Ponder This...

Who brings baby storks to their parents?

It's a question that has befuddled mankind for centuries.

 I'd be interested in hearing your conjecture.

Autumn Eye Candy

 An anvil thunderhead catches the evening sunlight.

Looking through my iPhoto library I realized that I had some very nice eye candy images. Here are a few that I collected in recent weeks.

 Macro shot of a past-its-freshness-date purple coneflower.

 Macro shot of daughter Phoebe's eye—she leaves these on every camera in the house.

White hibiscus flower—from the plant along our garage wall that the indigo buntings nested in very late in August.

Glory rays—that's what my Great Aunt Lolly called them—coming from the cloud-covered sun.

This image, taken with my iPhone 4S, looks almost like a painting. The blood moon was rising over the neighbor's pasture and the low-light gives the image a pleasingly grainy feel.

Soon the broad-winged hawks will all be well on their way to South America. I digiscoped this one from our tower using my iPhone.

Another iPhone digiscoping capture of a brown thrasher from the tower.

Streaks from the West, heralding the end of another beautiful August day at Indigo Hill. How I wish I could stay home and never miss another sunrise or sunset!

Bee-Buzz Haiku

Your wings are not blue
While others sing more sweetly
You just say "Beee-buzzzz!"

* adult male blue-winged warbler digiscoped at Long Point Meadows near Fayetteville, WV, May 2011.

Trip from Bountiful

While speaking and guiding at The Great Salt Lake Bird Festival in May, the kind folks at the festival put me up in Bountiful, Utah. The hotel was lovely, but being between two busy highways it was not so birdy.

When I found myself with a free morning, I was determined to find some birds to enjoy and to photograph, so I enlisted my new friend Valerie a festival volunteer and local Utah birder, to help me find a good, birdy spot. Also joining us was a longtime friend, birder, and Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival raconteur Marci Fuller. Marci was seeking a Virginia's warbler. I was seeking some bird photo opps. Valerie was kind enough to take us to a real gem of a spot called Willard Bay State Park, north of Salt Lake City and Bountiful. It turned out to be a bountiful trip!

As soon as we got out of the car our ears were assaulted by bird song. Yellow warblers were singing from every direction. Lazuli buntings and black-headed grosbeaks vocalized from the cottonwoods, and a host of other noisemakers chimed in. And then I heard one of those calls that you KNOW you know, but you can't quite place it. Know what I mean? This happens to me every spring.

Cavorting along the branches of a tree with lots of apparently tasty buds was the calling bird and, when I saw what it was, I jumped up and down, squealing, like a six-year old girl who's just been given a pony!

"Hey! EVENING GROSBEAK! Yes! Holy #@$%&*#$%! I KNEW I knew that call! How OSSUM is THAT BIRD!"

Then (I hope not because of my antics) the flock flew far away and I had to wait for a couple of hours before we relocated a photograph-able bird (below). I love evening grosbeaks, in case you were wondering. The first year of publishing Bird Watcher's Digest in our home in Marietta, Ohio, we had a huge finch invasion with loads of evening grosbeaks at the feeders, so they've always occupied a special place in my heart.

Male evening grosbeak.

Valerie lead us along the park's paths, many of which were flooded, necessitating some detours. We picked carefully through flocks of still-migrating warblers hoping to find a Virginia's, but we dipped out. Lots of orange-crowneds and clouds of yellow warblers, though.

Another song caught my ear—familiar, but not as familiar as the grosbeak's. It was a dark-plumaged fox sparrow singing a slightly weird song. We listened to his amazing melodic phrases. Fox sparrows pass through my home turf in spring and fall, only occasionally stopping long enough to be heard singing. In my opinion they are an underrated singer.

Fox sparrow.

Valerie and Marci scanning the woodland edge.

Farther along the path, winding in and out of the campground, we came to the edge of the lake and scooped up a nice variety of species new for the day's list. A male California quail and his covey of purty ladies skedaddled along the shoreline and into deep cover—though not before I got a few photos.

California quail.

Several American white pelicans were soaking up the warm morning sunshine in a small embayment. They hardly paid any attention to us.

American white pelican.

Out on the lake a Clark's grebe drifted in toward shore and I digiscoped it. This species seemed to be present here in Utah in equal numbers to its near-lookalike, the western grebe. Little did I know then, but I'd be straining my eyes to find a Clark's on a Big Day adventure in North Dakota just three weeks later. In ND, it seems to be 50 westerns for every single Clark's grebe. [Yes, we finally got a Clark's in ND!].

Clark's grebe.

A very cooperative male black-headed grosbeak sang for us in the sun. Seeing this stunning bird so well through my scope reminded me that we can get blasé about our familiar local birds. I recall wondering about a European friend's overwhelming joy at seeing a northern cardinal on my farm in Ohio. There are no all-red birds in Europe, so seeing one for the first time made his eyes pop out. I felt that way about this black-headed grosbeak—so handsome, especially to my eastern eyes.

Male black-headed grosbeak.

It's funny how easily we may overlook common birds. A pair of American robins was building a nest in the interpretive signage near our parking lot. They seemed wary, as if not wanting to tip us off to the nest's location. Since I began dabbling in various forms of bird photography, I think I've paid a bit more attention to common birds, especially if they are being cooperative enough to photograph.

American robin, adult male.

Valerie (left) and Marci laughing at my evening grosbeak happy dance.

It was a fine morning of birding at Willard Bay State Park, thanks to Valerie. Too bad we missed the Virginia's warbler. That one'll have to wait until next time!

For my readers who are interested in experiencing some excellent birding in the western United States, I highly recommend the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival as a fantastic starting point. The festival organizers really go all out to make everyone feel welcome, the birds are great, the birding hotspots convenient, and there's a lot offered for young birders, too. Check it out!

The Big Question about the Chukar

How many cars could a chukar chuck if a chukar could chuck cars?

Birding in Papua New Guinea: Ribbon-tailed Astrapia

Let's go back to Papua New Guinea for a post or two, shall we? In the afternoon of our first full day afield, the weather waffled between cool/cloudy and sunny/warming. We birded along the Highlands Highway as well as along some forest trails. While we saw quite a few new species, and more individuals of species we'd already added to the list, the most notable encounter was a foraging immature male ribbon-tailed astrapia—our third bird-of-paradise of the day.

Young male ribbon-tailed astrapia.

This young male foraged on the fruits of a tree alongside the road, at about eye level. Though the light was weak, I managed to get a few images with my digiscoping rig. Adult females show a dark brown body, and long dark tail feathers. Adult males have long white tail streamers and a glossy all-black body.


You can see in my video below that this bird is starting to show some white in the tail feathers.

After enjoying the astrapia show, we headed back to Ambua Wilderness Lodge, where the sun finally came out in earnest. We relaxed on the front lawn, enjoying the view and chatting about what we'd seen and what we were hoping to see in the days ahead.

Ambua Lodge view.

Our first full day of birding in Papua New Guinea was coming to an end. And what an incredible experience it had been.

Next PNG post: seeking the sooty owl.

King of Saxony Bird-of-Paradise!

Male King of Saxony bird-of-paradise displaying.

We left things hanging earlier this week when I described getting my first look at a King of Saxony bird-of-paradise. I would have been back with the goods sooner but my trusty Mac laptop needed a brain transplant in the interim. But we're back now! And one of us has a new brain!

=-=-=

Somehow the gods were smiling on us that morning—perhaps to make up for the long journey we'd had the day before and the cold, rainy, late-afternoon arrival at our first bit of decent bird habitat. Now, standing along the Highlands Highway, with a singing male King of Saxony bird-of-paradise in front of us, we might not have imagined things could get any better. And then the sun came up behind us, illuminating the scene in a wash of golden color, burning off just enough of the morning mist so we could get sparklingly clear looks at this amazing beast before us.

He waved his head plumes back and forth, uttering the occasional song. We stood gob-smacked for a spell, and then came to life as we realized we had a chance to capture images of this aparition.


Imagine a large black, yellow, and white roundish bird with giant, spidery, iridescent feathers coming (seemingly) out of its ears. I struggled to find words to describe the head plumes. They were like pheasant tail feathers in length, but their bright metallic blue spots made them look like something from a Lady Gaga video.


One of our group asked "What King of Saxony was this bird named for?" I did not hear the answer ( it turns out it was Albert King of Saxony, whose full name was Frederick Augustus Albert Anton Ferdinand Joseph Karl Maria Baptist Nepomuk Wilhelm Xaver Georg Fidelis—a name as long as the head plumes of the bird that bears his moniker.) I guess we're lucky they did not pick one of his other names for this magnificent species. Nepomuk bird-of-paradise does not really cut it.

I thought of something different to myself, and apparently spoke this out loud: "They should just call it the King Sexy bird-of-paradise!" On this point we all concurred.

Here is the video I shot via my digiscoping rig. I apologize in advance for the background sounds of me struggling to pull another camera out of my waist pack. The King Sexy had me all shook up.

Life Mammal at Long Range

After a delightful week in North Dakota at The Potholes and Prairie Birding Festival (yes, you should go), the family and I headed west into the Rocky Mountains. Our ultimate destination was to be Yellowstone National Park, a place none of us had ever visited. I will be sharing some of the highlights of that trip, but they will not always be in chronological order. This is due to a few reasons:

1. My brain does not always work chronologically.
3. Some stories demand to be told NOW.
2. My brain does not always work chronologically.

We were told by friends that we should enter the park through Beartooth Pass, which sounded ominous enough in name only. When this bit of travel advice was followed by the phrase "if the road is plowed and open this early in June," it added an additional schpritz of foreboding to the mix.

It took a long time to drive from Medora, North Dakota to Beartooth Pass in Montana. Along the way we stopped at a national historic site: Pompey's Pillar. I'll save that post for another day. Today I want to talk about starting out in the flatlands of North Dakota and driving along a highway through the snow-capped mountains.

This was not a casual lah-tee-dah drive along a mountain road. This was The Beartooth Highway, one of the most challenging high-elevation drives in North America. The Beartooth Highway cuts across and around parts of the Absaroka and Beartooth mountains which have many, many peaks topping 12,000 feet (which is an elevation that is palpable in the head and lungs for us relative flatlanders).

We were headed for Yellowstone National Park and our primary targeted species were not birds, but mammals. I'd never seen a live, wild bear of any species and YNP promised a chance to see two: grizzly and black bear. But before we could get to the park's entrance, we had to traverse Beartooth Pass.

Ears popping and lungs gasping both at the scenery and at the thin mountain air, we climbed ever upward on the snaky mountain two-lane. Soon we were hitting patches of roadside snow—sometimes the snow was piled so high it formed eight-foot-high walls on either side of the road. American pipits and mountain bluebirds drank from melt pools. The croaks of ravens could be heard when our vehicle slowed to navigate a turn. Yellow-bellied marmots (lifers for the kids) stared at us with eyes both wary and weary. I spied a distant Clark's nutcracker flying away over a canyon—everyone else missed it. So we pulled into a roadside rest and scenic overlook to empty our bladders and fill our eyes with purple mountains majesty.

Julie and Liam scan for a small flock of mountain bluebirds.

While Julie and the kids sought relief, I got my spotting scope out and began scanning a distant hillside where a sole patch of white seemed out of place. There was no snow anywhere else on the west-facing mountainside, which struck me as odd. What WAS that thing? Did I just see it move?

One scope glance mostly confirmed my hunch—that this was a mountain goat grazing on the tundra-like meadow. Yes, it was moving—and casting a shadow.

A digiscoped image of the mysterious white spot.

Then a second glance revealed one large white dot and two smaller ones—mountain goat kids!!!

One big white blob and two small ones!

I quickly shouted for Julie and our own kids to come and see. "Wow! Awesome! Ohhh they're SO CUTE!" were the reactions I got. Within seconds we had a half-circle of strangers around us asking for a look in the scope. This was a scene that was to be repeated many times in Yellowstone during the ensuing days. I'd see something, or Julie would, or Phoebe would, or Liam would—we'd train the Leica spotting scope on the creature and, because we could not help remarking, gasping, or high-five-ing, our fellow travelers would notice and come to see what all the commotion was about. Most folks were nice and asked politely for a look. Others just walked up, shouldered their way in, and grabbed a look. Presumably these people thought that we were Park Service employees sent out into the field to spot and identify wildlife for the touristy public. It was fine with us.

A cropped view of what is presumably an adult female and her two kids.

The mountain goats were a life mammal for 75 percent of our family unit (I'd seen them poorly in Alaska in the late 1990s). Though they were at a great distance, we still got a nice look thanks to our trusty scope. And if we hadn't had all that water to drink along the way, who knows, we might not have pulled over near the top of Beartooth Pass.

Posing with Liam and Phoebe for an áprés-goat shot.

Making it Up As We Go

Male yellow-headed blackbird.

Sometimes you act on a hunch and it pays off. On the night before the final field trip of the Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival, most of the attendees gathered for a picnic on a rhubarb farm northeast of Carrington, ND. I was a bit worried—not about rhubarb—but about the fact that our trip, called "Dawn Birding in Kidder County," was going to find many of the same target birds everyone had already seen: Baird's sparrow, chestnut-collared longspur, Sprague's pipit, Nelson's sparrow, LeConte's sparrow. On Thursday or Friday, these birds were heavily desired lifers. But by Sunday morning, many festival attendees were wanting to see something new.

A male Nelson's sparrow.

I decided to find out what our opportunities for finding something new would be. I talked to Ron Martin, who may be North Dakota's most knowledgeable birder and pried a bit of info out of him. Ron is a quiet, thoughtful man and he was happy to offer some advice. He suggested a birding spot, and then in the low-key manner that is typical of many North Dakotans, he began to rattle of the species we might see there: "ohh let's see, there are a lot of white-faced ibis there and a few glossies. Cattle egrets and night herons have a big nesting colony there. It's the best place in the state to see Clark's grebe. Lots of shorebirds in there and all the ducks, of course. Down the road is a spot for things like red-breasted nuthatch and yellow-billed cuckoo...."

I had to stop Ron and ask him to repeat himself so I could record his list of birds and, more importantly, his directions, into my iPhone. I wanted these directions so I could share them with my co-leaders in the morning so we could figure out how to go after all of these cool birds—very few of which had been seen by anyone else at the festival this year.

The next morning I shared my hot birding info with Julie Zickefoose and the other leaders for the trip, Paulette Scherr, Stacy Whipp, and Ann and Ernie Hoffert. Paulette and Stacy work for the Fish & Wildlife Service at the local national wildlife refuges. Ann and Ernie have been involved with the festival since its inception and are the de facto Welcome Wagon for the event. All four of these folks have been all over central North Dakota, but they'd never been to our new birding destination: DeWald Slough.

DeWald Slough is just south of the town of Dawson which is tucked along I-94, west of Jamestown. It's a series of sloughs, lakes, and wet fields through which farm roads wind. A quick pre-dawn poll of the trip participants gave support to the idea of going there first, then heading north to the pipits and sparrows, and a cafe lunch later in the day.

We drove about 45 minutes in an Etch-a-sketch pattern on the straight-as-a-string North Dakota roads until we got to I-94, then we bombed west to Dawson and dipped south to the slough.

Our approximate route to/from DeWald Slough south of Dawson.

By the time we got out of the people mover, a bank of gray clouds had moved in over the sun, but this did little to dampen our enthusiasm. The birds were EVERYWHERE!

Birding at DeWald Slough.

Standing in one place and scanning in a 360-degree arc, here are a few of the birds I could see: glossy ibis, American avocet, 13 species of duck, greater yellowlegs, American bittern, cattle, snowy, and great egrets, northern harrier, black-crowned night-heron, western meadowlark, horned lark, grasshopper sparrow, vesper sparrow, Savannah sparrow, Nelson's sparrow, chestnut-collared longspur, western grebe, eared grebe, horned grebe, Franklin's gull, ring-billed gull, black tern, common tern, plus lots of other common stuff like red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds.

Our group scanning at DeWald Slough.

Soon we started picking out some even more exciting birds: including Clark's grebe and stilt sandpiper.

Checking the guide to sort out the distant grebes.

We spent about 90 minutes at this first spot, working through the birds. Everyone got scope looks every bird they wanted to see well, which goes a long way to making the satisfaction level high on a field trip. Then we moved on to several other vantage points down the road.

We never did pick out a glossy ibis from all the white-faceds, but that was a small thing for most of us. Our final stop on the DeWald Slough route was along a road that ran along a high hill above a big lake. About half of the group followed Julie and me out the hill to get a better, closer look at the Clark's grebes. The looks were still a bit distant but satisfactory enough to count as life birds for about a dozen folks. While we were on this side trip, Ernie walked farther up the road and scanned a muddy and wet portion of an agricultural field.

"I think I had some shorebirds in that wet field up the road on the east side," he said. (Note that in North Dakota, when giving directions, most locals use compass direction instead of "on the left side." And why not? As long as you know that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, you're OK. Except at night and on cloudy days...)

We stopped and scanned Ernie's field and sure enough, there were a dozen Wilson's phalaropes there and a smattering of killdeer. Then I spotted a couple of distant semipalmated plovers. Topping all of these sightings, Julie exclaimed "I just heard a piping plover call!"

Sure enough, there were at least three piping plovers scooting along the edge of the water. This federally endangered species is struggling throughout its range and declining in most places. It was a thrill to see these tiny pipers—a lifer for many of the trip's participants. I snapped a few quick digiscoped images to document the birds, which were un-banded, unlike most of the piping plovers along the East Coast, which are closely monitored.

Piping plovers.

The pipers were noticeably smaller than the Wilson's phalaropes.

Pale-backed like dry sand, the piping plovers stood out on the dark mud.

Now it was time for coffee and a sweet roll and indoor bathrooms, so we headed into Dawson and invaded the cafe there in that special birders' way. The locals gave us bemused looks. But the cafe ladies were happy to sell us all of their hot coffee and homemade sweet rolls. We took our purchases outside and sat along the main drag, resting ourselves after several days of birding.

The sweet rolls were as big as saucers: three-inches thick of still-warm cinnamon-caramel icing goodness/badness. There was much groaning with delight as the sweet rolls were consumed, followed by loud smacks of finger licking. Liam asked for the last bite of my roll and nearly took the end of my forefinger off as he scarfed it down.

KatDoc and Lynne, two well-known bird bloggers, enjoying the town park in Dawson.

Just then, the sun came out and smiled warmly on our group, as if to endorse our decision to improvise the birding route. Certainly we were happy with the results.

Coffee time in Dawson. I recommend the cinnamon buns.

Now, bellies full and bladders empty, we got back on the people mover and headed north to our original destination...

Pileated Nest Part Two

Check out the swirling feathers of the female pileated woodepcker's crest!.

On the afternoon of May 15 I went back out to check on the progress of the pileated woodpecker nest I'd discovered in our orchard. Both birds of the mated pair had been sharing excavation duties and I wanted to see if they were still at work, or if egg laying had begun.

Soon after I entered the blind, the female flew in to the tree with the nest cavity. Without a sidewards glance, she entered the hole and started bringing out chips and dust from the bottom of the cavity. I noticed that I heard no loud hammering when she was in the cavity. A day earlier, I'd watched the male at the site and when he was inside, the hammering was loud and he emerged with chips rather than dust.

When the female reached to the bottom of the cavity to scoop up chips and dust, just the tip of her tail was visible.

On this day the female was coming up with mostly dust and dumping it out of the cavity. As she reached headfirst into the bottom of the cavity, I could see just the tip of her tail. This allowed me to estimate the inside depth of the cavity at easily 12 inches. Adult pileateds are between 16 and 19 inches in length from bill tip to tail end. They had excavated this cavity in less than two weeks.

I heard a loud drum from the deep woods to the southwest of the blind, followed by a pileated's contact call. Moments later the female exited the nest and flew off in the direction of the call.

The male came back next and continued his excavation. He chiseled for a while then brought several bill-fulls of chip up to the hole and let the breeze blow them from his open bill.


At one point he stopped to rest and seemed to notice my spotting scope sticking out of the blind's peephole. He stopped and stared. Turning his head left and right, he look the scene over very carefully.

The male was quite wary while in the nest.

He seemed to relax after a few minutes (and so did I) but he did not resume working. Instead, perhaps due to the heat of the afternoon, he began to pant with his bill open.

When the breeze would rise in force, the male would raise his bill—was he letting cool air flow across his throat and chest? I'll never know, but this seemed plausible.

He might have just been looking around, or he might have been trying to cool off in the breeze.

He closed his eyes and took a few short naps, so I knew he was unconcerned with my presence. This made me happy because I was looking forward to watching the entire nesting cycle—if these birds were lucky enough to nurture a brood from hatching to fledging. The huge, yellow poplar they'd chosen as a nest site was broken off on top and it was missing some of its bark, but there was no real impediment to prevent a hungry raccoon from climbing up to the cavity and making a meal of the eggs.

Male pileated woodpecker catching a few winks.

I'll revisit the pileated nest in some future posts. But right now I've got to go scouting for a Big Day field trip I'm leading tomorrow.