birdy words & whims

MY BLOG IS MOVING!

2010-11-13T13:59:00.000-08:00

I decided to move to Wordpress so I will no longer be updating on this site!!
Please follow me at http://birdyword.wordpress.com

Thanks!!

Happy Owl-ween!

2010-10-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

What's a better way to spend Halloween than getting up close and personal with Wisconsin's smallest owl, the Northern Saw-whet Owl?

I will be leading an Audubon field trip to view a Saw-whet banding demonstration at Linwood Research Station in Stevens' Point on Friday October 29th and the public is welcome to join for a small fee of $10. We will be leaving Madison at 5pm and will return around midnight. Right now, I believe there is a waiting list, but we're spreading the field trip out over two nights. Contact Mara McDonald (mamcdona@wisc.edu) for further information.

Follow me for a month in Europe!

2010-08-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce a new blog that Tim and I will be sharing!

http://stephandtimgoeurope.wordpress.com

We are going on a tour of Europe and leaving this Thursday (August 19th). Follow us along on our trip from Ireland to Greece. We'll update with photos and stories while we are traveling! Might even get to see some cool European bird species! I can't wait!

the perks of being a field biologist

2010-07-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

So my 3 months working at Fort McCoy in Western Wisconsin are now over. I thought I would have more time to blog while I was there, but I guess I will just have to spend some time catching up now! I'm happy to be back at home in Madison but I will look back fondly at my time in the field and of course, look forward to my next time in the field! Even though, yeah, I haven't quite figured out what I will be doing next year yet.

What's so great about working such an unpredictable job where you often end up covered in scratches, sunburn and bug bites?

Let me tell you!

1. Peace and quiet. OK, I worked on military bases twice now so I can tell you it's not always that quiet or peaceful. But you do get chances to get away from it all. Sometimes there might be some faint gunshots going off in the background, sure. But when you wander through the prairie or deep into the woods, it's just you and nature. You don't have to worry about being bombarded with emails or phone calls, just fresh air and bird songs.

solitude from stephanie on Vimeo.

Peace and quiet at Fort McCoy

2. Free Food. Not always a guarantee of course, but something I definitely benefited from this year. Late June brought tons of plump blueberries and blackberries and they were absolutely delicious!

3. Travel. I get to see fun parts of the state/country/world that I normally might bypass as a tourist. For instance, who knew that Sparta, Wisconsin has the largest cemetery for fiberglass animals (you know the huge ones you see at bizarre roadside attractions in the middle of nowhere!) When else am I going to be able to canoe the Kickapoo river or walk into a mile-long tunnel on the Sparta-Elroy Bike Trail? And did you know there's a park in Texas where you can actually step in real fossilized dinosaur foot prints? Or how about, how would you feel about not just visiting the Amazon rainforest but sharing your accommodations with bats and baby owls, washing your clothes in a tributary of the Amazon river and swimming in lakes filled with caymans and piranhas?

Probably the largest bird I have ever posed with, at the Graveyard for Fiberglass Animals in Sparta, WI

An old train tunnel that has been converted as part of the Sparta-Elroy Bike Trail in Wilton, WI

4. A sense of adventure. Sometimes as I was walking through the army base looking for birds and butterflies, it would feel kind of like I was a kid again pretending to be an explorer in my own backyard. Except this time my backyard was much bigger. And the real US Army was following me! Ha, just kidding. There are some stories though that soldiers have accidentally kidnapped wildlife researchers, mistaking them as part of a military exercise! It almost happened to me, but I was able to explain what I was doing and everything was OK. Whew.

Getting lost at McCoy

5. Discovery. You never know when you might discover something new, or at least witness something that not many other people get to see. Fort McCoy happens to be a huge reserve for a Federally Endangered species of butterfly, the Karner Blue. Since there are so many of them there, I had a few moments where one would land on my finger and lick the salt off my skin. Here I am, with this tiny endangered butterfly the size of a thumb nail and it's finding nourishment from my sweat!

Hanging out with a Karner

On another occasion, I sat down to take a picture of this other species of butterfly when I heard some strange squeaking. It turned out three lively and playful badgers were emerging from their den maybe 15 feet away from me. Luckily, I was able to catch it on camera! To give you an idea of how rare it is to see wild badgers during the day, my supervisor has been working all over this same army base for four years and has never seen one. Here's a glimpse:

badgers from stephanie on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoyed a look into the life of a field biologist! More to come later.

Hark! A Horned Lark!

2010-06-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

So, now that migration season has long been over I have moved on to a new project that I am working on. I am working at Fort McCoy and studying butterflies. It's a whole new area for me and I'm just learning a ton of new stuff! I have been quite busy lately and haven't had time to update my blog. But hopefully that will change.

Well, I just wanted to take a moment and update with some photos of Horned Larks at Fort McCoy. I don't get to see grassland species like larks very often, so I like to take the time to watch them scuttle across the roads while I'm here. Funny thing is that just after I took the pictures, a few soldiers pulled up in their Humvee and asked if I was OK. And of course they scared away the birds! I thought it best not to explain the whole situation though and just move on home! I'm sure they would have thought I was crazy though, looking at birds while they are busy preparing for war. Anyway, here are the pictures and video...

You can see the horns right?

Horned Lark from stephanie beilke on Vimeo.

Look (and listen) closely! There's a butterfly waving its wings in the background (no I don't know what kind) and the bird you hear singing is a Vesper Sparrow.

A little about leaves

2010-05-10T13:40:00.000-07:00

So, a little about leaves....

When it comes to tree identification, of course the most helpful tool is using the leaves. Even during the fall or winter you can pick leaves up off the ground and learn a bit about the vegetation around you.

A little bit about leaves with lobes...

One way to identify leaves is whether or not they are "lobed." Some familiar lobed leaves are Oak and Maple. But there are a few different species in these groups you can learn.

On our study sites, we have several different species of Oak, including Red, White, Burr, Black, and Swamp White. The two leaves pictured above are White (left) and Red (right), two of our more common species. The big thing to look for here is that White Oak leaves have rounded lobes and Red Oak have pointed lobes. It's that easy! But be careful, White oak can also be confused with Swamp White and Burr, which also have rounded lobes. And Red Oak and Black oak both have pointed lobes. Here, it's important to recognize the different patterns and the amounts of space on the leaves instead.

Another lobed leaf plant, Maple. It's absolutely everywhere in our woods at Kickapoo Valley Reserve, especially Sugar Maple. See if you can tell the difference between these two saplings.

Which one is Red Maple? Well in this case, the color gives it away, but it's not always that easy. During the middle of summer all Red and Sugar maple will have dark green leaves. The thing to look for is the fringe. Sugar maple leaves are more smooth while Red Maple has a more jagged edge. Another hint is that in springtime, Red Maple will have red flowers.

Some things to look for in non-lobed leaves...

The giveaway for this leaf is its shear size. This is a Basswood leaf and it is much bigger than the rest of the leaves on the ground. It also has an asymmetrical base, one side dips a little lower than the other. As opposed to other non-lobed leaves, such as elm and others, this one is especially rounded.

These two leaves pictured above, are both aspen. They look a little similar, but one is from a Big-toothed Aspen and one is from a Quaking Aspen. See the difference? The Big-toothed has big teeth! This is referring to the edge of the leaf which creates a toothlike pattern. The Big-tooth has large dips between the teeth whereas the quaking does not. Another obvious difference here is the size. Of course, on a given tree, leaves will range in size, but as for this Quaking leaf that is about as big as it will get. Also, Quaking Aspen leaves often "quake" or flicker rapidly in the breeze, giving them their name.

OK a little about birds too....

Since it's already the second week of May, spring migration is in full swing!! I've been seeing or hearing a new bird almost everyday. Yesterday it was a Red-eyed Vireo and today it was a Swainson's Thrush. Unfortunately, the birds are way up high in the trees and busy as ever, making it hard for me to take pictures of them! So all I have is a lovely yard bird during its migratory stop-over, a White-crowned Sparrow.

The local House Sparrow seems to be telling the White crown (on the right) he is not welcome in this brush pile, but he seems to be sticking around for a few days anyway, which is quite all right with me.

Join us for Bird Banding at Kickapoo Valley Reserve

2010-05-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, May 8, we are going to be doing bird banding at Kickapoo Valley Reserve as part of a public demonstration. All are invited to come check out the birds and hopefully some cool spring migrants. Kickapoo Valley Reserve is located around the city of La Farge, Wisconsin, just two hours north of Madison and about and hour southeast of La Crosse.

Kickapoo Valley Reserve Visitor Center
on State Hwy 131

For more information see the Kickapoo Valley Reserve Event Calendar: http://kvr.state.wi.us/event_view_all.asp?locid=115 or this flyer for our banding event: http://kvr.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=19127&locid=115

Banding will open to the public 8am-2pm. Another demonstration will be held on May 22 from 4-7pm. Hope to see you there!

Learning some of Wisconsin's trees by bark

2010-04-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been spending the last few weeks learning trees! It has been a bit difficult since some of the trees are still just leafing out. Fortunately, there are a few trees that are easy to learn, just by looking at the bark.

The White Ash has bark that forms a weaving pattern, creating little nooks.

Yellowbud Hickory (also known as Bitternut Hickory) has a similar weaving pattern, except the bark looks like it has been sanded down.

The Black Cherry Tree has bark that is peeling off in the shape of burnt potato chips.

Mature Aspen trees have deeply grooved bark at the base that becomes lighter colored and almost birch-like near the top. Seen above and below. This is Big-toothed Aspen.

Some more Wisconsin trees that can be easily identified by bark are Yellow Birch, Paper Birch, and Shagbark Hickory. Some of the other more common species, Maples, Oaks and Elms can be a little more difficult. Fortunately, their leaves make things much simpler! More on that later...

Spring Migration 2010

2010-04-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

Instead of heading south for the summer like I did last year, this year I decided to head north along with the migratory birds. Last week I drove up to Wilton, WI, just 2 hours north of Madison and nearby the cities of Tomah and Sparta. I'm now relaxing at the lovely farm house we're renting for the spring after a long day in the field (Thanks to our amazing hostess, Donna!!).

My new job is to collect data for Eric, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Basically, we are surveying migratory birds using the forests and savannas of Fort McCoy in Tomah and the woods of Kickapoo Valley Reserve in La Farge, WI. The focus is on wood warblers, especially those that have flown all the way here from Central and South America. So far a lot of early migrants have shown up at Kickapoo Valley where we have been collecting data on the vegetation, like Blue-headed Vireos, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Hermit Thrushes. However, we're still waiting for the warbler flood gates to crack open.

First things first though, and we have a lot of data to collect in the woods of Wisconsin. I don't think I ever mentioned it in my previous posts, but almost always when you do studies on birds you have to look at their environment and what kind of resources they are using. So that means we have been trawling the woods and identifying trees like mad for the past two weeks. I am definitely not a botanist, so it has been a bit grueling at times, but I'm learning a ton. Some of the really common trees here are White Oak, Red Oak, Basswood, Yellowbud (or Bitternut) Hickory, Red Maple and Sugar Maple. Some are nearly impossible to identify just by bark or shape alone. But fortunately, the oaks are just starting to leaf out now and some of the maples are almost in full summer plumage (hmmm.. ok maybe that's not the right word to describe it!) With the warm weather we've been having, the trees seem to be upping their usual pace, and in turn having an affect on insect populations. Will these factors influence the livelihood of our colorful spring warblers? I guess we have some research work that needs to be done.

Anyway here's a glimpse at our farm house where we're staying and an early spring migrant found in our yard.

Our home in the country

White-throated Sparrow - just stopping by on his way to Canada

A Red-tailed Hawk nest in view from our front porch

urban hawk banding

2010-01-31T17:24:00.000-08:00

Today I got the chance to meet up with Loren, one of the coordinators of the Raptor banding workshop I did in Stevens Point. He's also licensed to trap and band raptors and luckily lives here in town, so we thought we'd try trapping hawks today and see what we could get. It's been several months since I've gotten to handle birds, so maybe I had my expectations set a little high, but I was not disappointed!

We started out the morning with a Rough-legged Hawk spotted just down the road from our starting point. Not even 5 minutes after baiting the Roughie with deer mice, he was on the trap. Poor guy was clearly hungry, like many birds are in winter. I must admit, I'm more of a songbird birder than a raptor watcher. So, I'm still in the process of learning my local birds of prey! I don't believe I've ever gotten such a good glimpse of a Rough-legged Hawk before, and now he was here in my hand. He was quite stunning, a little bit smaller than a Red-tailed hawk, but with longer wings and a dark brown front. Rough-leggeds are only in Wisconsin for the winter, so they are a little bit more of a rarity compared to Red-tails, which are absolutely everywhere.

Close-up with a Rough-legged Hawk

Loren with our first catch of the day

Moments after banding our first bird, we were out setting traps after another Rough-legged and an adult Red-tailed hawk perching in the same tree. Unfortunately they were too far out. We had to walk the traps out to get closer to the birds and may have raised their suspicions. They weren't falling for it. Meanwhile, we caught sightings of a skunk walking around in the daylight and three flocks of Tundra Swans!

Our next catch was an immature Red-tailed Hawk, another easy catch that flew directly for our trap. We banded him right outside the Lussier Family Heritage Center near a popular walking trail, raising a few strange looks from passersby.

After releasing the young Red-tail, he stuck around for awhile perched atop the building before flying away.

After catching two hawks, we took a break for lunch. Alas we should have looked around more for hawks before sitting down! This red-tailed hawk caught it's own lunch just outside the window while we were grabbing sandwiches.

After catching an immature Red-tail, I suppose the goal now was to get an adult. We tried and failed to catch the red-tail pictured below. He went after the trap, but broke loose! Here in the picture, you can see how the mice are safely contained in the trap. The microfilaments attached to the top of the Bal-chatri Trap work as tiny nooses that catch on the raptor's feet.

Just as we were about to wrap up the day, we got a good spot on two Red-tails just down the road again from where we got our Rough-legged. We succeeded in getting one of the pair! Loren though it may be the male, judging by its smallish size, and the other may hawk have been its mate. Our adult red-tail still weighed in over 1100 grams. Pretty big, considering most of the birds I'm used to banding weigh around 10 grams!

So end of the day, we got 3 hawks. And I got to band all of them.. well with a little help of course.

Those sure are some "rough" legs.. I guess? A Rough-legged Hawk with some feathery feet!

backyard hawk watch

2009-11-23T19:39:00.000-08:00

This weekend I heard a bang on the glass sliding door. I ran to go look and see if a bird had tried to fly into our kitchen and saw a quite large bluish bird flying away from the porch. Not what I was expecting to see. What's big and blue.. but definitely not a Blue Jay..

The bird settled on the ground a few feet away from my window. It was a beautiful adult accipiter! I'm guessing the hawk was not the one who flew into the window, but its unfortunate victim. I'm sorry that the Robin tried to seek shelter in our kitchen and was quite unlucky in that regard. But on the other hand, I think it is still pretty cool to see a beautiful predator in action!

When it comes to accipters, I am still learning my fieldmarks. The differences between the Cooper's Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk are not always very clear. They have almost identical colorations and even their sizes can overlap. When it comes to birds of prey, the male is usually smaller, giving it an advantage when doing aerial displays to impress the larger female. Cooper's Hawks are generally larger than Sharp-shinned (Crow sized vs. Jay sized), but the male Cooper's Hawk can sometimes be similar in size to the female Sharp-shinned (or sharpie)! I am starting to get a better "feel" for Sharpie vs. Coop's, so I decided my backyard predator was a Sharpie.

See if you can tell for yourself..
WARNING: Upcoming photo not suited for all animal lovers and/or Robin enthusiasts

See how this hawk is not even that much bigger than its prey? And the head looks small compared to its body. These are important features I used to decide this is indeed a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

The next day I saw more feathers on my porch. Bluish brown. One with black spots. Definitely not Robin.. Signs point to Mourning Dove. It seems like our predator has found a pretty decent meal-zone. Maybe I will see the sharpie again!

halloween raven

2009-10-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

Common Ravens at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

friend on my doorstep

2009-10-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

I moved this month and although I'm still in suburbia of Madison, we do have a few nice birdy visitors every once in awhile. Yesterday I saw some big flocks of Cedar Waxwings and a few late migrating Red-winged Blackbirds just in our front yard. I was surprised to hear the blackbird "o-ke-lee" song that I definitely only would associate with summer. We have a nice little courtyard that is visited by a whole host of Juncos now. When it's junco season, you know it's winter. But birds are definitely still migrating. I've seen a few Ruby-crowned Kinglets in our yard and right now, there is a little thrush on the porch! He seems pretty content just sitting on the concrete slab, but hopefully he is finding food too.

ZOOM in!

Tail looks more reddish & contrasting with body plumage, plus the thin eye-ring + lack of the noticeable "buffy spectacles" over the bill are all leading me to believe it is a Hermit Thrush, but otherwise possibly Swainson's. They are tricky ones to ID.

(Update: he did eventually find a tasty bug to eat and flew away.. but was sitting on the porch for maybe an hour)

Madison migrants

2009-10-03T18:06:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks in Madison have been dreary and wet. Not the best weather to go birding. But the migrating birds are definitely flowing through right now.

A few weeks ago I was able to do some banding at Biocore Prairie again. The fall colors were just beautiful because of all the late blooming prairie plants.

We got quite a few migrants and young birds like this juvenile Red-eyed Vireo. It was neat to see the difference in eye color with the young vireos. Their eyes are dark brown and will turn red next year.

We caught this little guy, a Tennessee Warbler which can be very easily confused with another bird that we catch a lot of. Below is a picture of a female Common Yellowthroat. You can see how the Tennessee and the Yellowthroat both have whitish to buffy eyerings and yellow bellies! The biggest difference here though is size. The Tennessee Warbler is a very tiny warbler whereas the Yellowthroat is a bit more robust. It's too bad we didn't catch these two at the same time so I could have gotten a side-by-side comparison. But you'll also notice that the Tennessee has yellow all the way down its breast while the Yellowthroat has more yellow on the throat (surprise!) and is whiteish below.

Female Common Yellowthroat

Oh yes, we got another confusing Empidonax Flycatcher, similar to all the ones we were catching in Texas. Based on our many measurements, this guy ended up being a Traill's Flycatcher. The Traill's Flycatcher does not count as its own species, but it refers to both the Willow and the Alder Flycatcher. Apparently, there is just not enough information out there to completely tell the difference between these two in the hand. It is kind of scary how similar this guy looked to the Least Flycatchers I had banded before. There were differences in size though, with this one being a little bit too big to be a Least. Also this empidonax flycatcher had a less visible eyering, which is something to look for in the Traill's flycatcher.

Raptor Banding at Stevens Point

2009-09-15T09:41:00.001-07:00

OK, I'm a little behind in updating my blog! But a week ago I had the great opportunity to learn about raptor research techniques at the Linwood Springs Research Station in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

It was a 3 and a half day class and it covered everything from trapping & banding raptors to ascending tall trees to performing habitat surveys. Above pictured is our group for the September 2009 session (Me & Red-tail, Tim, Dave, Walt & Cooper's Hawk). I was the youngest there and the only girl. At first I wasn't too surprised about that since raptors are kind of macho birds. But our instructor, Gene Jacobs, actually said it wasn't too typical, and usually they get more women and more college-age participants in the classes. Either way, being the only girl definitely didn't mean I had to be protected from the fierce, taloned birds of prey. I got hands-on experience with two Red-tailed Hawks and an American Kestrel. Oh, and this was my absolute first time working with raptors!

My favorite was the Kestrel (an adult female). I love the falcon "helmet" or "side burns," that they have, very cute.

We almost caught a Merlin as well, a larger bird also in the falcon family. That would have been pretty neat, but the Merlins were not as interested in our traps. In order to trap birds, we used two methods: finding the raptors first and setting a trap or setting the trap first and then waiting for raptors to fly in. The first method used a type of trap called a "bal chatri," which is a cage covered in tiny nooses that get caught on a predator's feet. The cage has the bird's lucky prey item, usually a mouse from a pet store. Really, the mice are hardly ever harmed by the birds, but I wouldn't worry about it since most pet store mice end up being snake food or something of the sort anyway!

Another type of trap is a bow net, as pictured above. We used a live pigeon as a lure in this case. The pigeon was harnessed so it could not escape, and once again was unscathed by the raptor. We can use pigeons as bait since they are invasive non-native species and are not protected by federal law as most other birds are. Since pigeons are not protected, you could even keep one as a pet if you wanted to!

Anyway, once the hawk goes after the pigeon, it is lured into the area where the bow net is, and then we pulled the trigger to release the spring and the net captures our raptor. It's all a little like the boardgame, mouse trap. There are some great engineering minds behind all this raptor trap business. And it's a little more complicated than using the typical mist nets for songbirds, but it gets the job done.

Here I am with a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. Notice that the tail is brown rather than reddish.

And here I am with an adult Red-tailed. This guy took a little longer to come to our trap. They get a little smarter with age and more suspicious of prey inside of a funny cage.

In order to calm the raptors and keep them from flapping while we band and take measurements, we would use coffee cans to secure them. Just look at those tail feathers. This hawk had two generations of red feathers, meaning it was at least 3 years old.

Overall we caught four birds, 2 Red-tails, a Kestrel, and Cooper's Hawk. After the banding, weighing and measuring, we let them go! It was definitely a fun time, and working with raptors was an awesome experience. Even though they are powerful birds perfectly designed to tear open flesh with razor-sharp talons and bill, they really are not all that scary. I hope I get a chance to work with raptors again, we'll see!

The Wisconsin Idea

2009-09-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post a link to an article from the UW Madison "Wisconsin Idea" website, http://wisconsinidea.wisc.edu/profiles/McDonald/

It's a profile on my bird banding mentor, Mara McDonald, and about the work we do at Biocore Prairie. It's a lovely article!

I have to make a correction though, the author (not a science guy I presume) writes that we measure the femur of the birds, but it should say tarsus. Time to study up on your bird anatomy...

The tarsus (same as tarsometatarsus) is the foot bone, but many people call it the bird's "leg," since it is the most visible part of the bird leg. As you can see though, birds walk on their toes rather than their feet, just like cats and dogs. The femur and often the fibula & tibiotarsus disappear within all those feathers. So if you ever say someone has "chicken legs" you're probably comparing the person's legs to a bird's skinny feet. But if you ever eat a chicken leg, you're most likely eating the meaty area that makes up the thigh of the bird.

That's all for now for the anatomy lesson, I'll be back later so I can post some pictures from my most recent excursion to a Raptor Banding Class.

American Dipper

2009-08-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

I saw my first American Dipper while at the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, North America's only songbird that can swim!

10 Things I Learned in Texas...

2009-08-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

I'm finally settled in at home in Madison after spending the summer banding in Texas. It's good to be back! Mostly though because the temperature right now is only 73F (instead of 103) and it's the middle of the afternoon.

To sum up my experience with the MAPS program in Brownwood Texas, it was all I anticipated and more. So much fun! And really excellent people! I learned SO much and I would definitely do it again.

And here are some of the things I learned while I was in Texas...

1. Learned I can go an entire summer without using a microwave! (and oatmeal cooked on the stove top is 100 times better than microwave cooked!)

2. Learned how to age a Painted Bunting (PABU!)

3. Learned that the Carolina Chickadee sounds like it says, "I will kill you" and the Summer Tanager says, "Pik a chu.. pika chu chu chu!"

4. Learned how to spot the difference between a Bewick's Wren and a Carolina Wren

(Bewick's on the Left, Carolina on the Right)

5. Learned that Mourning Doves shed a lot of feathers when they EXPLODE! (see image at the top)

6. There's no pain quite like a Cardinal biting your cuticles

(Don't ever get too close to that beak!)

7. A lot of people in Texas have never seen a Painted Bunting, or if they have they think it's an escaped pet! They are all over the place, you just have to look!

8. It is OK to only check email 3 times a week

9. Learned how to do the Texan "two-step"

10. Learned so much about extracting and aging techniques for all birds!

wrapping up in Brownwood Texas

2009-08-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

We only have 2 more days of banding left in Texas! Then the MAPS 2009 season is officially over. Sad, but also sweet since I'm excited to go back home! Luckily there's plenty of time to enjoy the fall migration once I get back to Madison. Hurray for getting to identify fall warblers and sparrows.

This past week so far has been a little bit crazy! If it hasn't been one thing it has been another. We have been getting a lot of empidonax flycatchers lately (basically the hardest birds in North America to identify in the hand, or the hardest birds to identify ever as far as I can tell!) The best way to identify them is by sound, and birds don't sing in your hand. Mostly they have ended up being Least Flycatchers which have already begun their migration south for winter.

Here are the feisty flycatchers making flycatcher faces:

Along with the crazy "empids," today we got a crazy flock of bushtits. On our first net run of the day, I stumbled upon a net with no fewer than 10 bushtits caught in it and chirping their little tiny heads off. (If only I had a photo of this!! But I don't bring my camera with me on net-runs) Luckily I was able to call for back up and we managed to get them all out, plus a bonus female Black-and-white Warbler. We only lost one bushtit in the process and got them all banded and on their way. At the end of the day we banded 19 birds (Bushtits, Warbler + juvenile Cardinals, Rufous-crowned Sparrows, Painted Buntings and a Least Flycatcher). Definitely a high number for us, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. We will be going to our overall most productive site.

So on to the birdy whims like I promised. Exciting news, I finished my owl sweater!

Yes my Brownwood bedroom came with some nice fake wood paneling

Ta-da! According to the pattern, I'm supposed to add little buttons to complete the owl eyes. I don't have any buttons right now but maybe sometime later after I get home I will find some owl-eye buttons. I'm really happy how it turned out though. I will have to wait awhile to wear it though, not much use in the 100 degree Texas heat!!

The beginning of the end for Texas banding

2009-07-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

It has all come down to this, Week 10 of the 10-period banding season in Texas! Today was our first day of the 10th period. A slow start because of thunderstorms yesterday morning. Followed by more thunderstorms this afternoon and hopefully not any more this week. I've scheduled myself to hit the road by next Thursday night so I'm hoping everything can be wrapped up by then.

Back to the last period, Phase 9, we had quite a bit more success than the week before. We ended the week with a 15-bird day, which is pretty decent. Including one CRAZY "net-run." We typically check our nets for any birdies every 40 minutes and it's one person per five nets. Usually I can handle that. But at 6:40 I went to check the nets and I had a bird in every net except one which only had 2 fat cicadas which I also had to extract. I was extracting my fifth bird on my fifth net, and another bird flew right in. Total of 6 birds in one net check. I ran out of birdy bags to transport the birds back so I just held on to the poor little wren. So I ended up with a Carolina Wren, 3 Cardinals (including 2 juveniles), a Mourning Dove and a Bewick's Wren. I was pretty exhausted after extracting all those birds! At least it made for a fun day.

In contrast, today was mostly dull since we were at our slowest site. I spent most of the time reading a new book that was a gift from my aunt Leslie (Thanks Leslie!), Life List by Olivia Gentile. The book is a biography of Phoebe Snetsinger, a record-holding life lister, meaning she had seen and kept records of over 6,000 birds in her lifetime. So far it is an interesting read about a woman who begins birding as a hobby to escape her life as a 1960's housewife. But after being diagnosed with melanoma, her time is cut short. She vows to spend her remaining days birding all over the world with help from an inheritance after her wealthy father's death.

Today when I got to extract a bird that looked like a mysterious warbler I couldn't immediately identify, I definitely felt a rush of excitement. And I can see how identifying birds can turn from passion to obsession and fanatacism. According to the biography, Phoebe Snetsinger definitely crossed that line. It came to a point where she was rarely ever at home with her family and she was putting herself in very dangerous situations just to see birds. For instance, she was raped and almost killed during a trip to Papua New Guinea.

I can see why she would pursue a hobby so much, since she was given a short time to live and she didn't have any other outlet or career, but I wouldn't choose it for myself. I have to wonder if she would have enjoyed banding though. I find it much more rewarding than just birding, since you are doing something to help monitor bird populations rather than just trying to see them.

Also, I have to note, it is not always very helpful for birds when birders get excited about seeing a rare bird. Birders will flock to the rare bird's location and may disrupt it or call attention to predators. Most birders, of course know that there is a birders' code of ethics though, and they know not to harrass birds or have an overabundance of people trying to view an endangered species.

Although I'm not a fanatic, I do absolutely love watching birds and seeing a new species I have never seen before. I have already seen several new ones this summer including the Worm-eating Warbler, Blue Grosbeak, Green Jay and Olive Sparrow- just to name some of my favorites! I have some kind of life list but it is very casual and I'm sure it has huge holes in it from birds I have seen in Costa Rica, Florida and Arizona, my checklists and notes are somewhere at my parents' house. Anyway I have been using a great website, http://www.birdpost.com/, that allows you to list all your birds and where and when you've seen them. My list just has some of what I have seen but doesn't go into detail. So far my number is 332! If you use the site, my username is SongbirdSpiffy if you care to track what my favorite birds are or whatever!

Wow, this has been a wordy post so I'm sure you're looking for the birdy part of it. Remember I said something about a mysterious warbler that I got to extract today? Ah yes my favorite part of today, aside from being out for 12 hours, 2 hours of taking down net poles, another flat tire etc.

Well here is the lovely warbler. Like pretty much every bird we've been getting lately, she was molting like crazy too. All the more helpful for people trying to identify it (not quite).

Despite having no clue while extracting this bird, it was fairly easy to identify once I brought it back to our banding station. Blueish color with white wingbars? Incomplete eyering? Yellow breast with a reddish bar? Yellow lower mandible? Yellow feet and black legs? All fieldmarks for the Northern Parula.

Northern Parula

OK, I have words and birds, so next time I update I promise whims aplenty.

How to age a PABU!

2009-07-23T11:45:00.001-07:00

PABU (we pronounce it pah-boo) being short for Painted Bunting of course. All birds have official four letter codes like PABU, and bird banders end up memorizing lots of them and using them in place of the bird's actual common name. Like MODO instead of Mourning Dove and HOFI instead of House Finch. Sometimes the four letter code is just more fun to say! Just a little bird nerd tidbit for you.

In general, when it comes to age and sex, birds can be rather difficult. The best way of knowing for sure what a bird's sex is, is by getting a DNA sample. And the best way to determine age is if you capture a bird when it's born and then recapture it in successive years. But when it comes to Painted Buntings, there are a lot of clues that you can look for. For instance, we know the above picture is an adult male. In the bird world, it's typical for males to be bold and bright.

And we know for sure this picture above is a female Painted Bunting. Or is it? Males in their second year of life actually look a lot like the females. They don't molt into their full breeding plumage until their third year!

The best way to tell apart a second year male or female Painted Bunting is to look at its nether regions. The male will typically have a swollen "cloacal protuberance" during the breeding season. In Pabu's, females are the only ones that develop a brood patch, a loss of feathers on the breast and expansion of blood vessels in contact with the eggs during incubation. Sex can be determined in lots of other birds this way, while others don't even give such obvious physical clues that they are breeding.

For even more fun ways to determine age in a Painted Bunting, meet the PABU family...!

We happened to catch a male, female, and baby all around the same time a few days ago. I'm sure you can tell them apart.

This is the smallest babiest of baby buntings!! It doesn't get much fresher from the nest than this. This baby is still growing in all his feathers and doesn't even have a tail yet! Of course, the first thing he does is fly into one of our nets. But his mom was close by his side and they both flew away together just fine.

And now a little bit about bird wings. If you really want to know your stuff about how to tell the age of a bird in hand, feel free to buy a Pyle guide. If you don't want to spend the money though I'll give a little introduction. Bird wings can be great for telling the age of the bird since a lot of birds follow a specific pattern in how and when they molt their wing feathers. For PABUs, we look at the coloration on their feathers since it varies by age. Look at the differences in the below picture.

All painted buntings are born with brownish gray wing feathers. Over time, the females grow in all green-edged flight feathers and the males get bright green and red feathers. Birds in their second year keep some of their old baby feathers while they are growing adult feathers.

The more accurately we are able to determine age in birds gives us more information on just how long wild birds live. So it's good to have these skills. But while it may be relatively easy to do for Painted Buntings, it is a much different story for a lot of other birds! This summer I have definitely learned a lot, but it still takes a lot of training to know your bird molts.

nighthawk ...dayhawk

2009-07-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

The other day I found this very cryptic bird roosting in a tree outside the Camp Bowie security office..

It was a Common Nighthawk! Indeed these birds are quite common, and you can find them all throughout North America, but you rarely ever see them while they are perched on a tree. That is, unless you are always on the look out for bird-shaped silhouettes everywhere you go...

Common Nighthawk

For the most part, these birds are active during the night as you could probably guess. We usually hear them doing their "peent" call right before dawn while we are setting up our mist nets. And they also seem to like to sleep in the road while I'm driving up to our banding sites. (Don't worry they always fly away when they hear the car) Once in awhile we also see and hear them well into the daytime. Then they transform into Common Dayhawks, of course.

If you are enjoying a summer evening, remember to look for the nighthawk's long dark wings with white central spots. Or listen for the nasal "peent peent" call coming from the sky. Or I suppose just look out for any bird shaped tree branches during the day.

brownest of little brown birds...

2009-07-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

Bewick's Wren

I mentioned last week that we got 10 Bewick's Wrens in one day. But I realized that I have never taken a photo of one! I'm sure they are our 2nd most common species that we catch out here in Brownwood, right after Painted Buntings. We get them at all six of our sites and they just love to fly into the nets. They are tiny, but feisty and a whole lot of fun to extract from a mist net. One time, I had one go completely through a hole in the net (the holes are tiny half-inch squares) and was only caught by his little foot. I'm still not really sure how that happened!

Here is the little Bewick's Wren in all his glory. They look similar to House Wrens except for the white eyebrow and the black and white tail feathers and they sound remarkably similar to Song Sparrows. I'm sure if there were Song Sparrows singing here I would never be able to tell the difference, but luckily there are thousands of Bewick's Wrens and no Song Sparrows so I never will get them confused!

And now for the brownest of all little brown birds and the new species of the week...

Huh.. I'm sure I'm not the only one that would look at this bird and think "it looks like a sparrow" and then not really know much more than that! When trying to identify bird species, birders usually look for distinguishing features, like Does it have a colored bill? Does it have markings around the eyes or face? Does it have a reddish cap? Wingbars? Spots or streaking on the breast? In this case, this bird really doesn't have any of those markings, so what am I to do?

Well the field guide wasn't especially helpful but we were able to narrow it down based on the pictures and range maps. Then we could refer to the Pyle guide for bird banders. One species had faint white wing bars, black "anchor-shaped" spots on the back and white tips on the outer rectrices (tail feathers).

So our mystery bird must be... a Cassin's Sparrow! Haha, is that what you guessed too? This is the picture in the Sibley field guide :

Excellent!

Cassin's Sparrow

Phase 7 Summary

2009-07-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we finished phase 7 of banding in Brownwood. Since I still haven't gotten my car back, we had to park and walk a couple extra miles to our banding site when the roads got too muddy. But we ended the day with 10 birds and 68 total birds for the phase. And finally at one of our sites this week, we beat our record for # of birds in one day. We got 21 birds (including a Cardinal that escaped from the net) at a site called Stonehouse. Most of those birds were Bewick's Wrens. We had 10 wrens, mostly fledglings. Bewick's Wrens are a little more difficult to age, but usually you can tell the hatch-years by their fresher plumage, dull colors and loosely textured (fluffier) feathers.

Dickcissel juvenile

One of my favorite fledglings this week was a baby Dickcissel. He was still growing in all his juvenile feathers so we had to release him close to where we found him, so he could find his parents.

Dickcissel

A funny story is that we caught a few female House Sparrows last summer in Wisconsin, and we sort of guessed that they were Dickcissels at first since we had never caught a House Sparrow before. Sure, there is no question what's a House Sparrow when you see one on a city block, but a bird in the hand can sometimes be deceiving! If you look at the below picture of a female House Sparrow, you can see that they do look a little similar. Oh, the joys of little brown birds..

Female House Sparrow

This week, we got to band our first woodpeckers at Camp Bowie!

Ladder-backed Woodpecker, juvenile

We actually got two Ladder-backed Woodpeckers (mother and juvenile) in the same net at Stonehouse and two again the next day at Mesquite.

This is a juvenile because of the red tipped feathers on the head. The adult male has much more extensive red on the head.

From the back, you can see the woodpecker's pointy tail feathers. These feathers are much stronger and stiffer on woodpeckers than for other birds so they can use them to balance on the side of a tree.

We had another new visitor to the nets this week which was a complete surprise. It was a female black-and-white Warbler! We thought we were completely done banding warblers for the season, but I guess not. For the most part, warblers that we had the chance of seeing only migrate through Texas on their way much further north. But according to the B&W Warbler's range map there is a little spot in central Texas where they breed.

Female Black-and-white Warbler (photo taken during training)

For now, I have a couple days off, but hopefully there will be some more new birds next week!

The season for fledglings...

2009-07-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

Lately our capture rates at Camp Bowie had been declining, mostly due to the fact that it has been incredibly hot. When it's hot, the birds are less active and they are also more likely to get heat stress if they are left in the nets too long. But today we began to see a fabulous trend. More birds and more baby birds! Last week our greatest number of captures was 10 in one day, but today we got 12! Yipee.

Painted Bunting juvenile

Above pictured is our first (finally!) baby Painted Bunting. We hardly go a day without catching a bunting, so it was just a matter of time before we got some hatch-year birds. He was very drab and growing in new feathers absolutely everywhere. This usually means that it hasn't been too long since he left the nest and we give these birds the term, local. You can see the fleshy gape on the bill and some feathers growing in on the top of the head. So cute.

Carolina Chickadee juvenile

This was a hatch-year Carolina Chickadee. It has been out of the nest for awhile so all the juvenile feathers are grown in at this point. It's difficult to tell them apart from the adults except that the feathers are in really fresh and in good condition.

OK, maybe he looks a little messy in the pictures, but believe me, most chickadees look much worse. With lots of use, flight feathers (wing and tail) get ragged over time and then are replaced in an orderly sequence when the bird molts.

Northern Cardinal juvenile

In one day, we got one juvenile Painted Bunting, a juvenile Carolina Chickadee, another juvenile Rufous-crowned Sparrow, juvenile Eastern Phoebe, and two Northern Cardinal youngsters. Since they are still testing out their wings, they're more likely to fly into a net than older birds. The cardinals were pretty funny looking. The one pictured had random splotches of red all over, a pretty good sign that he is a male since the females don't get red feathers on the face. The other juvenile cardinal that we got looked very different, without any red splotches on the body feathers and more orange on the bill. Still, a really good sign that you are looking at a young cardinal and not an adult female is a blackish or brownish bill instead of bright orange, and a lack of the black mask on the face.

birdy art update

My latest projects were the Dickcissel

and the Cerulean Warbler (per request of MAPS biologist Tiffany!)

And to my readers, if you ever need a birdy drawing let me know in the comments!

Black-capped Vireos at Fort Hood

2009-06-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

So since it has been raining for the past 24 hours, our banding schedule has been delayed for the time being. Hopefully we will get back out in the field tomorrow. I spent this past weekend in Killeen, which is about 2 hours away and is the closest place I could bring my Volvo station wagon to get serviced. Although my car has toughed it out through mud pits, hail, and downpours it hasn't really been working perfectly for the past couple of months. So I had to leave it in Killeen to get a part replaced. In the meantime, I have a shiny brand new Mazda sedan which is not exactly the best car for driving through what I have been driving through.. so I'm hoping they will have my car fixed sometime soon! You might not think a station wagon is ideal for rugged conditions, but it is sort of a hybrid between a station wagon and an SUV and is technically all-wheel drive!

This is a picture of my car in the field and covered in mud. It usually looks a whole lot filthier though. I miss my car! However, the one I have now is pretty nice and fancy, plus the A/c works a lot better!

Along with car trouble, (flat tire last week, engine died out of nowhere two weeks before that) I have been having computer issues as well! I just had to order a new power cord since mine is giving me grief (again)! Oh and more bad news... our coffee shop that we regularly go to to receive internet access has gone out of business and they're closing ..TOMORROW! We do know of one other place in the whole town that has wifi so it looks like we will be taking our regular coffee trips elsewhere. And there's always the public library. Ah, farewell to Pecan Valley Coffee, we will miss you so much! Sorry that our biweekly $1 iced tea contributions couldn't help you out more.

But more about our trip to Killeen now... Our supervisor Julie's friend Carla works on Fort Hood for the Nature Conservancy so we got access to the base to do some extra banding. Julie is doing a research study on Painted Buntings so we have been target netting to catch adult males. Now, Painted Buntings are spectacular birds, but while I was on Fort Hood I was more interested in Black-capped Vireos, a very endangered bird that I have never seen before. Turns out, they were just about as abundant as all the biting insects on the army base.

I was dying to get a picture of one, but of course they are very flitty birds and they love to hang out deep in the scrubby vegetation.

After watching an adult forage with some of its fledglings, I finally got a few fuzzy photos like the one above. You can sort of make out the "black cap" which is more like a dark face mask.

Well, as luck would have it, and since they were just about everywhere, we ending catching three young Black-capped Vireos in our mist nets.

Black-capped Vireo (juvenile)

They were so cute! The adult males are actually much more striking, as usual, with very black head feathers instead of gray. I didn't get any pictures of the adult though.

All of the vireos we caught were already banded. This one has a blue color band on one of his feet as you can see in the picture. A group with the Nature Conservancy is doing an intensive project with the vireos involving nest searching and banding hatchlings while they're still in the nest. You have to have very special permission in order to band an endangered species. Our group doesn't have that particular license, so if we ever catch a Black-capped Vireo at Camp Bowie, we just have to let it go without a band.

You can tell this guy is young by the fleshy gape around the corners of the bill. He/she will need that to stretch his bil open really wide to beg for food.

Although we haven't seen any Black-capped Vireos, it may be possible to see them around here according to their Range Map. But it is clearly a bird with a shrinking habitat and dwindling numbers overall. With the help of the Nature Conservancy, we are learning more about this species and how to manage its habitat. To learn more about their project visit the Nature Conservancy's website or donate to http://support.nature.org/texas

Past the halfway point for my internship in TX..

2009-06-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of phase 6 for our banding season. So that means there are only four ten-day periods left of my internship. The weather is getting incredibly hot and humid, typically with temperatures soaring into the 90's before 10am. That means we've had fewer hours with our nets open and fewer birds. At our last six sites we had a record low of only 39 birds.

But as promised, I do have some photos of more juvenile birds that we have been getting more and more of.

This juvenile Lark Sparrow looks like a lot of young birds, brown and spotty. He still has the cheek patch like the adult, which will later turn a bright chestnut color.

Lark Sparrow (juvenile)

Similar to the Lark Sparrow, this juvenile Rufous-crowned Sparrow is much duller than the adult. He doesn't have much of a rufous crown at all. We found that this guy seems to have been born with a deformed bill that is crossed at the tip. Right now he probably is still being fed by his parents. Hopefully his deformity won't prevent him from foraging on his own, but it doesn't look to be too bad.

Juvenile Rufous-crowned Sparrow with deformed bill

Another bird with a tough life is the above female Northern Cardinal. Take a look at the horizontal bars on her tail. These are called "fault bars" and they show that while the feathers were growing in, the Cardinal encountered some kind of stress or nutritional deficiency.

And finally, we got another new species in our nets! We have been hearing plenty of Eastern Phoebes at one of our sites, but this is the first one I have gotten to see up in the hand. The phoebe is one of the many "name-saying birds." He sounds like he is saying "PHOE-bee", not to be confused with the Eastern Wood-pewee which also says its name "Pee-wee!"

Eastern Phoebe

Phoebes and Pewees also look similar. With an Eastern Wood-pewee look for the dusky wingbars and yellow on the lower bill. The Eastern Phoebe doesn't have much of any wingbars and has an all black bill.

Now I have the weekend off, but I'm Killeen, TX and hoping to see my first Black-capped Vireo, an endangered bird endemic to central Texas. I will be back next week with more birds!

Itty bitty wings 'n' things

2009-06-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

In today's blog, I'm featuring a few itty bitty birds with teeny tiny wings. The first one is so small you might not see it at first...

Oh there he is! It's another Black-chinned Hummingbird. This one was a little bit stressed so he didn't fly away right away. But after a few minutes and a perfect photo opp, he buzzed off just fine.

Black-chinned Hummingbird

I think this one was a young adult (second year) male. Note that he doesn't have the full black throat like the adult male below. He just has the little speckling. The female's throat is mostly all white, making them easy to confuse with the female Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Black-chinned Hummingbird

Adult male for comparison, showing his little tiny wing!

The other tiny bird we got this week was the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Just slightly bigger than a bushtit, the BG-Gnat weighs only around 6 grams.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - Adult

Juvenile Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Along with the adult BG Gnat, we caught this juvenile (Hatch year) Gnatcatcher on the same day. We actually caught him twice, the second time he was caught right next to his mom (or dad?). Bird parents are very protective of their little fledglings. And sometimes if they see their baby caught in the net, they'll dive right in after them.

Another picture of the Bushtit for comparison. They are similar in size to the Gnatcatcher and about the same color as the juvenile Gnatcatcher. But the bushtit's bill color and shape look much more chickadee-like. The Gnatcatcher is beginning to develop a white ring around its eyes and has darker tail feathers like the adult.

As summer continues, we are getting more and more baby birdies. Right now we are halfway through the season, so hopefully there will many more fledgling photos to come.

Texas birdy art..

2009-06-15T17:04:00.000-07:00

A few of my favorite birds of Texas...

Lark Sparrow

Yellow-breasted Chat

Today's forecast: Birdy with a chance of thunderstorms, wind and gunfire

2009-06-12T16:45:00.000-07:00

Most people know ahead of time where and when their workday is going to take place. For me, my current work schedule happens to be dictated by rain, wind, and when the National Guard wants to practice shooting their machine guns. We get there before dawn and work until we're soaked in sweat from the heat.

The weather in Brownwood has been unusually crazy over the last month that I've now been here. For the past three days we've had thunderstorms, hail and tornado warnings that blow through the town in about half an hour. Fortunately, the bad weather has mostly been in the afternoon and hasn't interfered with banding! But are the birds picking up on something? We've only been catching on average 3 to 5 birds a DAY for the past week! Until today we suddenly caught 19 birds. So.. much like the weather here in Texas the level of birdiness is definitely unpredictable.

Northern Mockingbird

Today and yesterday we caught a couple of Mockingbirds, the state bird of Texas.

Here you can see his lovely white wing patches. When mockingbirds are flying they can be distinguished very easily by this trademark. They are also very fidgety birds so I think it would be hard to hold them any other way than the grip I have above. Maybe it can be done though?

Black-chinned Hummingbird

And now, here I am demonstrating a completely different way to grip a bird, known as the "pencil grip." This is the only proper way to hold a hummingbird, which is too tiny to hold in the traditional bander's grip. The hummer I have here is a male Black-chinned and the first male I have seen since I got here. We have had quite a few hummingbirds in the nets, but they have all been female until this guy!

Just look at that gorgeous purple gorget (another word for a bird's throat patch). So cool! We don't band hummingbirds since we don't have a permit for it and we don't have any special paper-thin hummingbird bands. But we do record when we get them and where they are located. And it's always neat to get a good look at them.

Bowie bird update

2009-06-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we started the fourth period of banding at our favorite site, Mesquite. The number of mosquitos was significantly less than last week! And the birds were out and about. We only banded for 4 and a half hours, but we got 15 birds and a good variety of species. We usually aim to band for 6 hours (6am-noon), but this site is really out in the open and the nets are really exposed to the sun, heat and wind.

Orchard Oriole

My favorite bird of the day yesterday was this Orchard Oriole. It was a very beautiful adult male. I am pretty used to seeing Baltimore Orioles in the hand, so I was surprised to see how much smaller Orchard Orioles are compared to Baltimores. According to the Sibley guide, they are the smallest oriole and "sometimes confused with warblers." OK.. I don't know about that second part. They aren't quite that small, in my opinion!

Orchard Oriole

Mourning Dove

Another new bird for our banding season was this Mourning Dove. Of course, Mourning Doves, or MODOs for short, are everywhere, but we hardly ever get a dove in a net. Doves are pretty big and less likely to get stuck. They also have powerful breast muscles that give them the ability of "explosive flight." And if you've ever snuck up on a MODO before you may know what I mean!

Dickcissel

We got several more Dickcissels on Sunday and I wanted to put up this picture again so I could show the difference between the male and female.

Dickcissel

The female is at the bottom. The yellow is more of a buttery yellow and she doesn't have the black chin strap. The females are a lot smaller than the males as well.

Today's banding only yielded 8 birds and at least half were recaptures. But we also had a great species that I had never handled before until today! The bill looks tiny, but only on the outside. These birds can open their bills really wide and eat insects from dawn until dusk. Their wings are extremely long and their feet are tiny. They only stop flying to sleep .. sometimes roosting in chimneys.. What is it?

It's a Chimney Swift! I never thought I'd get to band a swift since they tend to be high flyers and are quite acrobatic. So I was very happy to see this one in one of our nets! Swifts are very different from most of the birds that we get in the nets, since they aren't passerines (the grouping of songbirds). They are actually are more closely related to hummingbirds.

My last bird is the Rufous-crowned Sparrow which I mentioned in the previous blog. I finally got a picture of one this time. Looks a little like the Olive sparrow but without the olive! Time for me to go, it will be another early morning tomorrow!

north america's smallest songbird and largest wren!

2009-05-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

What is North America's smallest songbird? The Bushtit! Well, I suppose it is known as "one of the smallest" according to my Sibley guidebook. They are pretty close in size to Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and... I'm not sure what else rivals the size of this tiny bird besides hummingbirds.

Bushtit

We have gotten 5 bushtits in our nets in the past 10 days. They are just adorable! But kind of a pain to get a hold of since they are so small!

And so, what is North America's largest wren? It's the Cactus Wren!

I actually was not expecting to get this bird at all. It was not on our list of breeding birds in the area, but here it is! Most of the wrens in the USA are about 4-5 inches from tail tip to beak but this one is a whopping 8.5 inches long.

Cactus Wren

This giant wren was the last bird we banded today, also marking the last bird of Phase 3. On Sunday we start Phase 4, meaning we start another 10-day period of banding at the 6 different sites.

Northern Cardinal

I thought I would include a nice picture of a male Northern Cardinal. Cardinals are so common, I usually don't bother to get a picture! But this one was looking pretty handsome and was cooperative with the camera. We are using stainless steel bands with Cardinals since they are notorious and relentless biters. The bands are a lot harder than the typical aluminum bands we use on the rest of the birds. Cardinals are known to bite the aluminum bands right off! But since we have been capturing a lot of Cardinals that were banded in previous years (as the one pictured above) we have evidence that they can't bite through stainless steel!

Field Sparrow

Ah.. little brown birds! I just love banding sparrows. They are so neat to see up close. It may look like a plain brown bird from far away, but in the hand you get to see all the little identifying features perfectly. Field Sparrows are most easily identified by their little pink bill and legs. They are usually pretty small even though this one looks a little puffed up.. there was a bit of a wind on that day! The other day we also got some more brown birds, Rufous-crowned Sparrows! I didn't get any pictures of them yet though.. but hopefully I will get some later!

beginning of phase 3 and mosquito madness

2009-05-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we started the 3rd phase of the MAPS banding schedule. In all, there are 10 phases (my training took place during phase 1). Each phase consists of 10 days, 6 days of banding at separate sites and 4 days off. Every phase, we revisit the same sites and set up the same net locations. Each site is a very different habitat, attracting a different variety of birds.

The above pictured location is known as "MESQ" which is an abbreviation for Mesquite. Every site has a four letter code and every bird has a designated code as well. MESQ was formerly a mesquite forest but a fire last year killed a lot of the trees. Now it is pretty much a wetland, with grasses and forbs growing up to three feet high. All the grass and the mud hold water like crazy too. And wouldn't you know it, it's an oasis for mosquitos. Today I wore my knee high boots but my knees still got wet and my legs were attacked by grass seeds with barbs in them. The mosquitos were so incredibly bad and absolutely everywhere. They were even biting the birds in the net and in our hands! I felt pretty bad since some of the mosquitos were about the size of a bird's head.

Anyway, the site isn't too horrible, since we have been getting some neat birds here. There are a lot of Dickcissels and Lark Sparrows and I even caught a new species, a Cassin's Sparrow. I think it was a Cassin's Sparrow anyway.. it actually escaped before I was able to band it. Hopefully that won't happen again. There are also a lot of Vermilion Flycatchers, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and Eastern Bluebirds in the area. This time we caught a baby Bluebird.

Since this bird is fledged from the nest, he is fully grown. He (or she) will keep most of his flight feathers (wing and tail feathers) until next year's molt, but he will lose his juvenal body feathers by fall and become a much bluer hue. We've been catching quite a few juvenile birds lately, which is pretty fun to see! The other day we actually caught at least 4 or 5 juvenile Black-crested Titmice at the same time. We got the whole entire family! Wish I had a picture of that, but we kind of had our hands full.

Above is a Lark Sparrow that we actually caught a few days ago. We caught another one today as well.

I think they are one of the neatest birds that we have gotten! I love this sparrow's face. Some have compared it to a face painted like a clown or a mime.

Here is a White-crowned Sparrow, which is a migrant in Texas. I think he might be kind of a late migrant since it is well past peak migration by now. But we have still be getting migratory birds. We had a Swainson's Thrush yesterday and on Tuesday we had two Yellow-bellied Flycatchers.

And now.. some Texas wild flowers and prickly pear cactus...

Rained in....

2009-05-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

We were supposed to band today but we had a massive thunderstorm roll through Brownwood this morning. We are now officially 2 days behind on our banding schedule, due to bad weather. That means we have to keep banding until Monday and then we get two days off.

Since we had the day off today I took some time to draw a male Painted Bunting. During yesterday's banding we actually had 5 painted buntings and only one other species, a migrating Swainson's Thrush. We'll see what tomorrow will bring after today's storm.

banding at camp bowie phase two

2009-05-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

Hello! I am now finished with my MAPS training and I am now onto the regular banding season. I'm banding at Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas for the rest of the summer. Brownwood is a pretty small town but they have a Wal-mart and a Dairy Queen, so at least we have the necessities. We don't have internet at home so I have to drive about 5 miles away to a coffee shop to update my blog. I won't be able to update everyday, but I will try to get access when possible!

Today was our second day banding at Camp Bowie. We got there before dawn around 5am. It is kind of scary setting up everything in the dark, but at least we know we are safe within the gates of the National Guard training facility. I have never been on an army base before but the parts we are using are mostly just woodland. Today's banding took place in a mesquite woods which had burned last year. Now it has turned into kind of a marshy grassland with lots of dead trees. Banding was great here, although since it was mostly open, the nets were exposed to a lot of wind which is not ideal for catching birds. Today we got a total of 19 birds including two recaptures. The highlights were two Dickcissels and a Lark Sparrow. I had never gotten to see these birds in the hand before. Luckily they are super common in this area so we will probably be seeing them all summer long.

I still have a few more pictures from training I wanted to put up so below I have a Least Flycatcher of the genus of Very Confusing Empidonax Flycatchers. He can be distinguished by his white eyering. Otherwise most of these flycatchers look a lot alike. Below that, I have a picture of a female Black-and-white Warbler. Both are migrating through the area.

Least Flycatcher

Black-and-white Warbler

On our four hour drive from training to Brownwood, we saw quite a bit of wildlife including a coyote and a turkey that ran across the road, a jack rabbit, and a couple of Harris's Hawks as pictured above on a telephone wire. Another common sighting on telephone poles was the Crested Caracara. They are really beautiful birds! I didn't get a picture but I might still see some here in Brownwood. More on the road sightings were Turkey Vultures, Black Vultures, Greater Roadrunner, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and once we saw a Great Horned Owl on another telephone pole.

Onto today's banding effort, one of my favorite captures was this male Yellow Warbler. We originally caught two but one accidentally escaped. They were singing and chasing each other around the area. Even though they are acting territorial, Yellow Warblers only migrate through Texas so they won't be around for long.

Yellow Warbler

Dickcissel

As I said before, we got two Dickcissels this morning. I love this bird! And of course they are very beautiful in the hand. I think we will be seeing quite a few of these because they were singing absolutely everywhere here.

Vermillion Flycatcher

We captured two Vermillion Flycatchers this morning. The above pictured is a second year male. The adult will be much more red all over the body. They are very very brilliant in color. The rest of the birds we got included a very messy Carolina Chickadee, Painted Buntings, Bewick's Wren, Common Yellowthroat, Eastern Bluebird, and three female Cowbirds. The Bluebird and the wren were both recaptures. Overall banding has been pretty successful, the bird have been super active and the weather hasn't been too bad yet.

Four more days of banding and getting up at 4:30am until I get my first day off since I've been here!

Nearing the end of training in South Texas

2009-05-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Black-crested Titmouse

Wow.. it has been an incredible time here in Texas. We only have a couple days left of my internship training with the bird banding folks of the Institute of Bird Populations. On Thursday I will be moving to either Giddings or Brownwood, TX where I will stay for the rest of the summer, collecting lots and lots of bird data! I wish I could blog more but I only have a limited time here at the library in the middle of nowhere. So I will just update with some more highlights and photos!

I have been getting up at 5:30 am everyday for the past week and a half.. yes every single day even weekends! And we have been banding every morning until it gets too windy or too hot. When it's overcast, the weather can be pretty tame, but as soon as the sun comes out it can be incredibly hot. Of course, what else would you expect? Of course the birds that live around here are used to the heat but we do have to be careful not to stress them out.

So, since my last update, we still have been getting a new species almost every day! Today was just incredible. We had several migratory species, including Magnolia Warbler, Ovenbirds, and a Mourning Warbler. On top of that, we banded a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. We've heard a lot of Cuckoos but it was my first time seeing one really up close! What a neat bird!!

Yellow-billed Cuckoo, back and front

Ovenbird

Magnolia Warbler

These cuckoos are breeding here while the Warbler and the Ovenbird are just passing through. We were pretty lucky to catch them. Another species we caught today was the Gray Catbird. I have banded so many catbirds in Wisconsin!! It was nice to see familiar bird at the banding station. Otherwise I kind of miss all the old song sparrows and and goldfinches that I'm used to seeing when I band.

Above pictured is a Brown-crested Flycatcher. Almost identical to another species called the Great Crested Flycatcher, but with slight differences and a different song. They are super common where I am and we actually caught 3 of these yesterday.

A Summer Tanager!! We sometimes see Scarlet Tanagers in Wisconsin, but coming here has been my first time getting a really good look at the Scarlet's cousin the completely red Summer Tanager. They are really gorgeous birds.. and super common everywhere here! We have caught a lot of these guys. The above picture is a male. The female is mostly all yellow.

This is a Bronzed Cowbird male. It's distinguished by it's lovely ruff of feathers around the neck and bright red eye. Closely related to the Brown-headed Cowbird, which is another frequent species around here. The Bronzed Cowbird is more of a Southern bird so it was my first time seeing these guys. They are pretty neat! But also their talons are quite sharp and they know how to use them.

Well I have more pictures but I will have to update again another time!! Oh and I almost forgot, the first picture at the top is another breeding species in Texas, the close relative of the Tufted Titmouse, the Black-crested Titmouse! They were once classified as subspecies of the same species, and are listed as such in the Sibley bird guide.. But now they are classified as two different species.

MAPS bird banding training update

2009-04-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yellow-breasted Chat

Today is the fourth day of my training for the MAPS bird banding program! I got here on Thursday but it seems like I have been here much longer. There have been so many neat birds already! We are way down in South Texas and we are just at the Northern tip of the ranges of some cool Southern species. One of which is the Green Jay, which is one of the most brilliantly colored birds around here. Not to mention there are also Painted buntings here.. they have a larger range in the USA but I had never seen one until this week! AND I got to hold one.

Green Jay, I hope we get to band one!

The Painted Bunting and Me

Training has been good so far and we are all getting used to waking up around 5:30am. I have been banding for a few years now but I'm still learning a lot, especially about how to properly age a bird. Of course there is still a lot more to learn, it is definitely something that takes time and patience and a lot of practice.

Along with the Painted Bunting and the Green Jay, I have seen so many species that are completely new to me. Some of them we even got to band. Today some of my favorites were the Olive Sparrow and the Worm-eating Warbler.

Yesterday, our first bird out of the net was this fabulous Blue Grosbeak:

We have been getting a lot of migrants flying through Texas, such as the Worm-eating Warbler I mentioned and the Mourning Warbler pictured below.

But our most common species are the Texan residents such as this White-eyed Vireo:

The bird pictured at the top of this update is a Yellow-breasted Chat. They have been the most popular bird in our nets and we have already recaptured several that we already banded. But once again, another new bird for my bird list.

Right now our internet use is pretty limited, but hopefully I will get to update again sometime soon!

Northern Waterthrush - another migrating warbler

I'm spending the summer in Texas!

2009-04-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

So... lately I've been preparing to spend my entire summer bird banding in Texas. And, I leave tomorrow! I'm interning with the Monitoring Avian Productivity & Survivorship program (MAPS) through the Institute of Bird Populations: http://www.birdpop.org/

I am so excited! I will be there for about four months, starting with a two week intensive training program where we learn all there is to know about Texan birds. Then we split up into groups to band at one of four locations in Texas or Missouri. I've been banding for awhile but I've never done anything quite like this. It should definitely be an adventure. Also-- I've never been to Texas before so I can't wait to explore a new place and see some cool new birds! My internship doesn't start until April 23rd, but I will try to report back soon as soon as possible, hopefully with some great photos of birds!

Birdy art featured above: Turkey Vulture

Wood Thrush

Puerto Maldonado Bird Banding Expedition

2009-02-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

Bienvenidos a Peru

Last summer I signed up to volunteer with the second annual bird banding expedition at the Centro de Educación, Ciencia y Conservación Tambopata (CECCOT; http://ceccot.org/) in Puerto Maldonado, Peru. It definitely was an unforgettable experience and like nothing I've been through before! We had a great group of volunteers and two awesome leaders, Ursula Valdez and Danel Froehlich, Ph.D. students at the University of Washington. I found out about the trip through the ornithology job listing (http://www.osnabirds.org/on/ornjobs.htm) and had never previously heard about the work they were doing at CECCOT and didn't know anyone else going on the trip. But since I love bird banding and have always wanted to visit the Amazon Rainforest, I thought it would definitely be worthwhile!

I left on the morning of September 19th and met with the rest of the group at dawn of the next day in Lima. We then took two more flights from Lima to Cusco to Puerto Maldonado. We arrived at the lodge via a motorcade of motor-taxis pictured below. Motorcycles and motor-taxis replaced almost all the cars in town. In the jungle 6 kilometers from town our lodge had limited electricity and no running water, a pit toilet, and although our rooms were shielded from the rain we were otherwise open to the elements of nature. So basically there were bats and owls and bugs living in our huts with us!

Oh, but of course we had mosquito nets! Surprsingly, there were very few mosquitos while we were there, but I'm still glad we had the nets. Although insects and spiders (!) were everywhere in the rainforest they were never really a problem. The most pesky bugs were the so-called "sweat bees." Not a technical term, but if you're sweating, these tiny insects will land on you and eat or drown in your sweat. But yes-- without so many bugs to eat there would not nearly be as many birds in the tropics.

Our lodge was right on the shore of the Tambopata River. Here is a view of the first day we arrived. At the end of the week, this river rose and devoured the sandbar shown here. The Tambopata is something of a tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Amazon River and I got to swim in it almost every day! Climbing onto the muddy banks afterwords, I never got very clean, but it was definitely refreshing on some of the hot days we had.

Mot Mots and more

The bird life in Peru was astounding and sometimes overwhelming. The guidebook had at least ten pages full of hummingbird species, if not more. But flipping through the pages, you find out at they aren't just "hummingbirds" persay; they have fantastical names like woodstars, emeralds, comets, racket-tails, sunbeams and sapphirewings. Our most common species that we caught in our mist nets was the Rufous-breasted Hermit. Our second most captured species was the Band-tailed Manakin, male is shown below.

Quite surprisingly, we caught around 2 dozen of these manakins but scarcely ever saw one flitting through the foliage. I swear I saw one once but it was just a glimmer of reddish-orange and it was gone. The males take around three years or more to grow their stunning plumage. The younger males and females are a duller green. This species forms leks, meaning that the males perform displays in groups in order to attract the attention of females. During one morning of banding, we caught about 3 males in the same net at the same time! So we thought they may have been in the midst of practicing their dance display.

Another popular species was the Blue-crowned Motmot. That's me holding one in the second picture. Although motmots became a common sight around the station, they are just fantastic looking birds with amazing feathered rackets on their tails that they swing around like a clock pendulum. Check the video for a motmot being released:

Motmots were actually one of the biggest birds that we banded. Oh, of course except for this guy, a gorgeous Roadside Hawk. We only caught one bird of prey, with the help of a carefully constructed hawk trap that involved a caged baby chick as a lure. Raul, Sam and Sam's dad Jim worked on these traps for a whole day so we were all glad that their efforts were rewarded.

I also caught on video, the Roadside hawk being released by Sam:

During my week in Peru, we were banding up to 20 birds a day and sometimes more. Here are a few more I caught on camera: Chestnut-capped Puffbird

Buff-throated Saltator (Watch out this guy bites down hard!)

White-browed Antbird female

Chestnut-tailed Antbird female

Black-spotted Bare Eye

Barred Antshrike

Warbling Antbirds Pair

If you were wondering, yes there are a lot of different antbirds in Peru, and antshrikes and antthrushes, antvireos, antpittas, and more. And for every species of ant-eating bird in Peru, there are probably another billion ants. Leaf-cutter ants, spiny ants, bullet ants, army ants and more! Of course, those last few ants don't sound very appetizing. Afterall, bullet ants possess the most painful sting of all stinging insects, which of course is where their nickname comes from. But it seems to be, if there's an ant out there, there's a bird that might just eat it. And if there's an ant that knows how to defend itself, it might just end up in my shoe! Yes, this actually happened, not a bullet ant but a biting ant. Our group was warned that the rainforest was full of biting, stinging things and we might as well come to terms that something would happen to all of us eventually. But bee stings, chiggers, ant bites, bird bite, I managed to survive OK.

Lago Sandoval

And although we were all innoculated against Yellow Fever and many of us were taking preventative medicine for Malaria, some of us were not expecting to face the other side effect of travel, a hasty bout of the flu. About half of our group was struck down with the flu on the day we took a trip to Lago Sandoval. Midweek, we took a morning boat ride down the Madre de Dios river, viewing the coastal wildlife, and then took a 2 hour hike to the lodge we would be visiting for one night. Along the way, we saw gorgeous butterflies, the world's smallest perching bird - the Short-tailed Pygmy Tyrant, tanagers, monkeys, and trogons.

Titi Monkey

My illustration of a Blue-crowned Trogon

Striolated Puffbird

Lago Sandoval

At night, a group of us took a canoe trip around the lake and spotted the eye-shines of caimans with our flashlights. We found that the lake was literally full of caimans, which are lizards similar to alligators, and some of them were over 6 feet long. Of course I discovered this after taking a nice long swim in the same lake. We took another canoe trip the next morning and found a look out post. From our vantage point, we saw flocks of macaws, a toucan-like bird called an Ivory-billed Aracari, and Toucans. We could hear the roar of howler monkeys echo over the lake as terns and kingfishers skimmed over the water. Lago Sandoval is also home to otters and big clumsy birds called Hoatzins. Unfortunately, my camera did not fare well at taking pictures aboard a canoe, so this was the best picture I got:

Hoatzins are bumbling, prehistoric birds that make breathy-hissing sounds. The baby hoatzins have an extra claw on their wings so that if they fall from the nest, they may clambor back up the tree. These birds appear so clumsy when they fly you can hardly believe they haven't become extinct as a game bird. But their magical survival trait? They apparently taste horrible!

Sandoval was magnificent, but I think we were all glad to get back to CECCOT afterwards. The staff at CECCOT were amazingly hospitable and friendly and the food was incredible! Most of us volunteers did not speak the best of Spanish, but we did get to practice quite a bit. And one thing I did learn was that "lobos del agua" actually means otter, and not the literal translaton which would be "wolves of the water."

So of course, I have probably just scraped the surface of what it's like to spend ten days bird banding and birdwatching in the Peruvian jungle. I could probably keep going but I'm going to have to leave you with this taste for now. For more, visit my web album http://picasaweb.google.com/Stephanie.Beilke/Peru and the CECCOT homepage, http://ceccot.org/ Thank you so much to Daniel Froehlich and Ursula Valdez for coordinating this amazing project and research and thank you to the staff at CECCOT, Pepe & Teresa, Raul, and Julissa.

Bluish-fronted Jacamar
Daniel and Debbie processing the Roadside Hawk

Team Motmot-Debbie and I in our matching motmot shirts

dreams of spring warblers

2009-02-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I last wrote a blog entry and a lot has happened since August! I went to Peru and saw wild macaws and toucans and took part in a banding expedition in the rainforest. I have hundreds of pictures to upload. I also had some exciting fall banding back at home. And of all things, I banded my first House Sparrow-- ok that part wasn't as much of a thrill! But I thought I would post a new blog since this weekend I was inspired to draw again. I haven't really done any birdy art in months. But the other night I dreamt about catching Black-throated Blue Warblers so I thought I would take my tablet out and draw one. The Black-throated Blue Warbler male is so distinctive and handsome. I still have a memory of seeing one for the first time, since it was one of the very first birds I indentified on my own about 15 years ago.

So here is the birdy art for the weekend. A Black-throated Blue Warbler and a Palm Warbler, both males in spring plumage...

I hope to write an update about my Peru trip some time in the future! But in the meantime feel free to check out my web album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Stephanie.Beilke/Peru

Confusing Flycatchers + B&W Warbler

2008-08-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

Update on banding, two very similar looking birds but different species:

The top bird is a Eastern Wood Pewee and the bottom bird is a Willow Flycatcher ..... to the best of our knowledge. We thought they were the same bird at first but the Wood Pewee ended up being noticeably larger. You can also see that the Pewee has fainter wing bars and is more gray than greenish like the flycatcher. I still don't know if I'm fully convinced since there are so many empidonax flycatchers that look almost identical even in hand. At least we know for sure that both of these bird species have been heard around here. Sound is actually the best way to identify flycatchers and similar species.

Another couple of looks at the Willow Flycatcher, in case we ever decided to change our minds on the ID we made.

This is a very very young Common Yellowthroat. We are sure that this one had fledged within a day or two, meaning it's fresh from the nest. The picture turned out kind of blurry but you can see it has a stumpy tail (still growing his adult feathers) and a big mouth for showing mom and dad where to put the food. He also made very interesting calls that weren't typical sounds you would hear from an adult bird. They were more like trilling/shrieking noises that a begging bird might make. When we get young birds like this we always make sure to return them to where they were captured even though they are perfectly capable of flying, but just in case they get lost.

I think the bird-of-the-day is definitely this female Black and White Warbler. What a cute little bird! This was my first time seeing one banded. They aren't a very typical warbler out here, but I think that they might breed in the area or they are already flying through. It's hard to tell. Soon enough though, we should be getting lots more confusing fall warblers migrating through come September. Exciting!

Another shot of those lovely black and white stripes. The male doesn't differ much from the female but has more striping on the face.

Total Birds Banded: American Goldfinch (3), Common Yellowthroat, Song Sparrow, Eastern Wood Pewee, Willow Flycatcher, Gray Catbird, Black & White Warbler

Birdy art: American White Pelican

brief banding update + brown thrasher + AOU

2008-08-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

Hi all, surprisingly the house wrens were gone from the banding station this week after the boom we had last time. In their place, we had several juvenile catbirds and a few late breeding birds. A pair of goldfinches showed signs that they were in the early stages of nesting. The female had a full belly, likely containing an egg. Another female Common Yellowthroat also showed signs that she had recently laid eggs. In general, August is late in the breeding season for birds, but it is also fairly common for specific birds like goldfinches.

The bird of the day was this juvenile Brown Thrasher. It was my first time seeing one up close.

Even though they are called Brown Thrashers, their feathers actually more reddish-brown as you can see.

This week I hope to update you with some western birds since I will be traveling to Portland, Oregon for the American Ornithologists Union meeting. I will be presenting some of my data that I've collected at Biocore Prairie with a poster I made and doing a little birding at Washington Park. Hopefully I will see some new birds but I will only be there for a few days.

Birds banded this week: Gray Catbird (4), American Goldfinch (2), Common Yellowthroat, Brown Thrasher, Song Sparrow

Birdy art: Stellar's Jay (a western bird)

wren fest & heavy molting

2008-07-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday was a great day for banding. As soon as we started putting up nets, we could tell that we would be catching a lot of wrens, and we did! 11 total House Wrens were banded in 4 hours. They were really active in the area and had taken over all three nest boxes near the banding station.

Here's one of the 11. One of the wrens had even just laid eggs recently, a little late in the season but these guys seem to be busier than ever.

I'm always excited to see Cedar Waxwings near the nets. They are such neat birds! A bit disappointing though because as you can see, this one does not have waxy wings, just like the other two we caught this summer.

Here's a Common Yellowthroat with some missing tail feathers. Many birds molt before after the breeding season, especially before they get ready to migrate across a long distance or if they have different summer/winter plumages. If you look at where the tail feathers once were, you can see two tiny shoots. These are called pinfeathers and will eventually grow into full feathers. Feathers are pretty cool and much more complicated than mammal hairs. People are still trying to figure out how birds evolved feathers. One theory is that they are modified reptile-like scales. Amazing what millions of years can do to a body plan adapted for flight.

Speaking of molts, here is a Black-capped Chickadee who looks terribly disheveled, but is actually going through a heavy molt. He (or she?) had pinfeathers sticking out pretty much all over. Of course it is important that birds shed feathers in a very particular order, so that they are still able to fly.

Another look, Black-capped Chickadee from the back. Chickadees tend to be little fighters and like to bite a lot. This one actually wasn't so bad (to me anyway, Jerry, who took the chickadee out of the net had a different story!)

Here's a young female Yellow Warbler. It's nice to catch up with a warbler in the middle of summer, since most of them only pass through in the spring and fall. Yellow Warblers and Common Yellowthroats are the only warblers that breed right here at Biocore Prairie to my knowledge.

Another view from the back. It was definitely a day for small birds. Apparently this is tricky for some of the banders here but I don't mind. Well, that is, they are definitely a hassle to get out of the nets but I don't mind if I am just banding them!

Here is a really short video of a Cedar Waxwing being released... (listen for House wren song in the background)

and a quick House wren release..

Bird Banded: House Wren (11), Common Yellowthroat (2), American Goldfinch, Grey Catbird, Song Sparrow, Black-capped Chickadee, Yellow Warbler, Cedar Waxwing

Birdy Art: Northern Cardinal

"BirdNerd" artist on etsy

2008-07-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

"BirdNerd: because birds are cool"

I just wanted to link to this artist's page on Etsy. She has some prints of her artwork, such as the chickadee picture above, and some other products based on her art. And the theme for all of her collection: birds.

All the birds look realistic but have funky colors and stuff. I really want to buy something from her. Maybe a pillow, they are really cute! So here's the link if you want to check it out: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=34858

First Hatch-years + downy

2008-07-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

This morning just "flew" by, with 15 birds banded in 4 hours. We also caught a few extras though which managed to escape. This included a very nice Brown Thrasher, which I would have loved to band. Too bad! One reason for all the bandings was the nice weather, sunny and no wind. The other reason was all the fledglings! A lot of the birds we caught were newbies, just born this year. They are officially called hatch-years.

This catbird was one of four hatch-year catbirds that we banded today.

If you remember my previous blog entry about catbirds a couple weeks ago, one characteristic we check is the mouth color. This baby bird has a yellow mouth unlike the adult in my other blog who had a black mouth interior. He also has a tremendous gape, which is the soft tissue on the outer corners of the mouth. The gape helps this bird stretch his mouth open while begging from his parents. The mouth color also takes part in stimulating the parents to "put food here!"

We had a lot of female common yellowthroats today. We've had lots of males in the past and I've posted pictures. Here you can see how different the female is. There is no black mask, but she still has that stunning yellow throat.

Here is my favorite bird of the day, a juvenile male Downy Woodpecker. These are the smallest woodpeckers you will find around here. It is so neat to see them up close since we hardly ever get woodpeckers in the nets. This one was a near escapee but I had good timing at the net. One of the neat things about woodpeckers is their tailfeathers, which are very stiff. They use their tails as a prop when they are climbing up trees and excavating the bark. Woodpeckers also have a very unique head bobbing motion which is pretty fun to see up close. Fortunately, this guy didn't peck the skin off my fingers and he was pretty small so I wasn't intimidated by his head bobbing.

Here you can see the red mottling distinct to the juvenile. An adult male will have a bright red patch on the back of the crown. This guy also had some kind of growth on the back of his bill. We weren't sure what it was unfortunately, but he appeared otherwise healthy.

Total bird banded: Downy Woodpecker, Gray Catbird (3), Common Yellowthroat (4), American Goldfinch (2), Baltimore Oriole, Red-winged Blackbird, Song Sparrow

birdy art: Red-headed Woodpecker

Weekly banding update: Orchard Oriole & Bluebird

2008-06-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

This morning started out very windy and a slow day for birds. There was plenty of activity among the beautiful prairie blooms, but none of the birds were flying into the nets. Pictured above are a pair of Red-winged blackbirds. Most likely this pair is nesting in the grass below since they were being rather loud as I walked by. It's pretty neat seeing the same birds returning to the same nest locations a year later. Not that we can tell for sure, but the same species seem to return to the same spots and I remember a pair of blackbirds nesting in this spot last summer.

Although the hours seemed to drag by without any birds, we ended up catching a few of the old favorites, Song Sparrows, Common Yellowthroats (the male pictured above), and a pair of Catbirds. We also wound up with a few very awesome surprises!

Here is the bird of the day! I was really stumped when I saw him. A green bird with a black face flying all over the prairie and warbling away in the trees. We finally identified it as a first year male Orchard Oriole. I'm sure I have never seen one with this plumage before, but I think it was a pretty good match after checking the guidebook several times over. The mature male Orchard Oriole is very reminiscent of the male Baltimore Oriole, but with a reddish brown tint instead of orange. This male is in the awkward transition phase of life where his plumage actually resembles the greenish-colored female more closely than the male. A young adult baltimore oriole would be more orangey-yellow and singing a very different tune. Check the video to hear the Orchard Oriole's song.

Here's a look at what we deal with when we take birds out of the nets. Sometimes it's really hard to tell which way they actually came into the net. It can get worse the more they struggle since they can become tangled in several layers of the net. In severe cases we can cut the nets to untangle the bird, but we try to avoid it since it will be much easier for a bird to escape in a cut up net. But in most cases, such as for this Song Sparrow, we can get them out in 2 minutes or less.

Here's a close-up of our male Song Sparrow with some very lovely streaking.

And now our second Bird of the Day, my very first banded Bluebird! This is the male, evident by the beautiful brilliant blue coloration. The females are a much more dusky greyish blue, so the males stand out quite a lot in contrast. What an impressive bird in general, and even more gorgeous up close. This one was actually a little shabby, we aged it as a after-hatch year, probably a younger bird still growing into its adult plumage.

I just can't get enough of brilliant blue birds so I have to share another one with you, an Indigo Bunting singing in the prairie. We had indigo buntings in surround sound today everywhere we went, but they are still pretty good at avoiding our nets.

On my way home, I had another birdy surprise, a pair of Sandhill Cranes literally a block away from my apartment. Although the cranes are regulars to the marsh and the prairie not far away, I guess I just wasn't expecting to see them on the lawn of the "Cereal Crops Research Unit."

For those of you interested in flowers, I have a few pictures of prairie blooms. I couldn't tell you what they are called though. Second picture - Purple coneflowers I think?

Birds Banded: Grey Catbird (2), Song Sparrow, Common Yellowthroat, American Robin, Eastern Bluebird

Birdy Artwork: Tufted Titmouse

Cedar Waxwings at Biocore

2008-06-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

This morning was a slow day for banding at Biocore Prairie. We only had five birds and closed up early around 11am. The highlight though was a pair of Cedar Waxwings. We have them out on the prairie on a regular basis but they usually fly too high to get caught in the nets. Two were extremely busy this morning collecting nest material, and eyeing our nets for loose strands. Only a few minutes after I said how much I wanted to band one, we caught them.

Here I am with the banded female. We figured it was female because she had loose wrinkly skin on her belly. This is a sign that the female has recently laid eggs.

Another characteristic of the female is a lighter throat patch just below the bill. The male's throat has noticeably more dark feathers.

This is the male. Just a beautiful bird! The yellow tips on the tail feathers are one way of estimating the bird's age. This male may be older than the female we caught since it has more yellow on its tail. Oh and you might notice, neither of the birds we caught have "waxy wings" despite their name. Cedar Waxwings typically have a couple of red waxy tips on their wings, but apparently it is acquired with age.

All morning we had two waxwings building a nest right in the mulberry bush next to our banding station. I'm not sure if they were the same ones we caught, but it was very nice having their company. With the waxwings in the mulberries, tree swallows and bluebirds in the nest boxes, catbirds in the shrubs, sparrows and blackbirds in the grass, and two oriole nests bordering the prairie, the area is becoming quite the bustling neighborhood. I can't even begin to imagine how many birds' nests are out here and how many bird families are passed by without anyone noticing.

Well, even though it was a slow morning we had yet another bonus. We caught a toad in one of our nets, here being held by future ornithologist, Henry.

Here is a tiny toad that I found in the parking lot today. I'm guessing they are the same species but unfortunately I'm not a herpetologist.

And here is a Cooper's Hawk I spotted today, perched on top of the spotlights above the UW Track. What otherwise might be a pretty cryptically colored bird, stood out quite a lot due to the several blackbirds, robins and swallows dive-bombing it. It figures that most songbirds will be more agitated around this time of year since they are protecting nestlings.

Banded Bird Count for the Day: Song Sparrow (3), Cedar Waxwing (2)
Other birds observed: Yellow Warbler, Cooper's Hawk, Great Crested Flycatcher

birdy art: Western Meadowlark

caturday catbirds

2008-06-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

The Grey Catbirds at Biocore Prairie were very active today. Several pairs must be nesting in the wooded areas alongside the prairie. One of which decided to build a nest right next to one of our net sites. The pair was very loud when I was setting up the net and definitely not happy. I'm guessing we'll become very familiar with that pair and their brood at the banding site.

Above is one of the three Grey Catbirds we banded this morning.

Here is a picture of one of our nets that we set up and take down each time we band. This is the one nearby the catbird nest.

All of the catbirds we got were adults. This can be confirmed by looking at the color of the inside of the mouth. Adult catbirds have all black mouths while the juveniles have a whiteish pink mouth interior.
Another view of a banded catbird, and a good look at that catbird characteristic red rump, or probably more appropriately known as "rusty undertail coverts."

A lull in the morning was quickly interrupted when we had a Northern Flicker crash into one of the nets. I let Jerry deal with the giant Flicker while I got this tiny male American Goldfinch out.
I loved the mottling on this guy's head. You can tell he's relatively young since he still has some feathers more characteristic of the juvenile and female of the species.

The Northern Flicker was just gorgeous. We hardly ever catch woodpeckers and this was my first time seeing one get banded. We have downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers in the area as well but they usually stick to the more wooded areas. The Northern Flicker is probably the only woodpecker you will see around here that feeds on the ground and this species will actually make frequent use of the prairie area. The one that we caught was a male, which is evident by his black "mustache." And of course, only the males have mustaches.

I love all the details and decoration on this bird, it's almost like a piece of modern art. The plumage may be showy, but there are actually not many differences between the sexes in this bird. This Flicker is also known as a "Yellow-shafted Flicker" which is a sub-species. The Yellow-shafted and red-shafted used to be thought of as two separate species, but they often interbreed. If you see this bird in flight, look for red or yellow on the underwings. All of the Flickers I've seen at Biocore Prairie have yellow shafted wing feathers like this one, but I believe it's still possible to see the red-shafted variation somewhere around here.

Here is a quick video of the Flicker being released into the wild.. yaay. (Look for the yellow on the wings!)

Banded Bird Count for the Day: Grey Catbirds (3), American Goldfinch, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Flicker

Other birds observed: Willow Flycatcher, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Indigo Bunting, Yellow Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, Song Sparrow, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-winged Blackbird, Tree Swallow

Barn Swallow

Banding at Biocore

2008-05-31T10:49:00.001-07:00

It was a gusty morning at Biocore Prairie, but fortunately the winds were blowing the birds right into our nets. We had one male Red-winged Blackbird, two Yellow Warblers, a male Common Yellowthroat, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Tennessee Warbler, two Song Sparrows, a Red-eyed Vireo and a Baltimore Oriole. It was great getting a lot of different species that we didn't have last week.

Here's the first Song Sparrow I've banded this season. I've had a few days in the past where Song Sparrows are the only bird we catch. I think it's more exciting banding sparrows when you get a variety and you get a real close-up look at the differences between the species, but that's just my opinion!

Here is the Tennesse Warbler we caught. It's hard to tell from the picture but he was a very olivey green color.

Here's my Common Yellowthroat. His head is a little damp because we wet the head feathers and check for skull ossification. This is a way of aging the bird, since we can see the color of the skull through the scalp. If there is variance in the skull color, this usually means that the skull has not completely calcified. It's similar to a new baby having a "soft spot" on its head. This male was an adult which is also evident by its complete dark mask and bright yellow throat.

Here, Marty is measuring the wingchord of a mysterious Empidonax Flycatcher, or so we thought. We're usually pretty wary when we get birds like this, since there are several flycatcher species that look nearly identical. Empidonax refers to the genus of species such as Willow, Least, and Yellow-bellied Flycatchers. After checking several characteristics, it was decided that this was a Least Flycatcher...

...But after releasing the bird, the group changed their minds and decided that it was actually an Eastern Wood-Pewee! It sounded like one when it let a little out a little "weep"-like call and it just seemed a bit larger than a typical Empidonax. It also makes sense, since I had been hearing quite a few Pewees in the area. Well .. I'm not fully convinced even now. I wish I was an expert on flycatchers but they are the most impossible birds I've encountered so far... oh well maybe flycatchers and small sandpipers!

This was my favorite bird of the day, the aptly-named Red-eyed Vireo. I thought I'd get a close-up of that red eye.

I was so excited to find this guy in the net, even though he was not nearly as excited to see me. He squawked and bit all over my fingers as I was untangling him. But this was my first time with such a good view of Red-eyed Vireo. Vireos are typically pretty shy and like to sing from deep within the trees. It's very hard to spot them, but you can always hear them around here. They even are pretty common in the neighborhoods around where I live. I can hear them chirping something that sounds like, "here I am, look at me, in a tree, Vir-e-o." (Of course I can hardly tell the song apart from the Blue-headed Vireo, but we don't need to get too technical.)

Here is a young female Oriole that Alex is processing. We use very subtle differences in the wing feathers to tell the age and sex of the bird. I'm still learning what to look for and the differences between the "primary coverts" and the "greater coverts". Anyway, we could definitely tell this was a younger bird and not an adult male, since it was a lot more yellow-colored without any orange at all.

Pardon my poor video-taking skills, but here is Mara releasing the Eastern Wood-Pewee. Often we have birds that don't realize right away that they are free and take a little longer to fly away.

wood warblers in a thousand pieces

2008-05-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

I had a task this spring.. to identify as many warblers as I could... also to complete this warbler puzzle! Unfortunately, the puzzle did not come with a cheat sheet that identified all the species. And even more unfortunate, I don't know what some of these birds are!!

But anyway, I finished the 1,000 piece puzzle this weekend!

Here's a better picture I found on Google image search (poster version, titled Warblers of the Canopy) and here it is again with my labels:

OK Time to name those warblers!

Blackburnian Warbler

Cerulean Warbler

Northern Parula

Blackpoll Warbler

Black-and-white Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

Golden-cheeked Warbler (not sure?)

Black-throated Green Warbler

American Redstart (Female)

Palm Warbler

Cape May Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

American Redstart (Male)

Tennessee Warbler

Black-throated Blue Warbler

Prothonotary Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Golden-winged Warbler

Yellow-throated Warbler
Blue-winged Warbler

Great ... I guess that was a little harder than I thought, so I'll have to get back sometime with the rest of those ID's. In the meantime, there's another similar image out there called "Warblers of the Understory" maybe they have another puzzle! That's another hint though, the birds featured in this puzzle are all arboreal species, not ground feeders.

Here is a bonus blackburnian I drew on facebook

Banding Bonanza

2008-05-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Wow, today was a really successful day at the banding station. We had about 10 or 11 birds, half of which were male orioles. It was so great to see that bright orange plumage up close. Walking to the prairie from the woods, you could tell that the trees were alive with birdsong. The summer resident Indigo Buntings were back at their usual perches and Common Yellowthroats were busy chasing Chickadees away from their favorite shrubs. An Eastern Kingbird teased us by perching just a few feet away from the nets and Scarlet Tanagers were chirping away in the distance. We also had a Warbling Vireo in the trees next to our set-up

This American Goldfinch was my first bird of the day. There was a whole flock of goldfinches sitting atop the net, wondering how to save their friend. But this guy was the only one who got stuck. If you see the strange color on his lower beak, we assumed that he had gotten stained by gorging himself on berries.

Here I am with the male goldfinch. I was able to extract him from the net by myself. It's really good that I'm getting some practice and feeling more confident doing this. It can be a really tricky and nerve-wracking process!

One of our 5 gorgeous male Baltimore Orioles. This was definitely a mature male judging by the brilliant coloring. Some of the younger males were a little yellower in color and had a few orange feathers sticking out of their heads.

This Common Yellowthroat wasn't being very patient for the camera and thought he could fly away. I banded another one right after I had this one. Both were males. Like the other two species mentioned, Common Yellowthroats are dimorphic species, meaning that the male and female have distinctly different plumages. The female Common Yellowthroat doesn't have the black mask and has a paler yellow throat. The females can be hard to distinguish from other warblers, especially after many birds molt their bright summer plumages.

I was about to say that I thought we had all male birds this morning, but we did have one female Yellow Warbler. Unless this was a young male, I don't remember now! But the mature males are much brighter yellow and have bright orange streaking on the breast.

With this Robin, I needed a little help getting him out of the net. It sure didn't help that he literally screamed when I was trying to remove the net from his wing. If you ever heard a rabbit scream, you'll know what it sounds like when a bird screams. But boy, was he beefy. It would help at this point to have bigger hands, because I couldn't keep his feet from kicking all over the place with my bander's grip. I needed a couple people to help me just to put the band on. I hope to go on and band even larger birds someday, so that will make for another kind of adventure.

This robin was so fidgety, I was a little afraid to hold him by his feet. But thanksfully, Jerry, another extremely helpful volunteer held the Robin for a nice pose. The Robin didn't want to fly away at first, and we worried that something was wrong with his wing. This can happen sometimes and banding can be stressful on the bird. He did manage to fly away eventually, so he may have just been getting over the shock a little bit. It's hard to guess how an inidividual bird will take the experience of being banded, but we try to minimize the stress as much as possible. If anything does go wrong, and the bird gets injured, our plan of action is to take them to a nearby animal rehabilitation hospital. But hopefully that won't happen.

green bay + whirlwind of warblers

2008-05-18T17:27:00.000-07:00

Check out these Tree Swallows - Does the male have his wing over the female's shoulder? Click the picture for the huge version. Awww!! Love is in the air.

Anyway, I took a trip to my hometown, Green Bay WI this weekend and happened to hit the jackpot of springtime birding. Of course, expectations were already high, the weather was perfect and the parking lot was full at the Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary. I got there around 7:30 which was after the official Saturday morning birding tour started, but I figured I could do ok on my own. Of course, my mom came to help out and hold the guide book if I ever needed it.

I already saw 3 warbler species around my parents' yard Saturday morning and I couldn't wait to get out to the sanctuary. Once we got there, this is the first warbler we saw, a Cape May. It was absolutely gorgeous and the first one I have ever seen. Later I would also add Northern Parula and Bay-breasted Warbler to my first-time-ever list.

Shortly after seeing the Cape May, I found this Blackpoll warbler amongst some Yellow-rumps and a Magnolia. After seeing this guy, I could really tell the difference between the blackpoll and the black-and-white warbler (which I also spotted later). The little black cap on the blackpoll is very distinct.

Obligatory squirrel shot - I love red squirrels and hardly ever see them.

A Blackburnian warbler! He was far away but I managed to get a shot. These guys are very striking with a bright orange breast. Some other warblers I saw that deserve an honorable mention are: Chestnut-sided, Black-throated Green, Yellow, Tennessee, Nashville, Canada Warbler, Northern Parula, American Redstart, and an Ovenbird. That brings the grand total to 18 warbler species in one weekend (in case you weren't keeping track.)

After a pretty exciting morning, I still had time to check out the American White Pelicans that hang out by the main street bridge in De Pere. They are a pretty cool sight to see if you're used to the typical midwestern birds. These pelicans have only been breeding alongside the Fox River for maybe the last 5ish years. This year there are close to 100 birds in this area. They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.

A couple Oriole pictures, male at the top and female with nest material at bottom. Again, orioles were everywhere as they were last weekend. A couple other notable larger birds I saw were Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Wood Thrushes, Indigo Buntings, and a Scarlet Tanager. I didn't get anymore great pictures of those birds but they sure made for a colorful bird bouquet.

Here is a Baltimore Oriole nest I spotted at Green Isle Park in Green Bay. They construct beautiful little hanging baskets. This one was kind of out in the open and I heard nest-parasitizing Brown-headed cowbirds nearby so I wish this pair good luck.

I was sad that I missed banding on Saturday, but it was a pretty successful weekend anyway! I hope they didn't catch too many cool birds without me. The video for the day is a Grey Catbird singing at the Wildlife Sanctuary and the birdy artwork is a Yellow Warbler.

bonjour oiseaux deux: a birdy souvenir

2008-05-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

As a bonus blog, I wanted to share one of the souvenirs I got in Paris.

The Famous.. Garden Birds playing cards! I haven't used them yet, but they are pretty cute. Each card has a different bird on it.

Here are some more of the birds I saw that I didn't mention in my last post: Merle noir, Troglodyte mignon, Geai des chênes, Pie bavarde, Héron cendré, Pic vert. OK, well, I don't know French but I recognized some of those words! The Merle noir is a European Blackbird. I had to double-check but noir means black so that one is pretty easy. The Troglodyte mignon is obviously a wren, and it turns out there is only one type of wren in my european field guide, and it is called.. a wren. I think I'll call it a European Wren. I recognized the word troglodyte, since it is the family (Troglodytidae) and genus name (Troglodytes) for all wrens. It turns out that troglodyte is also some sort of term in France for a weird cave that people dine in?? We had lunch in one of these caves/makeshift restaurants alongside some French roadside, but perhaps that's a whole different story.. However it raises an interesting question, are wrens associated with caves? I wouldn't have known.

Anyway, the other birds are a European Jay, a European Magpie, a Grey Heron and a Green Woodpecker. I liked the French word for Green Woodpecker since pic is likely related to the Latin "Picidae," which is the family name of a group of woodpeckers and vert is similar to verde, the Spanish word for green. OK, I guess it may be time to learn some more Latin to improve my worldly knowledge of birds...

One last European bird for this blog... you might recognize it from the previous entry.

bonjour oiseaux - a birdy blog from France

2008-05-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I actually returned from France over a month ago, but hopefully it's not too late to post about it! By the way, "oiseaux" is french for bird (or birds plural?), just don't ask me to pronounce it since I never learned French. Anyway, I did a little casual birding during my visit to Paris and Amboise, France. My family was mostly interested in the fine dining and site-seeing but I wanted to check off a few European birds during my first trip across the Atlantic. Paris was a huge city, and I didn't expect to see a lot of birds besides the infamous Rock Doves (commonly known as pigeons). For the most part I was right except that Paris actually has two very common species of urban doves, Rock Doves and Woodpigeons. They were everywhere. I was also not surprised to see an abundance of House Sparrows, Starlings, some large corvids (Ravens and Carrion Crows) and gulls (I determined they were Black-headed Gulls).

After arriving in the countryside via train, I was finally relieved to see some birds that were a little more uniquely European.

I was surprised to see that my Peterson guide labeled a lot of birds quite plainly. For instance, this bird was just called a "Goldfinch" where I believe it is more accurately titled a European Goldfinch. I need to know the full name!

When you see them, you can just tell they are related to American Goldfinches even though they have some distinct features. Check out the red bull's-eye face! I love it!

This is a Great Tit. It may be unsurprising for me to tell you that tits are related to chickadees, since they have the same cute faces. They are also moving all over the place and quite difficult to get a snapshot of.

Blue Tits were everywhere and even tinier and harder to catch on camera. But they are probably the most adorable birds I have ever seen! This picture is terrible but my camera doesn't perform miracles... This bird was probably 30 feet up in a tree when I got the picture and I couldn't even tell what the bird was until I got home and looked at it on the computer!

This is a Greenfinch. I had a hard time identifying at first because of the poor lighting (let's just say it was dark and stormy almost every day I was in France) but the picture gives me no doubt. He gives a really cute buzzy call that I wish I had recorded.

This is a White Wagtail, and yes, they definitely wag their tails.

Chaffinches were quite abundant and were standing by, waiting for us to drop a piece of baguette nearby the magnificent French Chateaux we were touring.

Ok, this is a drawing I did of a European Robin. The original photo I took is just as cute though. I absolutely loved these birds! By the way, the relation to the American Robin is only superficial. I'm guessing it has something to do with the red breast.

To finish this rather long post I have a couple of (very shaky, somewhat rainy) videos of a European Robin and a Great Tit doing there thing, singing their songs. Time to memorize these songs for your next European vacation since you will be tested later.

Bag a Bird

2008-05-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today was my first day banding this summer at the Biocore Prairie. There wasn't as much activity as I was hoping, but there were plenty of Baltimore Orioles, Song Sparrows, Catbirds, Goldfinches, and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers singing in the area. I also heard my first Scarlet Tanager of the year singing in the woods on my way there in the morning. But no warblers! How disappointing.

Instead of catching any lovely bright-colored orioles or warblers, we caught a flurry of brownish birds.

The coordinator of our bird banding station, Mara McDonald is holding our first capture, a female Brown-headed Cowbird. I was proud to add this to the list of birds that I have successfully taken out of the net without any help! (OK, so maybe it helped that I saw it fly into the net and was there right away before it could get too tangled!)

Chipping Sparrow

The other birds we caught were a Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, and a House Wren. I am holding the House Wren in the above picture. I decided it was a male based on its large "cloacal protuberance." Without this hint, House Wrens seem to be nearly impossible to differentiate between the sexes. The male cloaca swells during the breeding season, which is definitely underway. We usually see House Wrens all summer long so it's possible that this one will be nesting in the area.

I caught a video of a Baltimore Oriole, which sang in a tree above our banding station the entire morning. The picture isn't the greatest since it was so far up! But hopefully you get a good idea of the oriole's song, which is usually pretty loud. I've heard it described as sounding like, "over here, here, here, over here."

Oh, and take note of the Red-winged Blackbird which is perched almost right next to him. You can hear the "o-ke-lee" call as well as a Song Sparrow singing in the background.

If last year is anything to go by, we'll probably get to band some juvenile Orioles later in the summer after they have fledged.

welcome

2008-05-09T07:25:00.001-07:00

Hi and welcome to my new birdy blog! I hope to use this space to provide updates on bird outings, share some artwork and photos, and other related news. Spring migration is currently in full force here in Madison, WI and the summer season of banding at Biocore Prairie is just beginning. The above photo is where I've done some undergraduate research and also where we mist net loads of Song Sparrows, Red-winged Blackbirds, some other feathered creatures, and sometimes even giant dragonflies or bumblebees.

In addition to viewing and banding birds, I have been doing a bit of my own birdy art in my free time. To sample this collection, here is an Osprey I drew (using adobe photoshop and a tablet pen)

Thanks for reading and I hope you stay tuned for more to come !