same thing over and over. Not that I don't delight in watching the hive, but how often can I report the same thing? Things that are fun to check are larvae. I especially like frames with black foundation, makes things ten times easier to see and it really pops the color of the bees.

Above are mostly worker bee eggs (the things that look like mini rice) and some larvae off to the right. If you don't find your queen when you're digging around in your hive, you can be relatively confident that a she is alive somewhere in there because eggs stay in that shape for about three days as they are fed royal jelly from the worker bees.

Once the larvae is three days old, it's switched to a mixture of pollen, honey and water (some bee sites call this bee bread). You can see at least one worker up there feeding someboyd as her head is wedged into a cell. The larvae grows and eats for six days.

After six days, the workers cap over the brood and they pupate for 12 days as they go from a squishy blob into a segmented, leggy, winged bee complete with stinger.

Like this girl! On a side note, while looking up something else entirely I wandered into an article on eating bee larvae. I suppose eating all that honey would make them tasty.

For those curious, I think our hives are doing splendidly this year. Many are as tall or even taller than I am because they are stacked with so many honey supers for us to harvest soon. Though, Lynne was quick to point out that since I'm only 5 feet tall, that's not saying much.  Thanks, Lynne. ;)

 

 

Birdchick Podcast #118 Scott's Fined Millions For Tainted Bird Food

Scott's Wild Bird Food aka Miracle Grow fined $12.5 million in criminal and civil penalties that regulators say are the heftiest ever issued under federal pesticide law. Weirdest survey about birders and birding...ever. Warning, it takes awhile.

Are you a member of the American Birding Association? Be sure to cast your vote on whether or not to expand the listing area!

Cloaxia combines your vagina, urethra and anus into one hole. SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/ucbcomedy Watch more videos by The Punch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VozVSHq3hwc&feature=share&list=PL28885456FBB38DD2 Director Andy Bond Writer Adam Sacks Featuring Laura Michelle Cleary, Lisa Kleinman, Risa Sang-Urai, Keisha Zollar, Amey Goerlich, Avery Monsen, and Brian Glidewell Director of Photography Adam Sacks Editor Adam Sacks Animator Adam Sacks Producer Luke Kelly-Clyne Sound James Leggero, Silvija Ozols, and Casey Cline Production Assistants Andrea Shapiro and Jesse VandenBergh Special Thanks Matt Klinman Brought to you by UCB Comedy.



Random Barred Antshrike

Going through some photos for upcoming presentations at Hawk Ridge and Berkeley Springs, I came across this bird, a barred antshrike from my trip a couple of years ago from Canopy Tower in Panama.  I suddenly feel a huge ache to be back in Central America, specifically to this lodge. I always try to plan a mid winter trip...think Panama must be it in 2013.

Digiscoped with a Swarovski scope and Nikon D40 (with a DCA adapator).