A Great Evening

On a whim I stopped at Stewart Park, in Ithaca, on my way home this evening. While the portion that abuts the southern end of Cayuga Lake is mostly open grass with picnic tables and other park-like facilities, there is a patch of bottomland forest that hosts woodland birds. Among those woodland birds are a pair of Great Horned Owls who nest in a tall Cottonwood tree. If you know where to look you can often see the female snoozing while incubating the eggs.

A photo from early March, the female sits inside the crevice - a cozy nesting site.

April in NY is late in their breeding cycle. Recently I was thinking the eggs must have hatched by now, and voila! a post to the local listserve mentioned three chicks could be seen in the cavity. I wasn't in a huge rush to get home so I stopped, hoping to photograph three cute baby owls peering out of the only home they've known.

I found the tree easy enough, but didn't see anything resembling an owl. While photographing some debris at the bottom of the crevice, trying to make it into the back of an owl head, a birder approached and asked if I saw the chick.

"I'm not sure, but I think I'm looking at the back of a head, I think . . . "

"You're going to get a great picture," she cut me off. "Look there."

There was an unmistakable baby Great Horned Owl about 50 meters away from where we stood.

A branchling Great Horned Owl, likely the first day out of the nest.

We didn't stay long, it didn't move much. A slight swivel of its head, a slow blink of the eyes. After a few minutes we backed out of the woods, leaving the owl its privacy. Plus, I had one more stop to make.

Fellow Horseheads residents, bloggers, and nature enthusiasts Jan (of Scattered Seed) and George (of I Love Trucks) happened to drop by Sapsucker Woods this afternoon. We got to meet face-to-face and talk birds, birding, and about a Great Egret they found over the weekend, a good sighting for our area. They let me know it was still around, assuming it's the same bird, but not in the same expansive marsh near Watkins Glen where they originally found it. Now it was near "the Domes," the sports complex owned by Elmira College, which happens to be less than two miles from Horseheads Marsh and less than one mile from our house. Easy enough to stop for a look.

Thanks to their great directions I found the bird almost immediately. My only delay was explaining to the trooper what I was doing and why - the NY State Trooper station is less than a mile from the Domes, too.

Great Egret foraging along Catharine Creek, obscured by branches.

Great Egrets are uncommon in Chemung County, NY, something I base on eBird submissions and my own experience. In the past six years I've only recorded one, a fly-over at Horseheads Marsh in August. (Incidentally, through eBird I discovered there was another sighting, farther south, on that same date - perhaps the same bird winging it's way to an evening roost in Queen Catharine's Marsh near Watkins Glen?)

Regardless, all other observations from our area are late summer or fall sightings: post-breeding dispersers and migrating birds heading south. A spring sighting is certainly interesting, and I suppose the bird will continue on its journey as soon as the weather is conducive to migration.

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Oops, I Did It Again

Yes, I cheated again. We published a second post on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "Round Robin" blog. This one, titled "How to See a Sound That’s a Half-Second Long," gets into flight-calls a bit more and talks about using spectrograms to "see" sound.

Find out more about this image, including what it sounds like, at Round Robin.

If you missed it, the first post, "Let's Go Biding! . . . At Night . . . Blindfolded," serves as an introduction.

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The More You Know . . . .

From one of my absolute favorite blogs, The Futility Closet (self billed as An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements), comes this nugget:

GREAT CRESTED GREBE is typed entirely with the left hand.

I bet you not only didn't know that, you never even considered the concept. And now that your brain has processed that miscellany (or is it a compendious amusement?), you're stuck with it. You're welcome!

As long as I brought it up, it's worth subscribing to The Futility Closet for quirky, interesting, and varied short breaks from the daily grind. You're welcome for that, too!

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Radar is showing birds are on the move Sunday night, primarily in front of a storm front stretching from western Georgia to eastern Iowa. The blocky, dark blue line is the front connecting those two regions, the brownish wash and circular blues are birds in the air around 11:30 PM (EDT). If I'm reading this right, coastal Texas appears to have a pretty thick migration right now, as is South Carolina and Michigan. Sadly for me, not much benefiting the Southern Tier of NY tonight.

One of many Red-tailed Hawks taking to the skies this Sunday afternoon.

We spent the weekend at my folks place in Rochester, NY, and it was a typical April day for Rochester: deceptive. From inside it looked beautiful, sunny, bright, warm. Standing outside, however, was only sunny and bright. Temperatures stayed in the 30's (*F), wind was constant and strong. That's nothing for us locals, after an outdoor easter egg hunt we hit a local park. The "usual suspects" were all there, including an impressive amount of woodpeckers, ranging from Downy up to Pileated. A few "First of Year" species made appearances: Winter Wren, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Louisiana Waterthrush.

An American Tree Sparrow takes flight, soon to
be headed to its northern breeding grounds.

Back at the house the feeders were filled with "undesirables." Dozens of House Sparrows, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Common Grackles covered the ground, the hopper, the suet. On the desirable side, Pine Siskins continue on the nyjer feeder, White-crowned, and Song Sparrows mix among the ground-feeding species, a single Field Sparrow sang nearby. Siskins are actually breeding in the area, as are crossbills, trees are flowering, skunk cabbage is exploding. Renewal, growth, circle of life . . . it may not feel like spring, but it is.

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Nocturnal Migration

First, I hope you checked out my guest post, co-authored with Lewis Grove, at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Round Robin last week. The next post should appear this evening or tomorrow about spectrograms. Somewhat dry, but with audio of flight calls (!), then we can get into the fun stuff. Hopefully we'll be able to post some "predictions" of migratory events during the spring, but we'll definitely run a series of species-specific posts to help you learn some common flight calls and others about flight calls in general.

That said, tonight looks pretty good across portions of the eastern US, at least as of 10:30 PM. Compare these two maps, one what the radar looked like at 7:00 PM (EDT), the second just over two hours later.

Those two greenish blobs over the mid-west (Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas) and a bit farther east (Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana) represent storm systems, and are present in both maps. Then there are those circular blue blobs, a few present over the southeast in the first map but many, many more in the second map. Those are radar stations picking up objects in the sky that are not weather. They are birds, possibly bats or large insects, but the majority are birds.

The brownish washes seen across western New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and interspersed in other areas, are less-active areas of migration - but migration nonetheless.

Looks like a good night to go out and listen for flight calls, even better, for listening for flight calls while training low-powered optics on tonight's full moon. Perhaps you'll see some shadows crossing the face of the moon while hearing calls dripping down from birds on the move. I'm heading outside now, let me know if you see/hear anything!

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Around the Pond, In the Pond

A walk around the backyard is something that keeps me grounded. At least I like to think so. I'm not comparing our quarter-mile loop to Darwin's Sand Walk, but I do know it calms my mind, teaches me new things about our habitat, and (most importantly) allows my daughter and I to engage nature as a team.

14-year-old Barron still accompanies us on our walks.

We've been curious about where our resident American Crows have nested - somewhere across the street in a stand of pines we assume, based on the numerous times we've watched one fly in that direction carrying a stick. Reina noted they're still flying in that direction, but not carrying sticks. Must be done building, egg laying can't be too far behind.

American Crow, perhaps retreating to its nest site.

The first round of migrant birds are back in force, and many of them caught our attention yesterday. Song Sparrow songs came from every corner, each the same as the others (they speak the same language) but completely different (they each have a unique voice). Our Red-winged Blackbird, which we like to think is the same as previous years, perches atop his favorite spruce and keeps rivals away. Soon the females will return and, being polygamous, he'll use his song to attract a few.

Dark-eyed Junco numbers increase daily, we counted more than two dozen under our feeder. Best of all the Eastern Phoebe is back, even checking out his nest from last year, and some of our native plants are returning.

Marsh Marigold, here emerging from the very edge
of the pond, creates habitat for amphibians.

But what caught and held our attention was something we found in the pond, not surrounding it. What first looked like a small algae bloom a few days ago didn't look like algae today. We're wondering if it's an egg mass of some sort, if you have any ideas, please let us know! (Click for larger images.)



On the floor of the pond, below the second of the green, algae-like clusters, were hundreds (if not thousands) of bubble-like . . . well, bubbles. Or, perhaps eggs scattered along the bottom? Or maybe the vegetation is wickedly photosynthetic? We're grateful for any ideas, either identifying them definitively, guessing what they might be, or definitively excluding eggs.



If this helps, we know we have healthy numbers of Spring Peepers, American Toads, and Bullfrogs. Fish-wise, the pond holds many, many catfish, several koi, and one gar. In a very non-naturalist way we've never identified them past those distinctions. We look forward to your thoughts!

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Road Kill Birding

On my Blue Highway drive to work this morning I came across a possum in the road. I was driving the way I usually do on these roads: slow, eyes flitting back and forth to both sides of the road, one hand on the wheel, the other clutching binoculars. The possum was doing what it usually does on a road: lying there, unmoving, after an unfortunate meeting with a non-birding car.

The vulture looking the other way, "Nothing to
see here, no carrion in sight. Keep moving . . . ."

The possum was not what first attracted my attention, it was the hulking bird standing in the middle of the road. I slowed to a stop while opening the window. My hopes of watching the bird pluck at a carcass were dashed, but not before I snapped a few shots of a beautiful Turkey Vulture. In my experience it's not often you get that close to one, at least without being vomited on. In the wild they always seem skittish, keeping their distance from observers.

The bird flushed, circled once, and landed in a tangle of branches directly above the possum. Clearly, this bird was not giving up on the possum easily. I captured a few more shots before leaving the bird its morning meal.

The bright red head and yellow bill really
stand out perched on top of the brown body.

As the bird was taking its lap around the field it displayed the diagnostic wing pattern, perhaps the most recognizable field mark of any bird. You can't miss the undersides of the wings as the birds (usually several) circle above you, the leading edge of the wing dark and the trailing edge white, from body to wingtip. Usually those wings aren't flapping, they're held stiff, angled upward from the body in the characteristic dihedral. When it does flap it seems effortless, casual, efficient, and lazy, all at the same time.


This bird reminded me of the wonderment of the feather. Try this: the next time you find a flight feather of any species, preferably one of the long primaries, bend it. It seems stiff, too stiff to flex. It takes a reasonable amount of force to get it to bend, or maybe that just says something about my lack of a weight-lifting routine.



How does the bird bend them so easily? It doesn't seem that the muscles attached to the quill could do that, could the bird do it of its own volition? Or is it something external to the bird, something to do with the flapping motion? So much to learn. And that's the thing about birding, isn't it? There is beauty, wonderment, and a never-ending source of questions to engage you, even watching a bald bird with a red-skinned head stalk a dead animal on the side of the road.

I can't wait for the warblers!

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