1/22/2021 3 Comments Easily OverlookedMy backyard flock of Pine Siskins is growing. Yesterday I got a new high count: 284 of them! And today they were joined by 8 House Finches. Which is to say, they're not really the same flock from one day to the next. And it seems that, like a rolling snowball, the bigger it gets, the more quickly it grows. So I keep scanning to see if this is the day that something unexpected, like a redpoll (a northern finch not common this far south) might join the party. Not today, but maybe tomorrow. What I did find in a drive and walk along some of the wooded creeks a few miles south of Hastings was two of our smallest birds. The first was a Brown Creeper. With its stiff, woodpecker-like tail for stability, it clings to the trunks of our larger trees and creeps around looking for insects and spiders to pry from the bark with its de-curved bill. Unlike most woodpeckers, it's not some combination of black and white with red accents; it's mostly brown, accented with other shades of brown, and thus very well camouflaged. Maybe that's why I love these little guys. You won't usually find one unless you spend quiet time in winter woods, an edifying experience in its own right. When you are lucky enough to spot a Brown Creeper, it feels like the trees have rewarded you for your time by entrusting you with a secret. Even the call of the Creeper is like a whisper. The other bird I found today was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Do yourself a favor and look for a good photo of one online. They're absolutely adorable. But they're so tiny and hyper that I've never been able to capture a good picture myself. I did get a great look, though, at the teardrop white eye ring and the slightly flared ruby-red crest. Less than a mile up the road I found two of its cousins, Golden-crowned Kinglets, which are more expected this far north this time of year although still tough to see and tougher still to capture on film. If any of you have a good kinglet pic or story, I'd love to hear it!
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1/17/2021 2 Comments Photo ShootI took a late afternoon drive today and added a new bird to my year-list, the first one in over a week: Wild Turkey. Well, this flock is not that wild, living as they do on the north side of the Lochland Country Club and seen year-round feeding in people's front lawns, but I was glad to see them nonetheless. More exciting for me was getting great looks at a Merlin, one of three I saw within an hour. This one was sitting in the corn stubble right along a gravel road, and the bird seemed utterly unperturbed as I sat and took photos and videos through my car window. (Cars are great photo blinds, if you can pull over far enough to be safe.) This first photo is one I took with just my iPhone. Can you find the Merlin? Not great. So then I balanced my spotting scope --a Zeiss Diascope 85mm -- in the open car window with one hand, got it in focus as quickly as I could, and with my other hand I held my iPhone up to the scope and took some photos and videos that way. This photography method, called digiscoping, effectively turns a scope into a very, very long lens for your camera. Here was the result. (Notice how the second pic below caught the bird in mid-hop, levitating!) Then I took a couple more shots through my scope, this time using a Canon Powershot G9X (a little point-and-shoot camera, even smaller than my phone but with a bigger sensor inside). Here's one of those photos, cropped. If you're looking at these on a small screen maybe you won't notice much difference, but the colors are certainly richer and the detail sharper. So fun to come across a bird that is both so cooperative and so crisply plumaged! And as a bonus, I got this lovely Nebraska sunset. Ahh....
1/11/2021 4 Comments New Doves on the BlockIf you grew up in Nebraska and are more than about 20 years old, you know we didn't always have these doves around. The aptly named Eurasian Collared-Dove (ECDO), native to Europe and Asia, was introduced into the Bahamas in the mid-1970's and from there moved into Florida before a population explosion that soon covered nearly all the United States.
The first record of an ECDO in Nebraska was 1997. I remember getting excited when I spotted my first one in the early 2000's and got to add it to my "life list". Now, on a day of driving around Adams County, I can easily see over 100 of them, sometimes in a single flock, especially in small towns and around grain elevators. I recall a single day report of 1500 in Kearney. They've nested in my yard, even in late winter. They are abundant, prolific, and loud. In addition to a dove-like cooing similar to the native Mourning Dove (MODO), they make a raucous, nasal screeching call, especially when flying, not a pleasant sound to most ears. And I've noticed them using their significantly bulkier bodies to bully the MODOs at my feeder. Can't say I'm a big fan. Did you know that Mourning Doves are the most popular game animal in the North America? Over 20 million are taken for sport and food in the U.S. each year. I haven't read much about the Eurasian Collared0-Dove in that regard, how they are to hunt or to eat, so if any of you knows more about that, I'd love to hear. A hunter would certainly get more bang for the buckshot taking down this 7 oz bird (compared to the 4 oz MODO.) Plus, while most of our MODOs move south for the coldest months, the ECDO seems quite content here in January. And while MODOs can only be hunted for two months in the fall, it is my understanding that ECDOs can be shot all year long in Nebraska, with a daily bag limit of 15. It will be interesting to see what happens to the population over time. Some non-native, invasive species like this have an initial boom and then a crash. What are you thoughts, experiences, and questions about the Eurasian Collared-Dove? 1/10/2021 0 Comments OwlingSo Friday morning I got up a little before 3 am to go "owling." (This last word was auto-corrected to "bowling" five times before the computer gave up. I wish.) I drove around on gravel roads, rolled the windows down, shut the car off, waited a moment, listened, then played a recording of an owl or two from my phone, waited around a bit more, and then moved on. I did this until after the sun came up, and I heard exactly zero owls, nor any other birds, for that matter. Still, you never know what's out there until you go looking. There have been more than 20 species of owl seen in the U.S. In a good year, a birder could expect to find nine of them in Nebraska. The one I most commonly hear and see in Adams County, and the easiest by far to find across the state year round, is the Great Horned. I've had them nest right outside my bedroom window (back before our big, dying cottonwood trees came down). The other owl I've seen this year is the Short-eared. They tend to hunt marshy grasslands, and when I drove by the Kenesaw WPA (Waterfowl Production Area) last Sunday, I thought the habitat looked good. So I parked the car off the side of the road and waited. If you find an area frequented by Northern Harriers, a marshland hawk, that's a good place to check; just as the harriers are bedding down for the night, the Short-eared Owls take over the night shift. The sun set at 5:19pm. I waited for almost half an hour and was just about to give up when there, in the last minutes of fading light, two Short-eareds appeared, floating over the marsh with their strangely slow and uneven wing-beats, often described as "moth-like." Score! I'm hoping for a few more owl species this year: Eastern Screech-Owl, Long-eared or Northern Saw-whet, maybe a Barn or Burrowing this summer. There are a couple Snowy Owls being reported elsewhere in the state this week, and while I've seen one in Adams County before, I know it's a long shot. But whenever I see an owl of any kind I count it a blessing. There's just something captivating about them. Below are a few more I've seen and photographed over the years in Nebraska, a little owl eye candy for you. (You can click them to make them larger, and if you hover your cursor over them, the caption will appear.)
1/9/2021 2 Comments Siskins Galore!Since yesterday morning I've added four new species to my year list: Great Blue Heron, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Gadwall, and Carolina Wren, putting me up to #61. But even more interesting to me is a species I've seen every day since January 1, the Pine Siskin. Siskins are among several finches known as "erratics," northern nomads that do not follow a regular pattern of migration but instead wander the continent following the fluctuations of seed crops, especially conifers. They are birds you may not see for years, and then suddenly they appear en masse at your feeders, emptying your thistle as quickly as you can fill it.
Tuesday I looked out and counted 168 in my backyard. Yes, one-hundred sixty-eight! If you happen to have a flock of American Goldfinches or House Finches at your feeders, it's worth taking a closer look to see if you may have one or two (or 168) Pine Siskins mixed in. They are easy to overlook. Notice the sharp little beak, the fine streaking above and below, the little accents of yellow in the wings and tail. Below is an American Goldfinch (which in winter loses most of the bright yellow for which it's named,) and below that a female House Finch, for comparison. 1/7/2021 3 Comments Do You Have a Favorite Bird?The Cedar Waxwing might be my favorite bird. I don't yet have a great photo of one; this one will do for now. But first let me return to the subject of my previous post, the Merlin. I saw my 4th Merlin of the year just an hour ago. I had said that Merlins are hawks of the wind-swept, open prairie, and that's exactly where I saw my first three, but today's bird was in town, perched on a short power pole next to a baseball diamond.
I love surprises like that. And I talked to a lady today who described how, just a week or so ago, had a Merlin hit her window here in Hastings. She heard the bang, went outside to investigate, and there, lying in the snow next to her house, was what she described as one of the most beautiful birds she'd ever seen. Steel gray, delicate-featured, but with such dagger-sharp, bright yellow talons. She gently nudged it with her cane and was surprised to see it blink its eyes. She backed away and continued to watch it for the next five minutes or so, debating what to do. (For the record, I myself am mostly a "non-interventionist" when it comes to situations like this, though there are exceptions, a subject I'll return to another day.) In any case, after lying unconscious, the Merlin finally sat up, shook itself, and flew off, apparently unharmed. I hope so. (I suppose that's another topic I could address in some future post: the frequency of birds flying into buildings and what can be done about it.) Back to the waxwing. A Cedar Waxwing was my 2021 Adams County bird #55. The best way to find them is to listen for their high pitched calls, but having talked to many older birders, I know that since higher frequencies are the first to go, the Cedar Waxwing is one of the first birds we are unable to hear as we age. So look for trees like crabapple or cedars filled with fruit, the later in winter the better, and you may very well find a flock of these lovely, crested, sleek frugivores, their wings tipped with waxy red accents. They are just so subtly handsome and their plumage seems smoother than most birds, somehow. Do they have a higher "thread count"? I'm not sure. But if you want to see them, they're often found in the company of robins. Did you know that robins, which eat mostly critters like worms in the warmer months, switch their diets to dried fruit this time of year? By the way, today I saw another new bird-of-the-year, a Cooper's Hawk. Below is a pic I took of one nesting near Hastings College a few years ago, doing the same one-legged perch you noticed in the Merlin pic. One of the discoveries I was most pleased to make on January 1 and 2 was that there are at least three Merlins within 15 minutes of my house. I haven't seen one while at my house in eight years! Yet take a little drive, keep your eyes peeled, and there they are. Ever since reading The Once and Future King when I was a teenager, I've loved the Merlin. Besides being the name of that endlessly inquisitive and nature-loving wizard, the Merlin is a small but fierce falcon, chasing down little birds out in open country, like over winter corn stubble. Once spring comes they'll head back north into Canada, so now is the time to see them.
1/5/2021 9 Comments WanderlustThe Germans have a word, I am told, "Fernweh," which translates roughly "far-sickness," which refers to that deep yearning to get away, that "wanderlust" (another German loan word). Have you ever felt the travel ache? I know 2020 gave many of us a bad case of Fernweh. I cancelled a fishing trip to Cape Coral, Florida with my son, which we'd planned to celebrate his graduation from high school. My wife postponed not once but twice her own trip to Florida with family. Instead of traveling to see our kids, their colleges were shuttered and all ended up back at home. Work had me swamped. COVID numbers were worrisome. We all have people we love in high-risk categories. Suffice it to say, I didn't get out much after February 2020.
So here I am in January 2021, still itching to see something new. Back in 2013 I did a Nebraska Big Year, working to see how many species of birds I could document in the state in one calendar year. 347 species, it turns out! I loved it, AND it kind of burnt me out. But I still love birds and birding. So I went on a leisurely drive January 1, initially just to see what my first bird of the year would be, a little game birders like to play. Mine was a White-breasted Nuthatch, jaunty little fellow and a good omen, I thought. While I drove I started thinking: What special something might I do this year to add some spice, to pep me up, to help me see life through a new lens? It occurred to me that I could start keeping a list of the birds I saw right in my own backyard, as it were, right here in Adams County, Nebraska, which has been my home for 20 years. Sometimes you don't have to go far to make discoveries. Remember hide and seek as a kid? Squeezing behind couches, hiding under beds for what seemed like hours, breathing your own hot breath inside kitchen cabinets? And when you went to get cereal out of there the next morning, you saw that space in a new light. You now had a personal connection to it. What if I really got to know my county like that? Stopping to listen for birds at each little stream or seemingly empty stretch of corn field. Learning where every Red-tailed Hawk pair was building a nest. Falling in love with a place all over again. That's my goal. And birds are my road in. I won't go far this year. Adams County, in south-central Nebraska, is just 23 miles east to west, 24 miles north to south. But I think it will satisfy my Fernweh, even though I'll never be far from home. |