March Miscellany

How often do you get to use the word "miscellany" in a birding blog? This is just to bring things up to date before the migration season shifts into high gear. The owlets at Cave Hill are growing fast. They are eating whole mice now from their parents, and should start climbing around on the branches soon.  I plan to return to Cave Hill frequently to keep up with their progress. Assuming, of course, they are active during the daytime.

When they started building the East End Bridge several years ago, they found an active eagle nest  in the construction area. Debate went back and forth for a while - should they change the plans for the bridge? It was finally decided to proceed, and the eagles didn't seem to mind. A few years later, however, they lost a chick, then the nest tree came down altogether in a storm, and they decided to  move. The new nest was built nearby, so I decided to look for it. Found mom on the nest and dad keeping a watch nearby. Good news!

Arctic weather made Creasey Mahan and the Louisville Audubon Society cancel the event for Great Backyard Bird Count. This Saturday started cloudy and windy but improved as the day moved on. Tavia limited the number of attendees, because of the COVID, but everything worked out well. Tavia took people into the Woodland gardens to look at the wildflowers. I hope folks will come back to see how the blossoms change during the rest of the season. Lee Payne and I, as LAS Board members, led two groups around the Nature Preserve looking for birds. Our visitors were mostly inexperienced birders, so we talked about how to get started birding and how to use binoculars initially.

 

I guess being the leader made me nervous. I forgot to start an eBird list, and I didn't take many photos. Too busy talking to the group. When we got to the meadow, the day became a success as we saw Tree Swallows, Barn Swallows and Bluebirds!! Many of the common birds I saw earlier in the week didn't make an appearance for us. The long week of cold weather and storms was rough on many Bluebirds, so I was delighted to find these. We even saw the Kestrels who have moved into the nest box out by the totem pole.

I explained to the group how to tell the difference between mistletoe, squirrel nests and bird nests in a tree without leaves. We found a nest of sticks behind Mahan Manor, and closer examination found Adell, our resident Red Shouldered Hawk sitting on eggs!

Pine Warbler by Lee Payne

Lee is the "Owl Whisperer" who knows where all the owl nests are, so after the official walks, we headed into the woods looking for owls. I started losing my balance, so we didn't stay long enough to find an owl, but we did track down a  FOS Pine Warbler. It's yellow, it's trilling and it's in a pine tree -- got to be a Pine Warbler! April is coming soon - what wonders wait to be found!

Cave Hill Owl Nest

 Owls are nocturnal, right? They are active at night, and I am more likely to hear them than see them at any time. (Except for Short-eared owls and maybe Burrowing Owls, of course). I spent 10 years working at Raptor Rehabilitation Of KY, and most of my owl photos are of our education birds, rather than birds living in the wild. 

Now I have a new birder friend that we call the "Owl Whisperer." I swear, I think this man knows where every owl nest in Jefferson County is! Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but not much. And he is a fantastic bird photographer. Birding ethics makes me reluctant to ask him where these owl nests are. After all, they have a right to privacy. He works at Cave Hill Cemetery, which seems much more than a graveyard in this community, and he is familiar with all the birds and other animals (such as foxes) who live there. He shared the location of this Great Horned Owl nest at the cemetery, and I hoped I would be able to find it. Until all the other birders showed up too!

It looks like she has taken over an old hawk's nest. With no leaves on the tree yet, the lighting is great for photos. She has 2 chicks, although I only think I saw one, and the male was off sleeping somewhere. We will have to go back in a few weeks to look for "branching" owlets, who are walking on the branches of the tree, and flapping their wings.

Heron Rookery

 

 

 What is a rookery? These are Great Blue Herons nesting in a colony, yet it always called a "rookry." Once again the Internet comes up with a answer.  The term rookery originated because of the perceived similarities between a city slum and the nesting habits of the rook, a bird in the crow family. Rooks nest in large, noisy colonies consisting of multiple nests, often untidily crammed into a close group of treetops called a rookery.

  

On March 7, we arranged to meet a friend who is an experienced canoeist, and agreed to take us upstream on Harrad's Creek (the backyard creek of his house). We wanted to see the heron rookery, which we had missed last spring. With trepidation I managed to climb into the canoe without tipping either it or myself into the cold water and we set off. I should be OK until it's time to climb out again.We avoided getting smacked in the face by any branches and finally reached the main course of Harrod's Creek, swollen high by the flooding Ohio River.

At first I saw one or two nests made of branches...

 

...then I glanced to the left and saw many more nests in bare trees over the water. Actually, I didn't really expect the nests to have birds on them this early in the year.  Not  sure if they were sitting on eggs yet, or just getting things ready. David said there were over 80 nests several years ago, but the numbers keep dropping. Perhaps they regret their loss of privacy.

The places where we hiked to bird last spring were all under water, and we didn't see too many species. But we got a fine view of this Red-shouldered Hawk flying off with a mouse for his afternoon snack.

Sandhill Cranes on the Move

"Ka-roooo!" In Central Kentucky, including Louisville, the cry goes out, "I hear Sandhills!" and all the birders rush outside, binoculars in hand.  In November, these large birds migrate south, and in February, they are ready to head back north again. We wonder why they bother to migrate at all sometimes.

Sandhill Cranes

On Feb 11, as the snow started to melt, we decided it was safe to leave home, and went to look for cranes at the Cecilia fire station, situated in the middle of Hardin County farmlands. We found absolutely THOUSANDS of them foraging. These cranes are omnivorous, although in our area they tend to feed in corn stubble, avoiding the soy bean fields. Snow doesn't seem to bother them. 

The range map shows them as mostly a western/central bird, the Greater Sandhill subspecies. But the Lesser Sandhills migrate right across our area in Kentucky. Unfortunately, they have a reputation as the "rib-eye of the sky," and hunting is permitted in Kentucky and Tennessee during a limited time. Every year we hear reports that Whooping Cranes have also been shot.

Adult cranes have grey feathers. They paint them with iron-laden mud and vegetation to turn them rust-color for camouflage during breeding season. They have a bright red skin patch on their forehead. We always look for a large white crane with the flocks, since Whooping Cranes sometimes travel with the Sandhills. Look closely though, because the sun can make them look white when they aren't. The red forehead will give a positive ID.

Sandhill Cranes mate for life, choosing their partners based on dancing displays. Displaying birds stretch their wings, pump their heads, bow, and leap into the air. Although each female usually lays two eggs, only one nestling typically survives to fledge.

During migration and winter the family units group together with other families and nonbreeders, forming loose roosting and feeding flocks—in some places numbering in the tens of thousands.

“Marshland Elegy” is a chapter in “A Sand County Almanac and sketches here and there,”where Aldo Leopold tells the story of the noble Crane and of how the crane marsh has been displaced by the short-sighted and wasteful ‘progress’ of human beings.

In the 1930s, Sandhill cranes were generally extirpated east of the Mississippi River but their populations have recovered with there being an estimated 98,000 in the region in 2018, a substantial increase over the previous year. The greater sandhill crane proper initially suffered most; by 1940, probably fewer than 1,000 birds remained. Populations have since increased greatly again. At nearly 100,000, they are still fewer than the lesser sandhill crane, which, at about 400,000 individuals continent-wide, is the most plentiful crane alive today.