Birdman of Lauderdale

I took my front left tire in to the dealer’s for repair or replacement. He found a puncture in the sidewall of my tire, with nothing inside that had penetrated the tire. He thinks it could have been one of the barnyard dogs that was chasing us and biting at our tires on Saturday in Pepin County, Wisconsin (see my January 23rd entry).

Luckily the tire was still under warranty, so replacement was covered.

But I will give barking farmyard dogs much more respect (and space) in the future!

Last Saturday, six of us toured Pepin County, Wisconsin, as part of the National Eagle Center’s annual Golden Eagle survey. On one day in January, Scott Mehus of the NEC heads up this annual survey. Nearly 100 surveyors cover assigned areas to find and count golden eagles, bald eagles, hawks and other raptors. Since we’re all out on the same day in our own assigned area, there should be less duplication of counting.

This was the fourth year for some of our group, and the fourth year without spotting a single golden eagle! But we did find 46 bald eagles; we only had 8 last year. And we had 19 red-tailed hawks vs. 7 last year. It’s interesting to speculate on the great increase in our numbers. Part of it may be the warmer weather so far this year. Bald eagles like to fish in open water and the Mississippi River may have been more open, longer this winter. So, more of them could stay around, rather than moving farther south to find food.

One of our folks was a visitor from Aberdeen, Scotland. We were able to find him a life bird, the American tree sparrow! So that was pretty exciting! And, we were able to find him onion rings to have at lunch! He simply loves American onion rings; can’t get them back home.

We also saw horned larks, wild turkeys, lots of dark-eyed juncos, and a couple of pileated woodpeckers.

And our cars were chased by three farm dogs which chewed at my tires. I did find one tire deflated when I got home, and unable to hold pressure after re-inflating it…could it have been the dogs? I’ll find out when I get it repaired today. Stay tuned.

January is a slow time for bird watchers. I do continue to go out with my Monday Morning Birding Bunch, but now we feel lucky if we spot ten species. In spring and fall, we can see 30 or more. And the winter birds are very predictable: Various woodpeckers (downy, hairy, red-bellied), although a pileated woodpecker is pretty spectacular. A northern flicker would be uncommon, so note-worthy.

Black-capped chickadees are common as are white-breasted nuthatches. Brown creepers can be found, but not too often. Blue jays announce that they own the woods. And cardinals are usually around.

Juncos and gold finches abound, even in very cold, windy weather.

We see occasional red-tailed hawks, usually along freeways, and bald eagles are not that uncommon and always nice to see. Seeing an owl is a very special event, usually a barred or great-horned owl. And every so often we have a Cooper’s or sharp-shinned hawk speed through looking for a birdy breakfast.

I’ve been fighting a nasty cold and sinus condition for nearly two weeks, so I’ve pretty much confined my bird watching to the feeders in the front yard. I’m learning to study them for behavior habits, how they interact, trying to determine flock groupings and the like.

If you’d like to attract birds so you can have some fun watching them, place your feeders closer than three feet or beyond thirty feet from your windows to reduce bird/glass collisions. In our case, 30 feet would put the feeders out in the street, so ours are about 20 feet out.

I offer shelled sunflower seeds, safflower, peanuts and suet. And, very importantly, a heated water bath. I’d suggest visiting a wild bird store to get some feeder suggestions, various feed offerings, some squirrel deterrents, and identification guide choices. Don’t hesitate to ask questions; owners and staff are glad to help.

Review of Twelve Owls, Laura Erickson, illustrations by Betsy Bowen. University of Minnesota Press, 67 pp. $19.95.

This book is a high quality production: It’s printed in landscape format on high gloss paper, which allows Betsy Bowen’s paintings and sketches of owls to “pop.”

Each chapter covers one of the twelve owl species we might see here in Minnesota, starting with the smallest, the Saw-whet Owl, concluding with the Great Gray Owl. Each chapter is introduced by a life-sized painting of the owl, so as the owls get bigger, the paintings focus on the head and shoulders.

I’ve been watching birds for over twenty years, leading field trips, writing about birds and bird watching, even “talking” to owls. And yet I learned a great deal from this book.

In the Introduction, I got new insight into the importance of the owl’s noiseless flight. It’s obvious that a silent approach is essential for capturing prey. And in most cases, the owl locates prey by sound. As Laura points out, in flight, an owl’s ears are right next to their wings. Noisy wing beats would interfere with its hearing. Silence in flight is improved by stiff combs on the flight feathers that break up the airflow over the wing.

Owls’ hearing is estimated to be ten times more sensitive than human hearing. Great Gray Owls can hear the sound of a rodent moving beneath eighteen inches of snow!

We birders are sometimes led to an owl by listening for crows squawking, mobbing one. Laura offered a new insight for that mobbing: The theory that by driving away the owl, it won’t see where the crows are going to roost for the night. The night is a dangerous time for crows if an owl is around. An owl can swoop through sleeping crows, silently picking off one before its neighbors know what happened.

The Burrowing Owl is the only owl listed as endangered by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. It uses old prairie dog burrows for its home. It collects mammal scat to adorn the entrance to its home to attract the dung beetles it feeds to its young, and keep predators away (whew!).

Of the twelve species in the book, the most common owl in Minnesota, and in North America, is the Great-Horned Owl. I’ve read elsewhere that you’re never more than five miles away from a Great-Horned Owl anywhere in North America. The male brings the female mice and rabbits while she’s brooding her eggs and chicks. And as the weather warms, he brings her more pungent gifts. In Laura’s words, “He says it with skunks.”

Many Snowy Owls have been coming south into Minnesota this winter. Laura says it’s not always caused by a crash of the lemming population in Canada. It may be that a higher lemming population led to increased nesting success and now there are more owls than the food supply or hunting territories can support. A typical clutch is three to five eggs, but can go as high as seven to eleven. Young males are the ones most frequently forced to wander.

The book ends with the essay on the Great Gray Owl. While it weighs less than the Snowy or Great-Horned Owls, it is longer in length, one of the longest in the world. Laura says it’s “feathers and spirit and not much more.”

I was surprised to see that a local Twin Cities newspaper put “Twelve Owls” in the category of children’s picture books. I didn’t think that was appropriate and decided to enlist a young bird fan that I know to test that designation.

Chloe is a nine-year old friend who reviewed “Twelve Owls” for me and judged it “Cool!” She especially liked the paintings and drawings. But she was put off by a number of big words and thinks it’s really aimed at an older audience, maybe thirteen-year olds, “so they’d know the words.”

And her mother agrees that anyone picking up the book and looking through it will recognize immediately that this is not a children’s picture book.

“Twelve Owls” is meant for people who want to know more about owls in Minnesota, from beginners to the more advanced bird watcher.

Our Monday morning bird group was walking through a wooded area near the Bass Ponds (Bloomington). I was walking beside John, a fairly new birder, and we were listening to a bunch (flock) of robins squawking at each other. I told John that robins sometimes can raise the alarm about an owl or other predator, but I thought these particular robins were squabbling about the abundant chokecherry crop, trying to get more for themselves. Not an alarm call.
We proceeded down the trail till we met our partners, Val and Ellen. They stood under a huge cottonwood tree, looking up at a great-horned owl…which the robins had seen and were raising the alarm about! So much for my “years of birding wisdom!”

One Monday morning this month, we birded at Silverwood Park in New Brighton, part of the Three Rivers Park District. It’s a very nice park, formerly a Salvation Army summer camp. The paths are paved and it’s an easy walk.

There we found an exceptionally white fronted red-tailed hawk perched in an oak. Most red-tails have a “belly band” of dark feathers across the stomach area, but this guy was snow white, very beautiful. Suddenly another red-tail was soaring above, occasionally calling that “keeer-r-r” call you hear in every Western when the hero steps out into the street. We figured the hawk on the branch was a juvenile and the hawk in the air was a parent, letting the juvvie know that it was time for it to hunt its own breakfast.

After we left Silverwood, we went a bit farther north to Long Lake Regional Park, also in New Brighton. We drove through the park, looking for any raptors without any luck. Our caravan of three cars had pretty well split up as we left, when we sighted some large white birds in a pond just off the exit roadway. We got out the scope and found they were trumpeter swans! And they were accompanied by a flotilla of hooded mergansers, the females of which species show a classical “bad hair day” every day.

Then, when we looked toward the meadow side of the road, there was a northern shrike in the top of a small tree, looking for something on which to pounce. Shrikes will take mice, voles, other small birds, and often impale them on a thorn or barb of a picket fence. Their nickname is the “butcher bird.”

Off across the fields was a flock of crows raising a ruckus in the oaks that bordered the prairie. This is often a mobbing action directed at an owl or other bird of prey, but we couldn’t see any sign of the target of their annoyance until Julian got on the scope and studied the trees. There sat a great-horned owl, blending into the browns and oranges of the leaves, but visible whenever he turned his head to keep track of the harassing crows.

I call this the exit phenomenon. It’s similar to the birdwatcher’s myth that you always see the best birds in the parking lot as you’re returning to your car…only this time it was on the exit road.

It was a pretty productive final act for the morning.

About a year ago, some of my birding friends and I decided to go out birding each Monday morning. It helped me to face winter a little more bravely last year. And we’re still keeping up the weekly outings.

One of the most special mornings this month was on the shore of White Bear Lake. We were looking out into the lake for waterfowl when someone heard twittering behind us. There was a flock of snow buntings doing their aerial display, turning, dropping, rising like a school of fish, with no apparent leader, but all in unison nevertheless. The snow bunting is a lovely house sparrow sized bird that spends its summers as far north in North America as you can go and still be on land. Its summer plumage is black and white. In fall and winter it becomes a more muted brown and white. They were very impressive; and very nervous, never staying on the ground for long before taking to the air again.

And in among them, my friend Julian spotted two Lapland longspurs. These migrants, too, come from the high Arctic. They’re brown with a gorgeous facial pattern, chestnut color down the back of the head, and, as the name suggests, a long spur on each foot…the rear facing toe is much longer than the front facing ones.

A delightful November morning’s birding.

Well, after complaining about not seeing any white-throated sparrows yesterday, I did see some by the end of the day. They were across the alley, feeding in the underbrush. So, that’s a sign of fall for me.
Then this noon, we had a couple of dark-eyed juncos in the yard. They’re also known as snowbirds…so we went from fall yesterday to winter today. Argh! That was quick!
I told my wife that the strong north wind yesterday probably blew them in from the Arctic tundra.
We’ll watch to see if they stick around or go back north for a while.

We’re still waiting to see white-throated sparrows in our yard. My friends are seeing them in St. Paul and White Bear Lake, and I’m seeing one or two on field trips, but none in the yard yet. My buddy, Val, says to put out some millet and they’ll drop out of the sky! I put on a hat first, then tried it…nada so far. But my ground feeding space is covered by peonies and shrubbery at the moment, so maybe after my fall clean up I’ll have a more attractive place for the seed.
White-throated sparrows are the ones who sing, “Poor Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.” It’s the bird that the lumberjacks called the loneliness bird ’cause their song is so mournful. To me, it’s a marker of fall’s arrival. So, I’m waiting…

We’ve had a few interesting birds taking advantage of water sources in our yard. First it was a house wren “bathing” in the little cuplets of water held by the leaves of a sedum plant. The leaves are rather thick, cup-shaped and each hold maybe a teaspoon of water after the morning sprinkler system has run. This little house wren was going from mini-puddle to mini-puddle, leaf to leaf, splashing, fluttering its wings, and seeming to enjoy just getting wet during this dry period we’re going through.

In the second instance, a beautiful female American Redstart, a tiny warbler with yellowish tail and wing patches, was hopping through the Isanti dogwood as the reciprocating sprinkler came and went across the bush. It looked like she was playing a dodge game with the water drops, and again enjoying an opportunity for a shower, cooling down during our recent hot spell.