Sunday Lifer Birding

Red Crossbill - Female on top, male bottom right

You are probably aware of the large numbers of finches in places they normally aren't seen this fall/winter, right? I've heard it's because Canadian fir trees don't have enough cones this year. The KY Bird List reported Red Crossbills at the cemetery in Lexington yesterday, and this morning at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville. We planned to go an a Beckham Bird Club trip to Cave Hill anyway, so it was a bonus to have such a rare target bird.

Red Crossbill Male

I'll be honest. If I'd gone by myself to find this bird, it would have been a complete failure. I might have seen this bird perched at the very top of a hemlock tree, and wondered what it was through my binoculars, but I never would have known for sure. And they were far enough away that the photos don't give much detail. Thanks again to all our birder buddies with big Swarovski spotting scopes, I got some good long looks at these unusual birds. I even watched the brick colored male grab some hemlock cones, pry them apart with his crossed bill, and pull out the seeds to eat. We did not see a White Crossbill, just the Red. "Just, the Red..." I shook my head in wonder as the words left my mouth!

Cave Hill National Cemetery

I've gone to Cave Hill Cemetery off and on for years, but I did not realize before that it is also a National Cemetery, with soldiers from the Civil War through Vietnam buried there. The rows of small white headstones looks much like Arlington Cemetery. The stones with a rounded tops are Union soldiers, while the ones with pointed tops identify the graves of Confederate soldiers. During the Civil War, there were so many dead that the bodies were carried to the cemetery in trains of wagons every day. Beginning with 0.65 donated acres, today, the national cemetery encompasses 4.1 acres within the nearly 300-acre Cave Hill Cemetery.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

We also had some good views of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker coming to check out one of his favorite trees. These birds aren't really rare, I suppose, but I don't see them as often as the other woodpeckers, so this was exciting to me, especially since he was close enough for a good shot. A new person who is a professional photographer joined our group this morning . She carried her camera (with a 3 foot long lens) on a monopod. To take a photo of a bird up in a tree, such as the Crossbill, she had to kneel down on the pavement (which we fortunately had this morning). Sorry, I don't care how good the photos would be, I don't want to carry around that much equipment. I do covet another spotting scope with one of the bent viewers, though I can't really justify spending that much money.

Northern Harrier

The KY Bird List also reported another sighting of the Short Eared Owls I went to look for a few weeks ago, in the same place as before. Well, it's warmer since the sun came out, so why not? I chatted for a while with the owner of the land when he drove down the road. He likes the hawks that eat mice, but he's not fond of the ones that go for bunnies and birds. He didn't mind at all that birders were coming to look for these owls.

Short Eared Owl

As the sun sank behind the horizon, I finally saw some birds. No, that one has a long tail, it's a Harrier. Why are they coming out at dusk, when I didn't see them for the whole hour I waited? Oh, sure. That facial disc means they hunt with sound, just like the owls do. But the long tail is the giveaway. Look there! This bird has rounded wings, a rounded head and shorter tail. This must be the Short Eared Owl!  Hooray! Now I just have to find one sitting on a fencepost sometime so I can get a photo of its beautiful face!

The hunt continues, but I can put notches in my binoculars for two more life birds today! Just imagine the hunting success the owls will have tonight in the light of the full moon.

Backyard Bird Drama

After unsuccessfully searching for the rare Snowy Owl seen at the Louisville Airport the night before, I came home Saturday for some lunch. Walking into the kitchen, I gasped to see a Cooper's Hawk sitting on top of a bird feeder in the back yard!

Coopers nested in our neighbor's tree for three years, so I am not surprised to find young hawks in my yard, but usually they are perched in a tree looking for lunch, or trying to avoid mobbing groups of smaller birds. I wonder if she is one of our fledglings all grown up.

This beautiful adult brazenly sat in the middle of all the feeders looking around. Of course, the yard was silent. The backyard birds wisely crouched in the dry leaves, hiding from this known predator and keeping absolutely quiet. The hawk scanned the yard, concentrating particularly on the drying flowers of our butterfly garden. Would this be my lifetime chance to photograph a hawk actually catching prey? She appeared to be searching for ground rodents, not the birds we normally would expect her to hunt for.

After a few minutes, some of the braver birds came out of hiding. Could they tell the hawk wasn't interested in their kind today? I noticed that the little nutchatches and chickadees would grab one sunflower seed while the hawk was turned the other way, then dash back into the leaves again. Smart birds!

The hawk thought she saw something under the flowers and hopped to the ground, peering between the dry stems for a mouse or chipmunk, and completely ignoring the birds.

Aha! This is our chance! and my pair of Carolina Wrens started eating sunflower seeds, their pert little tails sticking straight up as usual.

At least four First of Season Red Breasted Nuthatches came to dine as well.  I usually don't see them in my backyard most years. Ron Pittaway is forecasting that a fair number of species--especially Red and White-winged Crossbills, redpolls, Pine Grosbeaks, and Evening Grosbeaks--are likely to be on the move this year due to widespread crop failure of fruiting and cone-bearing trees in Canada. Three irruptive non-finch passerines are also discussed in his report.

Lots of Kentucky birders (not me yet) are finding large numbers of Pine Siskins in their yards already. Snowy Owls are showing up in mid-November, and as far south as Louisville, KY - which is quite unusual. Something is going on with the regular winter food supply of these birds, causing them to leave their home territories. After last year's unusually mild winter, I wonder what's going to happen this year. I try not to think about doom and gloom rumors, i.e. the Mayan prediction, but the nature of a disaster is to come without warning. We are planning to go to Florida in February, which normally portends a big snow for the north while we are gone. Sorry guys, it just happens that way.

The Cooper's Hawk landed for a minute on a decorative log in the garden, then headed into the brush. I'm sure she's still around somewhere, just prudently keeping out of sight. She's not worried about the rest of the winter, just what she will eat today.

Search for the Snowy Owl

Snowy Owl Photo by Eddie Huber

Last night around 7 p.m., my cell phone rang. "Kathy, you have to get out here right away!" Morgan exclaimed. "We have a SNOWY OWL out by I-65 near the airport!" I had been watching Hercule Poirot reruns on Netflix, and hadn't checked my emails lately, but a Snowy Owl was sighted in Louisville on Nov 15.  There are several strange things about this sighting. One, Snowy Owls very rarely get as far south as Louisville. Even in a bad winter, they come to Ohio and Indiana, but not Kentucky. AND mid-November is extremely early for such a bird to be sighted. We've heard about the finch sightings, but I was blown away by this. Of course, we put our shoes on and hurried to the car, but only a mile away from home my friend called again and the bird had flown off. This photo was taken by Eddie Huber, another birding friend. Apparently it was found at the foot of an exit ramp off the interstate!

So I got in my car this morning and headed to the area of the sighting. Snowy Owls are diurnal and could be hunting at the airport again.  It should be easy to spot if it's there - a large white bird tends to stand out. So I scanned all the light poles, power poles, roof tops, signs and fences, but no luck. When you see something light colored you take a closer look, with your heart pounding madly. Maybe I got lucky this time, you whisper to yourself.

I never realized how many odd things are attached to the top of various poles and posts! I met up with another birding buddy, and we cruised the back side of the airport for a scenic tour of the industrial side of Louisville, checking in with other birders via cell phone. I would have been completely lost, but Del seemed to know where he was going. Of course, we saw plenty of plastic-bag birds. I suppose this metal feather duster thing is some kind of anti-bird device.

Large Great Brown-Tailed UPS birds perched at their regular feeding area at the airport. I wondered what was going through the mind of that young owl. (I know, this is anthropomorphising, but hey...) Coming so far from the familiar barrens of the Arctic tundra, it must have felt like it entered the Twilight Zone. There were areas of short bare grass, kind of familiar looking, surrounded by large paved areas completely devoid of life. To the north of the airport is the Kentucky State Fairgrounds, with more grassy areas and parking lots. To the south of the airport is the largest landfill in the county, with few trees but plenty of rats to eat, making it attractive to raptors. Therefore, this strip has attracted other northern visitors over the years, including a Rough-Legged Hawk one winter. Last year, a Ferruginous Hawk stayed at the Cincinnati airport for several weeks.

As we cruised through the industrial buildings and warehouses, I did spot this young Red Tailed Hawk, trying to ignore a vicious attack from a Mockingbird. The hawk finally gave up and flew off. I'm keeping my cell phone nearby and charged up, hoping that someone will find this bird again, and I can get to see it. Wow! A real, live Snowy Owl here in Louisville! I just hope we don't have to bring it in for rehab sometime.

Bird Quest

Since the weather report said this would be a nice weekend, followed by cold and rain, we decided to join our friends from the Kentucky Society for Natural History on a trip to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge. This NWR is only an hour or so north of Louisville, and an easy drive. Traditionally, we would go there in the fall and winter looking for water fowl of all sorts on the many lakes. However, they now have a new property manager, who has a different plan for the refuge, and most of the lakes we saw had more plant growth than water in them. We saw about a dozen Canada Geese, and only one male Wood Duck on one of the larger lakes, but none on any of the others.

Muscatatuck is the first place I ever saw a Red Headed Woodpecker, and I'm glad they are still around, along with the Yellow-rumped Warblers. But even the Bluebirds seem to have moved elsewhere.

I would have to say that the Refuge is now being managed for Turkey Vultures, since we saw more of them than anything other kind of bird. I'm sad to say that I am removing this NWR from my list of favorite birding spots in this area.

I subscribe to the Kentucky Birdlist, and read the postings, even though I'll probably never post anything myself, just to see what other birders are finding. This weekend, a couple reported seeing a Short-eared Owl and some Harriers in nearby Western Kentucky. It's only an hour and a half drive, I thought. I could make that and would sure love to get a photo of a Short-eared Owl!  They even provided an address (in the middle of farm country) for my GPS. I daydreamed about the wonderful closeup I'd get of that owl sitting on a fencepost all the way there.

I got there shortly before sunset, and found Harriers swooping over a field on the next ridge. Golly, they sure fly quickly from one end of the field to the other side! Then as I peered through my binoculars, I spotted FOUR of them in the air at once - an adult male, a female, and probably 2 juveniles -- the entire family! What about the owl? I did see a different bird, in a closer part of the field, but it flew so quickly away from me that I didn't get a close look. I'm going to say it was the owl.



Harriers are hawks, but they fly with their wings tipped in a dihedral, like Turkey Vultures. They have a facial disc like an owl, and use their hearing to help find prey. When they turn, you can see a large white rump. I never see them where other hawks are found, since they seem to require large open fields in which to hunt and won't come near the city. But they are definitely exciting birds to watch!

Eagle News!

When we went to Reel Foot Lake last week, we just enjoyed the beautiful fall weather and took photos of anything I could focus on. As often happens, I discovered something special while working with the photos on my computer that evening. One of the Bald Eagles had a radio transmitter on! I

sent the photo to David Haggard with TN State Parks, who sent it to Scott Somershoe, the TN State Ornithologist, who sent it to KY's State Avian Biologist, Kate Heyden. Here's what Kate says:

 "Remember “Missy”? The young rehabilitated bald eagle we deployed a transmitter on in August of 2011 which disappeared in October of 2011? Recall we had gone to west Tennessee to search for her after she stopped transmitting, but found no signs of her and wondered if her transmitter stopped working. Well, a young bald eagle was photographed at REEL FOOT Lake last week wearing a transmitter. The bird’s age and style of transmitter are correct and I can’t find any other young eagles that are currently being tracked that have been in that area recently. Thus, there’s a high probability that this bird is “Missy.” Too bad she is wearing a non-working transmitter, but I’m glad to see she’s OK. Our last locations from Missy were in this same area."

 Missy was rehabbed at RROKI in August 2011. Eileen Wicker of Raptor Rehabilitation of Kentucky says that of the three birds with transmitters, two of them were rehabbed at RROKI!

Meanwhile, Turner has flown to Alabama- that’s the furthest south he or any of our eagles have been. Chief Paduke continues to stick around his territory at Ballard.  See more about the transmitter project at:  http://fw.ky.gov/eagletrack.asp

When we rehab and release any bird, it's always with a prayer, since we have no way of knowing whether it will survive and do well or not, especially the young birds. It's wonderful to be able to learn something about one of our "alumni." Especially when I found it!!

Crazy as a Coot

You've heard the phrases. "Crazy as a coot," or "You old coot." Until I started birding, I thought a "coot" was simply a derogatory word for someone who was slightly batty. Then I learned that there actually is something named a coot, and it's a bird!

The American Coot is a black/gray chunky bird with a pointy white beak, built like a chicken, but related to rails. Unlike ducks, with whom they often swim, they don't have webbed feet, but only lobed toes. The broad lobes fold back each time the bird lifts its foot, so it doesn’t impede walking on dry land, though it supports the bird’s weight on mucky ground.



When the heavy bodied bird tries to fly, however, it has to work pretty hard. It runs as fast as it can, flapping furiously, just in front of your boat. Then in a short distance, they decide they are safe enough, drop back down to the lake's surface again, and return to calmly browsing the water plants.

I enjoy watching the Coots at sunset, when they paddle across the lake leaving long wakes behind. What a peaceful way to end the day!

How Many Pelicans Can Sit On A Log?

 

Most people assume that all Pelicans live near the ocean, and, in fact, Brown Pelicans do. But the American Pelican is white, breeds on lakes throughout the northern Great Plains and mountain West, and is one of the largest birds in North America. It winters along the coasts, but breeds only inland. By October, they flock up to descend the Mississippi flyway towards the Gulf Coast to spend the winter. Reel Foot Lake is an attractive stop over point to rest and feed. All those old cypress stumps make perfect perches. And the occasional underwater log can provide perching spots for many Pelicans at a time.

Pelicans are enormous birds, with a wingspan nearing 9.5 feet, and weighing up to 20 pounds. While enjoying their wing display, I wondered why so many white birds have black wing tips. Think about it...American Pelicans, Snow Geese, Wood Storks, White Ibis, many different gulls and terns. Google to the rescue again. Apparently the melanin in black feathers makes them stronger than white feathers without melanin. It's important to have strong flight feathers when you travel as far as these birds do in migration every year.

They are graceful fliers, but getting that large body up into the air takes a lot of effort, much of it quite comical! Those big feet come in handy for a running start!

 

 

 

Their feeding behavior is different than expected too. They don't dive down into the water after fish, but swim on the surface, herding their prey into a small area to be scooped up by those long bills. Several pelicans may fish cooperatively, moving into a circle to concentrate fish, and then dipping their heads under simultaneously to catch fish. It looks like a Pelican ballet!

Reel Foot Lake - a Drowned Forest

 

Reel Foot Lake, along the Mississippi River in Western Tennessee,  is an unusual body of water. It's classified as a "natural" lake, since it wasn't created by a man-made damming of some river. Instead, it formed when the great earthquake of 1811-1812 dropped the bottom of old river bed, and the river flowed upstream to fill the lower area.

 

 

Look at the curved shapes in the lake (at the red A). They indicate old oxbow bends in the river. To the left is the big oxbow bend currently taken by the river at the point where Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri join. In fact, one part of Kentucky can only be reached by going into Missouri these days. It used to be joined to the rest of the state, but the river moved since the maps were drawn.

In 1811, these river beds were swampy areas filled with bald cypress forests. The bald cypress is a very unusual tree. It's a conifer, which usually means an evergreen tree, but these trees drop their needles each fall to become "bald" in fact!

They grow huge "buttressed" supports to keep them steady in the boggy areas they favor. Cypress knees grow up in the water around the base of the tree. Much speculation says they help the tree obtain air when the roots are under water. Another theory is that they help support the weight of the tree in soggy soil. Notice that you don't see the knees when cypress are planted in your neighbor's yard. The lake is normally only about 5 feet deep, but drought hit Western Tennessee this summer, just like every place else, and currently the lake is only about 3 feet deep. The water levels are clearly visible on the lake shore knees.

When you look across the lake, you see small cypress trees growing in the middle of the water, beside mystery objects. I asked David Haggard, our guide, "Are they rocks? Are they birds?" No they are the stumps of cypress trees that lived here 200 years ago when the lake was formed after the earthquake, and so are the surviving stunted trees. (Thump!) You see, bald cypress trees don't rot when covered by water. (Bump!) The dead logs only rot when exposed to the air, so as long as the lake stays at its normal 5 foot depth, the 200+ year old stumps are covered in water, and safe from further decay. (Rrrrrrr! Tilt! Splash!) Some of the trees themselves are still alive after 200 years, but their growth has been stunted.

What are the sound effects, you ask. That's what it sounds like to take a boat into the lake when it's this low. Even though David skillfully steers around most of the stumps, some are still hidden below the water's surface, and we find them only by running into or over them. In fact, he has a special "four-wheel drive" boat, which seems to be a combination flat-bottomed John boat, with a Jeep-like 2 blade motor, enabling it to climb up and over any stumps and logs in the way. He drives slowly when he knows the water is low, and faster when going through the old river channels which have fewer stumps. I'd love to see those idio__, excuse me, those boatmen, from Kentucky Lake try to come here with their big outboards, or some junior idio_ with jet skis! They would ruin their boat and dump themselves into the water in about 3 minutes!

The really shallow parts of the lake are home to American lotus and water lilies, growing at a depth of only 3-4 inches! The keel on his motor keeps the blades from becoming entangled in the plants, or getting stuck in the mud, although a few times he had to tilt the blades at an extra shallow angle to keep from becoming stuck.

In the summer, the lotus grow one stalk with a huge leaf, and another stalk for the flower/seed pod.

By now, all we have are brown dry leaves, and brown flower pods that look like shower heads. The acorn-like seeds make a wonderful rattle when one of the pods breaks off, landing in the bottom of the boat. The mini-forest of dried leaves and pods provide excellent hiding places for the water fowl coming here for the winter. You don't see the coots and ducks until they actually take off en masse with a loud whirl of wings. Duck season will start in a few weeks, but I'm betting on the ducks. They can only be shot if they leave the water. David says there is a six duck limit per hunter, and the limit is allocated among the different species depending on how rare they are. Hunters have to learn to recognize them on the wing flying at full speed, something I certainly can't do.

Dawn is a wonderful time to enjoy the lake, with pink clouds and incredible reflections in the water. What a terrific way to start the day. We thanked David for taking time off work for our tour, and he said he preferred being on the lake to staying in the office all day! You can always do paperwork when it rains!

Bald Eagles at Reel Foot Lake

Everyone recognizes our national symbol, the Bald Eagle, right? Most people know that they were on the endangered species list for many years. Before European settlers arrived in North American, an estimated  half-million Bald Eagles may have lived along every large river and concentration of lakes within North America, nesting in forty-five of the lower forty-eight states. Their numbers began to drop as they had to compete with people for territory and food through the 1800's. The pesticide DDT killed huge numbers of Eagles and other birds by making their eggs too thin to survive incubation.

Bald eagles were officially declared an endangered species in 1967 in all areas of the United States south of the 40th parallel, under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act of 1973. On July 4, 1976, the US Fish and Wildlife Service officially listed the bald eagle as a national endangered species. By June 2007, they were officially removed from that list, having been re-introduced into their old territories by hacking, or releasing young birds, in appropriate areas. When the young birds reach the age of reproduction, they return to the area where they fledged to raise their own young.  The number of nesting pairs in the lower 48 United States increased 10-fold, from less than 450 in the early 1960s, to more than 4,500 adult bald eagle nesting pairs in the 1990s. In the Southeast, for example, there were about 980 breeding pairs in 1993, up from about 400 in 1981. The largest concentrations were in the states of Florida and Louisiana. Today, there are an estimated 9,789 nesting pairs of bald eagles. In Kentucky, we have an estimated population of 100 breeding pairs, including two nesting sites in Jefferson County.

No matter how many times you see a Bald Eagle in a raptor program, there is no thrill to match seeing them in the wild, doing what they were meant to do. At Reel Foot Lake in Tennessee yesterday, we must have seen at least 20 eagles, and it isn't even migration season yet. The numbers increase dramatically when they come down the Mississippi River to the warmer waters of Western Tennessee and Kentucky. At one point, we saw six of them in the air at once, flying around each other, touching talons, and generally looking pretty darn happy. It made us happy too! We were able to approach the adult bird at the top of the post within about 25 yards, and he just sat and posed in the sun for a long time before flying off. Someone who really knows his stuff can age a juvenile or sub-adult eagle by the patterns of white in its feathers, which change every year until maturity at 5 years of age. This bird with the dirty head is probably a 4 year old, and will grow completely white head and tail feathers next year.

Their beaks are dark as well as their feathers as youngsters, and as they mature, you can see the beaks and legs changing color too.

They love the open snags at the top of an old bald cypress tree for an "eagle's eye" view of the lake. Reel Foot State Park offers eagle viewing weekends in January. Reel Foot Lake is home to one of the largest wintering populations of eagles in the country. During the peak season (Jan.-Feb.) there can be as many as 200 eagles wintering on Reel Foot. The three Kentucky State Parks near Land Between the Lakes offer eagle weekend tours as well.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel will often climb up into eagle nests (a dangerous move) to band the young eaglets before they fledge. Kentucky's Dept of Fish and Wildlife has attached satellite transmitters to several bald eagles to track their movements. The eagles wear a 70g solar-powered GPS-PTT satellite transmitter, attached externally, like a backpack with a Teflon harness. Solar panels recharge the transmitter's battery and we hope to receive three-five years of tracking data from each of these birds. The transmitter will not affect the eagle’s ability to fly, forage, or breed. Each transmitter, or tracking device, will allow KDFWR to follow the bald eagle’s movements and will provide information on the dispersal, home range, migration, roosting and foraging patterns, as well as, the survival of each eagle. In examining the photos I took, I saw that one of our birds had a radio transmitter on his back. (click to enlarge the photo for a closer view). Dave Haggard, long time eagle expert and our guide yesterday, said he would see if he could track this down.

 

Chief Paduke is the adult eagle (no, this photo isn't the Chief, but a bird I saw yesterday) currently being tracked in Kentucky, but the maps indicate that he's staying pretty much around the Paducah area. "Chief Paduke" was captured using a rocket-net at Ballard Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in western Kentucky on April 30, 2012. Chief is an adult male (at least 5 years old) and is known to nest on Ballard WMA. But Chief was already banded when captured! He had been rehabilitated in 2010 after he was illegally shot, which injured his wing. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) captured Chief after a landowner reported seeing an injured eagle and took him to Raptor Rehabilitation of Kentucky. After recovering from surgery, Chief was released in his nesting territory in late summer 2010.  WOW! I was volunteering at Raptor Rehab that summer, but didn't realize one of our birds was being tracked! Too cool!