Birding

[Cedars]

The recent reminders about ebird inspired a trek to the meadows for a bird count. Some birds were too flighty to identify in the dark skys. There are still warblers moving thru in some numbers, but I was not able to properly identify much. I did tag 4 yellow rumped Warblers for sure and possible chestnut sided warblers were seen. There were a few yellow colored warblers or vireos but I was unable to verify which so I wont tally those for an official count.

 

Lots of Blue winged teal still are grouped there, a Marsh Hawk harrassed a swampful of them and the crowded skies were a good 200 birds. Could have been 500. There was just too much movement and too many to count.

 

There was a large group of Redheads on the north end, mixed with large numbers of mallards and teal, again too many to count, and yes, they launched skywards in a blur long before I could have tallied even a 1/4 of the total. Mixed in with this group and not so nervous were 10 additional Trumpeter Swans. I have not added up the total swans counted yet but whatever it ends up being, it is an under-representation of total swans in the meadows, as I did not count birds moving from one grouping to another and a very large grouping was obscured by an island.

 

A rough tally of total species of birds seen is 17. This doesnt count the types seen on the way to and from the meadows.

 

The biggest numbers were of the Sandhill cranes which are begining to stage at the meadows. My hard count is 566 but it is lower than actual birds seen. One large group nearing the end of my time there was mixed in with some very tall grasses making counting very hard so I skipped that group. There were easily 100 birds there. There was another group on the NE side that I did not count. And I got to the meadows later than I like to and found myself trailing a busload of birders (Yellow schoolbus full) the first 1/4 of the day. I finally lost them on the Northeast corner by taking a different route, which deprived me of some ability to total higher numbers.

 

The weather hindered my birding ability. It was very cool and gray rain laden clouds hampered my efforts. The songbirds were hanging very near the ground foraging for insects who had no hope of warming to a preferred temperature. Several birds I am sure were there; due to hearing their voices, but again, I cant tally them officially due to inability to sight verify (for my own standards of ID).

[Flapjack]

I'm not a serious birder but I do have a spotting scope and spend many hours relaxing watching birds. Last year in Ecuador we were birding and saw some real beauties. I think the best was a Scarlet Tanager there were some good sightings of hawks but has we do not have them in the UK I was fascinated by the hummers

[DougF]

Good pitcher Flapjack,

[Cedars]

I'm not a serious birder but I do have a spotting scope and spend many hours relaxing watching birds. Last year in Ecuador we were birding and saw some real beauties. I think the best was a Scarlet Tanager there were some good sightings of hawks but has we do not have them in the UK I was fascinated by the hummers

 

Were you able to id that type of hummer?

 

We get scarlet tanagers here during the summer. About 4-5 years ago I was at the meadows when the males moved thru in numbers. We must have seen 50 that day. Anywhere there was med to old growth forest, there were Scarlet Tanagers. It was an amazing day on the meadows. May 10th but I dont remember the year.

[Hill]

Like other hummingbirds, Anna's Hummingbirds make display flights to impress females and drive off rivals from their territories. The male hovers and sings, then climbs rapidly to an altitude of about 40-50'. Facing toward the sun so that it strongly illuminates his gorget (bright throat feathers), he power-dives toward the ground in the vicinity of his intended target, pulling up sharply just above the top of the local foliage. At the bottom of this J-shaped dive, he emits a loud "peeep", and then often returns to repeat the performance several more times. Literature that details this flight describe the loud "squeek" as a vocalization.

 

Over my years of watching them, I had wondered about this and several times seen evidence that the sound is not made vocally, but by controlling the tail feathers. In those instances, the bird dove and produced nothing more than a soft "pfft". So I suspected a missing or damaged tail feather was the cause of the noise.

 

Recently, I read the following article by Susan Milius in Science News.

Week of Aug. 25, 2007; Vol. 172, No. 8 , p. 125

 

 

The sound effects of Anna's hummingbirds, widespread along the West Coast, have been misunderstood, according to a new test.

 

 

Some of the males' most dramatic noises aren't vocalizations, as has been thought. Instead, the birds make noises by whipping their tails through the air.

Males, with iridescent, rose-colored throats and heads, perform aerial dives when courting a female or confronting another male. For a display, a male flies high in the air and then drops nearly straight down. When he's plummeted to the level of his intended audience, he pulls out of the dive while sounding an explosive squeak.

In the late 1970s, ornithologists decided that those notes came from the birds' vocal organs. Chris Clark and Teresa Feo of the University of California, Berkeley have challenged that idea by removing some birds' outer tail feathers. A clipped male still dives, but he no longer makes the sound as he bottoms out. Clark also tested the tail feathers in a wind tunnel and was able to make noises like the birds'. The researchers reported their findings at the July 21–25 meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Burlington, Vt. Ornithologists have documented a wide variety of noises made by bird wings, from cricketlike rubbing sounds to aerial whistles. A tail-feather sound effect, though, is quite rare, says Clark

 

Attachment illustration from: http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v084n02/p0208-p0225.pdf

[Turtle]

Birds May See Earth's Magnetic Fields | LiveScience

 

..."If you look into the brain of a bird during magnetic compass orientation, only the visual system is highly active," said study co-author Henrik Mouritsen, a biologist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, noting that most migratory birds do so at night. "Other regions of the brain are not, so birds could use vision to 'see' Earth's magnetism and orient themselves."

...

[Flapjack]

Were you able to id that type of hummer?

 

We get scarlet tanagers here during the summer. About 4-5 years ago I was at the meadows when the males moved thru in numbers. We must have seen 50 that day. Anywhere there was med to old growth forest, there were Scarlet Tanagers. It was an amazing day on the meadows. May 10th but I dont remember the year.

 

I think it is a Sword billed Hummingbird. It was taken at the Guango lodge east of Quito

[Turtle]

I'm thinking of setting up a feeder station again this year; how 'bought you all?

 

ummm... I never took mine down ;)

 

Oooops. :doh: Anyway, I bought a couple suet packs and a large bag of mixed seed to start. I sterilized, repaired, and filled a plastic feeder & hung it under a "wobble" dome from a thin wire. I hope this keeps the squirrel from the main store of seed; it'll have to make do with what falls to the ground.

 

I do have neighbor cats that hunted my feeder last year and short of trapping them and calling the County authorities to come get them I have to resort to scaring the crap out of them when I get the opportunity. I do throw seed on the ground as well for those birds that don't much care to get off the ground to feed; nothing comes without risk I guess. Hey...maybe the cat will kill the squirrel? :D:eek:

 

I have the hanging feeder just 5 feet from the porch door and have the glass well cleaned so I'm ready to shoot some birds. :) :doh:

[Hill]

Oooops. :doh: Anyway, I bought a couple suet packs and a large bag of mixed seed to start. I sterilized, repaired, and filled a plastic feeder & hung it under a "wobble" dome from a thin wire. I hope this keeps the squirrel from the main store of seed; it'll have to make do with what falls to the ground.

 

I do have neighbor cats that hunted my feeder last year and short of trapping them and calling the County authorities to come get them I have to resort to scaring the crap out of them when I get the opportunity. I do throw seed on the ground as well for those birds that don't much care to get off the ground to feed; nothing comes without risk I guess. Hey...maybe the cat will kill the squirrel? :D:eek:

 

I have the hanging feeder just 5 feet from the porch door and have the glass well cleaned so I'm ready to shoot some birds. :) :doh:

 

I have mine up all year. I do several bird study counts through the Birds - Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, and I like to keep track of the ebb and flow of species throughout the year.

 

We have two goldfinch only "thistle" feeders, a size filtering feeder for regular mix, a platform feeder for all comers, a hanging black sunflower seed feeder for finches, chickadees, nuthatches, and the occasional woodpecker. There's a fair amount of seed that gets scattered beneath the feeders, that attracts Mourning Doves, finches, and a variety of sparrows. Three hummingbird feeders right now because of a huge influx of migrants. It's too warm here for suet to be attractive to the birds. And two frequently cleaned and filled bird baths.

 

Birds of the past few weeks:

Cooper's hawk - at a birdbath

Red-shouldered Hawk - calling nearby

Mourning Dove

Great Horned Owl ( a pair calling to each other in our deodar one night)

Vaux's Swift (overhead migrants)

Black-chinned Hummingbird

Anna's Hummingbird

Costa's Hummingbird

Rufous Hummingbird

Allen's Hummingbird (lots of females and young of Rufous and Allen's which can't be differentiated)

Nuttall's Woodpecker

Black Phoebe

Western Scrub Jay

American Crow

Raven (frequently overhead - but never in our small yard)

Mountain Chickadee - up to 3 at a time - many years we consider ourselves honored tohave one)

Oak Titmouse

Bushtit

White-Breasted Nuthatch

Bewick's Wren - patrols the yard for insects and spiders

Northern Mockingbird - frequently around the margins.

Black-headed Grosbeak - immature - passing through

Warbling Vireo - passing through

California Towhee

Chipping Sparrow - Immature - first of the season

White-crowned Sparrow - recent arrivals from "up north"

House Finch - up to a dozen at a time right now - usual count is 2-4

Pine Siskin - one for several days - maybe this will be an irruptive year

Lesser Goldfinch - Up to 60 at a time now though the count rarely goes below 30

Lawrence's Goldfinch - one at a time occasionally over the past week, and others heard (flight song) during the same time

 

Below are birds of the past few days. Hummingbird feeder with Anna's and a Costa's (perched at right), adult Cooper's hawk (for some reason the other birds left the yard during a daily count;)), thistle feeder with Lesser Goldfinches and one (striped) Pine Siskin, male and female Lawrence's Goldfinches.

 

[Cedars]

Headed up to the meadows this morn. Wow, there was as many people there today as I saw for a whole summer total. Thats the bummer about a place when it becomes popular. Everyone is there to see the cranes.

 

Phantom lake area had at least 1,000 cranes when I arrived. They were just starting to take flight in groups to day spots in the area (7:30 am). Around 10am the crane movement began to let up and by noon it had slowed to a trickle. I did not attempt to count total birds but I have no doubt I saw 2000 cranes myself in various spots and fly-overs today. Photo of flying cranes below.

 

One spot had 28 swans, a mix of young and adult. Other spots had various numbers. Earlier this year I posted a pic of a swan pair with 7 cygnets. The wildlife person at the visitor center had doubts all of them would make it, with such a large brood. Today I photographed them and all 7 babies are still alive. (Photo attached).

 

Last week there were some Lesser Yellowlegs, this week I can add Greater Yellowlegs to birds in the Meadows. Pool 5 had around 20 of these birds splashing and peeping to each other, un-alarmed by the 7 cars lined up watching them.

 

Tried to snap a few hawk/eagle shots with the camera I use. Its just not very good for birding. One tree had 3 immature Bald Eagles perched in it. The photo below is the last bird leaving and one of my better raptor pics of the day. The raptors tended to fly when I stopped the car. They would stay still if you kept moving (brats).

[Hill]

Headed up to the meadows this morn.

 

What, or where, in Minnesota is "The Meadows". Great birds and photos.

 

Attachment is some California Condors at a nearby mountaintop. Photo is from about a year ago. I want to get up there again soon now that the weather is cooling off.

[Cedars]

What, or where, in Minnesota is "The Meadows". Great birds and photos.

 

Attachment is some California Condors at a nearby mountaintop. Photo is from about a year ago. I want to get up there again soon now that the weather is cooling off.

 

Oh my... Sorry Hill... I have yapped on and on so much about the meadows in previous posts I forget that not everyone here has been exposed.

 

Crex Meadows WMA is located in Grantsburg Wisconsin. I was introduced to it about 20 years ago as a birding area and fell in love. Its 30,000 acres of a brush prairie /wetland restoration that has re-created one of the most beautiful examples of what that area used to be like.

 

Its listed as an IBA at Audubon. The wildflowers are spectacular and has a flourishing population of Karner Blue butterflies.

Their Homepage

Welcome to Crex Meadows

 

You took the condor photos? Great pic! I believe Tartarism desires to see Condors in real life (as do I should I get to California again) and he is located in Cal if I remember right. I hope he sees this post!

[Hill]

Crex Meadows WMA is located in Grantsburg Wisconsin. I was introduced to it about 20 years ago as a birding area and fell in love. Its 30,000 acres of a brush prairie /wetland restoration that has re-created one of the most beautiful examples of what that area used to be like.

 

You took the condor photos?

 

Looking at the web site, I can see why you like the area so much. More than enough to kep any naturalist happy.

 

I did take the photo. Here is another with a closer look at a few of the Condors, two immature and one adult. All have tags identifying them. No more thumbnails - I'm out of space. The "little bird" is a Raven for scale.

 

[Cedars]

This may have been posted before, but I do not remember seeing it.

 

The Internet Bird Collection is host to user submitted videos of world birds. Though I have just discovered this site, so far, the videos I have watched have been of very good quality. A significant number of the videos will also have the bird calls going on which is an added bonus.

 

the Internet Bird Collection

 

Enjoy!

[Cedars]

I did take the photo. Here is another with a closer look at a few of the Condors, two immature and one adult. All have tags identifying them. No more thumbnails - I'm out of space. The "little bird" is a Raven for scale.

 

 

Having your own personal condor pics must be a highlight of your photo collection!

 

PM Tormod or one of the Admins of the site and ask them if they will expand your pic space.

[Hill]

This may have been posted before, but I do not remember seeing it.

 

The Internet Bird Collection is host to user submitted videos of world birds. Though I have just discovered this site, so far, the videos I have watched have been of very good quality. A significant number of the videos will also have the bird calls going on which is an added bonus.

 

the Internet Bird Collection

 

Enjoy!

 

Looks like a good site. Thanks for the link.

[DougF]

Thanks Cedars

For "The Internet Bird Collection" site, I will enjoy it.

 

PS. Very nice pics Hill, Good job.