Author Archives: Richard

Northern Shrike — The Butcher Bird

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One of the winter birds that I have yet to see and add to my life list is the Northern Shrike.  We’ve been away much of the last three winters but there’s also been a fairly reliable visitor, which we call the “Appleby’s Shrike,” hanging out in the trees near the popular Berlin, VT restaurant.  Most of my birding friends have seen it but for me, it’s just one of those, “Oh, you should have been here an hour ago” birds.  Close encounters during the winter months I’ve been around.

I’ve seen many Loggerhead Shrikes in my Southwest journeys  —  this winter, one of my goals is to see my first Northern Shrike here in Vermont.  I mentioned that in a Winter Birding – Bring It On post last month.

The shrike hunts by perching atop a tall shrub or tree at the edge of a field where it surveys the surrounding area for songbirds, insects, and small mammals.

The Northern Shrike is a songbird that is slightly smaller then a robin. They breed up up in the Arctic Circle of Alaska and Canada. During the winter you may find them around your feeder if you live in the northern half of the United States. Unlike the other birds they are not there for the nyjer thistle, cracked corn or other type of seed.

A predatory songbird, the Northern shrike sits on an exposed perch and watches for insects, small birds and mammals, or reptiles.  They do not have the powerful talons that raptors use to catch their prey — they grab their prey with their feet, and kill by biting through its victim’s neck. They will impale prey, sometimes while still alive,  on the barbs of a fence or large thorns. They often kill more prey then they can eat, which is how they received the scientific name Lanius excubitor, roughly translated this means butcher watchman. This species is known to pierce its prey onto thorns, sticks, fences and other pointed objects where it will either immediately eat its catch, or leave it impaled to be eaten at a later time.

The main field marks which help to easily identify the Northern Shrike are its stout bill which curves at the tip, and its distinctive black mask which goes from the base of the bill through the eye and to the side of its large head.  Generally speaking, its upper portions are gray and the underneath are an off-white/soft gray with a faint barring on its chest.  Its wings are black with white patches.  The Northern Shrike is a medium sized song bird, yet when it flies by, at first glance one generally thinks it may be a out-of-season Northern Mockingbird because of the similar coloring; however, once you see the curved bill and black mask you know that you have seen a rare visitor from the north.  I’m already looking every time I go past the turn for Applely’s.

Note:  Vermonter Tom Slayton wrote a wonderful article on Northern Shrikes last year.

Image by cheepshot

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Smart Birds Stash Stores, Thwart Thieves

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We know that squirrels make the most of fall’s plenty by hoarding nuts for the winter, but the fact that birds also store, or cache, food goes largely unappreciated. Through clever observation and experiments, biologists have found that food caching (from the French cacher, “to hide”) has developed to a high art in some birds.

Take the chickadee, for instance. Chickadees put tens of thousands of food items a year into short-term storage. They usually retrieve and eat the food in the space of several days. Each food item is cached in a different place to make it difficult for thieves to steal all the food at once. When hiding a new item, they remember their previous storage sites and avoid placing caches too close together.

The Black-Capped Chickadee hides seeds and other food items to eat later. Each item is placed in a different spot and the chickadee can remember thousands of hiding places.

Chickadees remember each hiding place for around a month, even though they may be scattered widely across a bird’s territory. Research shows they use visual cues to navigate back to each of their cache sites by a combination of larger landscape features, particularly verticals, and use of the sun as compass. Smaller local details are not as critical, probably because these often change in a forest. When retrieving food, they remember which sites have been emptied, either by them or by robbers, to avoid fruitless searching.

How does a tiny bird have such brain power?

Chickadees begin to store food at the onset of fall, when seeds become abundant. At the same time, the region of the brain that handles spatial memory (part of the hippocampus) starts to grow in size by producing new brain cells to handle the huge amount of cache data. It continues to grow as more food is cached. Come spring, reliance on food stores drops, caching dwindles, and the brain area shrinks. Brain cells use a lot of energy, so to conserve resources the extra cells last only as long as they are needed. Brain growth is tied to food availability, since captive chickadees that receive plentiful food year-round do not undergo seasonal brain changes…

(Read whole article by Li Shen, an adjunct professor at the Dartmouth Medical School and the chair of the Thetford, Vermont, Conservation Commission)

Image by qmnonic

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Airstream Repair Photos

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As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I dropped off the Airstream at Colin Hyde’s repair facility in Plattsburgh, NY.  The other day, I got a bunch of photos showing the progress on the replacement of the panels.  They have to remove both the inside and outside panels to be able to rivet so that the rivet heads are proper.  Looks like good progress.

The top panel is gone and the lower one is being removed.

Project Feeder Watch Starts Soon

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The 26th season of Project FeederWatch begins November 10, and participants are needed more than ever. By watching your feeders from November through April and submitting what you see, you’re making it possible for scientists to keep track of changing bird populations across the continent. New or returning participants can sign up anytime.

After unusual winter weather in some parts of the country last season, many participants found themselves asking, “Where are the birds?”—but the story might be different this year.

The AccuWeather long-range forecasting service is predicting some big storms in the Northeast this winter, so FeederWatchers in that region may see more birds at their feeders than they did last winter. Forecasts also call for another year of below-normal snowfall for the Midwest, above-normal snowfall and below-normal temperatures for the central and southern Rockies, and a wet winter with above-normal precipitation for the Gulf Coast and Southeast.

“We’ll have to see if those predictions pan out and how they might affect feeder-bird numbers,” says David Bonter, project leader for FeederWatch. “The one number we definitely want to see increase is the number of people taking part in FeederWatch. It’s easy to do, and the information is incredibly valuable in helping us better understand what’s going on in the environment and in the lives of the birds we enjoy so much.”

Other things to look forward to as the season approaches:

  • A new photo gallery featuring some of the many photos FeederWatchers sent in during the 2011-12 season.
  • This year’s Winter Finch Forecast shows it could be a great winter for birds at feeders—so don’t miss it! Red-breasted Nuthatches, Red Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks, and other birds are likely to be on the move after a relatively poor summer for cone crops. Read the full forecast for more details.
  • Winter Bird Highlights is the annual summary of the previous season’s results. The 2012 issue is being mailed to Canadian FeederWatch participants in their kits and will be mailed to U.S. participants with the fall issue of Living Bird News (late October). You can also get a PDF version online and read it immediately.

To learn more about joining Project FeederWatch and to sign up, visit www.feederwatch.org or call the Cornell Lab toll-free at (866) 989-2473. In return for the $15 fee ($12 for Cornell Lab members), participants receive the FeederWatcher Handbook and Instructions with tips on how to successfully attract birds to your feeders, an identification poster of the most common feeder birds, and a calendar. Participants also receive Winter Bird Highlights, an annual summary of FeederWatch findings, as well as the Cornell Lab’s quarterly newsletter, Living Bird News.

(Project FeederWatch is a joint research and education project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada.

Image: Dick Mansfield

New Twitter Background for Vtbirder

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The dog and I went out into the woods on a photo mission this afternoon, using the self-timer to shoot a couple of avatar-images for a new Twitter background.  I worked in Photoshop to put together a custom background.  Not a great idea to update on a Friday afternoon before big storm — slow slow page loads. The first draft looks like this:

Come visit me on Twitter.

Magic of the Snowy Owl

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A wonderful hour-long video of Snowy Owls is now available online or through your PBS station.  I set my DVR for 5:00 AM tomorrow morning — check your local listing.

Watch Magic of the Snowy Owl Preview on PBS. See more from Nature.

Magic of the Snowy Owl premiered Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings)

Throughout the long months of the Arctic’s frozen winter, the sun remains below the horizon. The cold is intensified by the darkness, making life difficult, if not impossible, for all but the toughest and most experienced of animals. Snowy owls are built for the challenge, their every sense and skill honed to take on the eerie, bleak world. When the brief Arctic summer approaches, bringing light back to the tundra, snowy owls embark on an even more daunting challenge than keeping themselves alive. They breed and attempt to raise young in one of the harshest environments on the planet. Once summer arrives, they will have just 82 days of sunlight to successfully raise a family of helpless owlets until they are ready and able to fly. Documenting the degree of difficulty involved in those efforts, a team of filmmakers must face some challenges of their own as they set out to record the rarely observed daily lives of a breeding pair of snowy owls.

You can watch the full video here.

Digiscoping at Plum Island

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I try to make it over to Parker River NWR every time we visit this area and today I grabbed a few hours to check things out and practice some digiscoping.  There were few tourists and birders and lots of ducks.  Most of the ducks were feeding heavily so I gave up after taking way too many “duck butt” shots.  I saw Gadwalls, Mallards, Teals, Pintails, Wigeons, Ruddy Ducks, Black Ducks, and a probably a few more.  Four Mute Swans were in the Salt Pannes –here’s a shot of one preening.

Mute Swan preening

We always check Mute Swans hoping for a Tundra…. some day.

Some of the highlights of the day were the hundreds of Double-crested Cormorants (with probably a Great or two in there) heading southward.  I enjoyed watching two Northern Harriers hunting, using the northwest wind to hover and swoop.  They are perhaps my favorite hawk.

Lots of sparrows still hanging out — Swamp, White-crowned, Savannah, Song, and several others too vague for me to identify.  I need a sparrow guru with me on Plum Island.  One Song Sparrow posed for some digiscoping:

On the way out, about a dozen Yellowlegs were resting.  Here is one that was up and about and looking good.

In addition to good weather and good birds, it was nice to be at Parker River between hunting seasons.  The adjacent waters are hunted heavily and it’s nice to have some peace and quiet — for us and for the ducks and geese.

Harbor Seal Spotting

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Every fall and winter, harbor seals come into the Merrimack River. They congregate just opposite to the campground -they are very much a local attraction — to campers and day visitors to Salisbury State Park Reservation.  Mary and I drove over today to see them as the tide was receding.

Named common seal throughout Europe, this seal frequently observed around Long Island lives along the shores of eastern Canada, New England and in the winter, as far south as the Carolinas in a variety of habitats. Their scientific name loosely means “sea calf” or “sea dog.” This latter nickname is well suited as these seals closely resemble a dog when their head is viewed at the surface of the water.

“Hey Guys, stop loafing and get to work. The fish are running.”

They were out on the rocks, lying with their heads and hind flippers elevated in a “banana-like” position. They were “talking” to one another and enjoying the fall cloud-filtered sunlight.

A Great Black-backed Gull posed as we watched the seals.

While harbor seals don’t do the tricks of the seals at Sea World, it was delightful to see them in their natural habitat, feeding, playing, and resting. Nice images to take back to a pending Vermont winter.

Mallards Get No Respect

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“Ah, just a couple of Mallards.”  How many times have we said that when scanning through a group of waterfowl, looking for the rock stars: the Teals, the Hoodies, the Redheads … anything but plain vanilla Mallards.  Like Black-capped Chickadees or American Robins, or even Blue Jays, it’s easy to take a “just another” attitude toward the feathered friends we see quite often.

But, there’s a lot to be said for bird watching, rather than birding from time to time:  taking the time to observe, to admire, to just be present with …  some call it slow birding.  Here is one online description of the differences:

One person can be both a birdwatcher and a birder. Many bird lovers change their style of birding from day to day, some days more casually enjoying their familiar backyard birds, while other days focusing on chasing that new lifer or identifying a unique visitor. What both types have in common, however, is a love of birds that withstands any name rivalry.

The other day, I watched two pairs of Mallards feeding in the morning sun, oblivious to me scoping them from across the inlet.  They just dabbled and preened and had a great time — it reminded me of hanging out in a great coffee shop, nibbling and sipping, just having a leisurely breakfast.

I watched a couple of Mallards leisurely feeding and dabbling, partly hidden by the foliage, enjoying the morning sun.

I’m usually not the most patient of birders — I have to consciously slow down and observe rather than just ticking the bird off on my iPhone and moving on.  There’s a time and a place for that, but it’s also fun to make time to not only study the details of plumage but to learn more about what the birds that we see and hear are doing.  It’s a work in progress for me.  So Mallards, if I have maligned you in the past, remember deep down I think you’re cool-looking and acting ducks.  Dabble on!

Two Lifers in Ten Minutes

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Today was a beautiful fall day to chase birds.  I returned to Artichoke Reservoir which was rather calm after yesterday’s chaos.  I was looking for the Greater White-fronted Goose that has been seen for several days in a row.  My first pass on the various vantage points brought some nice birds: lots of Mallards, Pied-billed Grebes, a Double-crested Cormorant, a couple of Mute Swans, and about 20 Canada Geese but no target bird.  I was early and knew that they had been overnighting in nearby cornfields and arriving later in the morning so I drove over to nearby Cherry Hill Reservoir.

I took a walk along the eastern edge, seeing hundreds of Ruddy Ducks, a couple of American Coots, a late Osprey, and numerous sparrows.  A birder came walking up, with a dog on a leash, and asked if I’d seen the goose.  When I said no, he told me that it had just flown in back at Artichoke — that he’d been there when it arrived.  So, back in the car I went, stowing scope and tripod, and drove the ten minutes back.  Sure enough, there was a gaggle of geese on the wind-swept water and after counting 49 and not seeing it, I went slowly back through the group and sure enough, there it was — smaller, orange bill, different coloration.  Life bird 348!  I took some digiscoped shots but they are for documentation — too far away and pretty windy.

A Greater White-fronted Goose on Artichoke Reservoir, West Newbury, MA.

As I was watching, a birder from New Hampshire showed up, and then another serious guy who’d driven yesterday to Rhode Island for the Wood Sandpiper.  They got on the bird and then a woman arrived, mentioning that “the Great Cormorant was still at Cherry Hill Reservoir.”  I asked her where and since I’d never spotted it, after watching the goose for a bit longer, I made the short trip back to Cherry Hill.  I suspect that locals are used to birders by now.

I found the juvenile Great Cormorant — perhaps two — the photos look that way — on rocks way on the other side of the water.  They digiscoped photo is pretty rough but the looks through the scope were good.  Life bird 349!

I would have liked to see the Pink-footed Goose that someone reported a few days ago and my birder friends were really after that … but it may have been a misidentification or just left, as rare birds will do.  I’m at the point in birding where I still have a number of not-so-rare birds to get for life birds.  Hope to get one more this week — perhaps a Northern Gannet.