I guess it’s time I outed myself. Some of you may have probably figured out, based on my previous posts about robins and rock doves, that I’m a closet birdwatcher. No doubt a few decades from now I’ll be a familiar site around town, a crazy old broad in a funny hat shlepping around the Arb and local stormwater ponds with binoculars around my neck.
I’m still smarting from Griff’s followup post in which he implied that my posts on bird sightings are “fluff”. I suspect that there are more than a few of us around town - maybe even an organized group or two. (In fact, today is the day of the annual bird count in the Arb. Anyone…?)
Here’s my most recent sighting of the unusual, which made me happy for a whole day. Last Thursday evening about 7:30 I saw a Cape May warbler in one of our blossoming plum trees. I assume it’s passing through on the way to its summer range, and it’s a beautiful little bird.
I’d love to hear about birds observed in the Northfield area, especially now when we have some interesting species passing through. If you can find a photo of the bird on the internet, you can embed the picture in your comment by including the following HTML “image source” commands in your comment:
Be sure to include the angle brackets and quotation marks around the photo link as shown. If you do that, your comment will display like this:
Today I saw an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in the Arb!
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Tracy, I agree birdwatching is not fluff. Trials motorcycling is fluff.
But, is your bird watching report of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker faux?
I bet you saw a pileated woodpecker in the arb. I saw one on the south end of Circle Lake Thursday.
I like to make an occasional field trip out to Shields Lake (or, to be more correct, General Shields Lake), the source of the Cannon River, to see the American white pelicans. If you go, take some good binoculars, since the birds are often far out in the middle of the large lake. Take a map, too; I always get lost down there.
Brendon’s been feeding a loon behind his house. Ask nicely and he’ll imitate the bird’s aggression toward the geese.
I saw a green Heron near Spring Creek and a Turkey Vulture while biking near Valley Grove church.
Curt, I was TOTALLY kidding about the ivory-billed woodpecker. (Its habitat isn’t anywhere around here.) Cornell has an interesting site about the search for this extinct-or-isn’t-it woodpecker.
My new gravatar is an ivory billed woodpecker. squeeze it and it plays the bird’s actual call.
Tracy, re: the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, I had my “faux” news detector on, but since there was no mention of a person whose name sounds like a sexual organ, I wasn’t sure. (please, no need to point out the word “woodpecker”)
And I did see a pileated woodpecker the other day. Really.
Also, I spotted a pair of Baltimore Orioles this am.
There’s a Baltimore oriole nesting on Carleton’s Mai Fête Island. I’ve post a picture of the nest here.
tracy : Although i do not have a closet in my back yard for you to watch from, I do have a pair of Cooper Hawks in my back yard. They are in the process of deciding if they wish to be a pair; she has done some pretty “dirty dances” in front of him and he acts offended, spreading his wings and screaming “Kek”! Then she flies to a farther off tree and sits there going WAAAH, waaah, waaah …
Am I anthropromorphizing (?) too much?
Anyway, they are very stunning; slate grey backs with pale russet fronts …
Tracy - Fluff? Then I’m guilty.
I missed the Carleton bird count, but Jan Mitchell and I walked in the east part of the Cannon Valley Wilderness Area this morning where the forest floor was scattered with wood anenome and the trees and bushes were alive with American redstarts, wood thrush, and warblers I’ll never be able to id. We ran into Tom Bovers who takes the whole the month of May to go birding. He said he’d seen several cerulean warblers.
For me, the prize was a scarlet tanager basking in the sun at the top of a tall barely leafed out maple.
That is a beautiful park, by the way!
Oops, the photo didn’t come through! What did I forget to do?
I run in the Arb and I’m always looking to hit the Primary Color Trifecta - seeing at least one red bird (cardinals - always, scarlet tanagers - rarely), one yellow bird (goldfinches, meadowlarks) and one blue bird (bluebirds, indigo buntings) on my run. In the Big Bird category, there are several blue herons in the Arb these days along with bald eagles and more common hawks.
I’m still wondering how red-winged blackbirds land and perch on the top of stalks of grass.
Jane, you put in the URL of the web site inside the img tag instead of the URL of the image. I fixed it.
http://www.ownbyphotography.com/Scarlet-Tanager.jpg
We’ve got a redstart flipping around our backyard this morning. Luckily I had read this thread so I had some clue what it might be. Have had this spring… purple finches, gold finches, and a downy woodpecker. Lots of redwing blackbirds by the pond.
This morning, I’m pretty sure I saw a black and white warbler in our yard. According to my Minnesota birds book, its range is in the northeast corner of the state, so it may just be passing through. It’s a striking bird, and not very afraid of people. I was within about 10 feet of it and it did not fly off. We’ve also seen a few yellow warblers.
Oops, my photo didn’t load either.
Tracy, since we moved I have become infatuated with the birds around Valley Pond. Early in the year I saw a male Hooded Merganser. I had to do a lot of searching on the internet to figure out exactly what it was. Fortunately Gilly was here help out.
Then not long after I saw 3 male and 3 female Ring- Necked Ducks, they stayed for only a short time and moved on.
Right now I have about 6-8 Baltimore Orioles hanging out in my tree, today I filled the feeder and within 5 minutes they were all there. I had one strange darker burnt orange colored bird at the necture feeder and think it was an Orchard Oriole. The House Finches are eating the grape jelly and the oranges as well as feeding at the Oriole station. I had a Cardinal come up on the deck where the grape jelly is and ate the jelly too.
I am so new at this I have no idea what to expect and what exactly to feed them…. I am just flying by the seat of my pants and it is fun! Griff says the back yard looks like a circus with the feeders.
If anyone has the secret as to how to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeders, tell us all.
I just spent $120 on two feeders that are working remarkably well. Now the squirrels are foragging on the seed that falls out.
The Arundale Sky Cafe is advertised as the “Fort Knox” of bird feeders, and actually has a money back guarantee against squirrels.
http://www.bestnest.com/bestnest/RTProduct.asp?SKU=AR-360
I even went as far as to put the squirrel baffle on the bottom.
Once the squirrels leave, the grackles take over…
Robbie: could the burnt orange bird be a female oriole?
Jane…. that is what we thought at first but the color was very intense and the female landed on the feeder while the darker bird was there. The Baltimore male was in the tree… so we could see all 3 birds. It was marked like the male Baltimore but a burnt orange color. When we looked at the Oriole cheat sheet that came with our feeder. It looked just like the Orchard Oriole on the bird identifier. It was drinking the necture from the feeder?? I am just assuming it was some kind of Oriole.
Does anyone have humming birds yet??
A pair of cow birds at our feeder last week.
Try again:
I made an oriole feeder out of a length of 6ga. copper wire. I hang it over a branch on the maple in my back yard and skewer a half of an orange onto it. So far, I have two pairs of orioles (Baltimore) that regularly visit it. We have also had the gammut of house finches, purple finches, yellow finches and chipping sparrows on the thistle seed feeder. We also have a pair of cardinals, some junkos, and the occasional bluejay on the sunflower seed feeder. Haven’t seen any hummingbirds yet, but I think the flowers need to get a little larger.
My wife and daughter saw a couple blue-gray gnatcatchers on their walk along the path north of our house. They also saw some American redstarts out at Nerstrand woods on Saturday, along with a pileated woodpecker.
As far as ducks, I saw a couple of old coots out walking the other day, but I won’t go into that any farther. I also saw an odd duck in a field pond a couple weeks ago. (Actually, it was a scaup)
Bright- As far as keeping the squirrels off the feeders, the best idea I ever heard of was from a neighbor of my brother. He suspended his feeder on a lenght of #9 galvanized wire (we used to call it telephone wire, from when the phone lines were above ground) between two trees in his back yard. Before he stretched the wire, he threaded about 8 or 10 wooden sewing thread spools on either side of where the feeder hung. The squirrels put on quite an acrobatic show trying to get past those spools. They finally gave up and left the feeder alone.
Robbie:
You’re probably right about the orchard oriole. I don’t remember seeing them before.
My hummingbird feeder has been up for a week and finally, yesterday, a female hummer began visiting it.
Isn’t this fun?
Fluff, I don’t think so. The Chicago Reader, which is a free newspaper,
and the most popular one I have ever seen around the Midwest. In it,
every other week for many years was a two page article on birds seen
in the city. I knew the author myself and there is nothing more needed
in a city like Chicago than someone who can take you away into nature
while you are riding on an elevated train.
Around here, it’s educational and fun!
I have been posting quite a bit about bird sightings on my blog, Penelopedia.
This link will (I hope) take anyone who is interested to a collection of my birdwatching posts. I’m certainly no expert, but am an enthusiastic amateur. The loons on Brendon’s pond and other interesting waterfowl passing through have been especially interesting to me. Yesterday out of my kitchen window I saw a yellow-rumped warbler on the ground on my patio, which was an unusual-seeming place to see one.
I can vouch for Kiffi (post #8) on the amorous avian antics in her backyard, which almost abuts mine. Careless of property rights, these Cooper’s hawks perch in just anybody’s trees, in pursuit of each other and who knows what else.
For a really good birding time, I recommend the area just north of the St Olaf wind turbine. With prairie, woods, and ponds nearby, the area has a lot of variety in a small space, and some great spring migration visitors. Last week I saw several Palm warblers —
which I believe are slightly unusual. Near the water there are also plenty of Yellow-Rumped warblers, Yellow warblers, swallows, etc. On or in the water watch for Hooded Mergansers, Buffleheads, Blue-winged Teal, and the occasional muskrat. In the prairie areas are lots of pheasants and various sparrows, including the Clay-colored variety, which buzzes like an insect. Judging from the fox and/or coyote scat, there are also plenty of delicious rodents in the vicinity.
For 2-3 weeks each spring we get to entertain a variety of sparrows that vanish toward the end of May: Harris, white crowned, white throated. We call the white crowned guys helmet heads. I had hummingbirds last week and the orioles arrived the week before that. I’ve had orchard orioles in years past, but not this year. One of my favorite song birds is the rose-breasted grosbeak. We have two or three pairs every year.
No sign of my brown thrashers yet, but I expect them soon. They sit in the tree tops and sing for hours. For the first time I had a couple of blue birds in the yard for several days, but I couldn’t get them to nest in my boxes. I’m renting to swifts again.
Anyone seen the wrens yet?
I have been spending many hours scouring the forested areas in the twin cities and Houston county this month. My goal was/is to id all the warblers that come through during the migration. This is what I have:
Yellow-rumped, Black and White, Golden-winged, N. Waterthrush, Ovenbird, Magnolia, Cape May, Yellow, Nashville, Tennessee, Wilson, Palm, Orange-crowned, Chestnut-sided, Northern Parula, Black-thoated Green, American Redstart, Blackpoll, Common yellowthroat, and this morning a Blackburnian. Bonus birds over the weekend - eastern Towhee, Blue Gray Gnat-catcher, indigo bunting, rose-breated grosbeak, orchard oriole, and heard some Connecticut chatting.
Andy
No wrens yet, but I saw my first brown thrasher while walking the dog today. I’ve been looking for them because we had a nest in one of our bushes last year. This one was flying into my neighbor’s highbush cranberry, presumably building a nest there.
Way to go, Andy.
Dan, Jan Mitchell and I saw and heard lots of wrens in the Cannon Valley Wilderness Area Saturday and I’ve had several very vocal ones in my yard scoping out the little wren house on my garage for a week or so. As in past years, they seem to show up about the same time as the male orioles.
I don’t think I was hallucinating. Around 6 PM today I am pretty sure I saw a squadron of pelicans on the northwest side of the Hwy 19/35 exchange. The birds were swimming in the little wetland area there. They were definitely not egrets or snow geese. The birds had large orange beaks and long curved necks. Not much on the web about pelican sightings in MN. What do you say bird watchers? Is this what I saw?
Laura, you were not hallucinating. There are also pelicans on Circle Lake which is about five miles southwest of your siting. Some years they stop over for a few days on their migrations. Lately some have hung out there all summer. I think it has something to do with the stocking of walleye fingerlings on the lake. Also, there are large numbers of pelicans that summer in northern Minnesota, possibly attracted by names like “Pelican Lake” by the city of Pelican Rapids. (The last being a faux remark, of course.)
I have seen several pelicans over the last couple of years. I didn’t think much of it, cuz down near our place in Oklahoma, where the Cimarron and Arkansas River meet, the pelicans have a layover when they make the journey from the Dakotas to west Texas. In another thread, someone said that their path took a segue due to storms or something and now layover around here.
I have seen large flocks (several dozen birds) of pelicans on Lake Byllsby (near Cannon Falls) in the past, but haven’t been over there yet this season. That area you mentioned, Laura, is another place I’ve seen them. It does seem incongruous, doesn’t it? The place I was most surprised to see pelicans was at Yellowstone — so far from any major bodies of water, though of course Yellowstone Lake is pretty big as lakes go. It goes to show that our (my) preconceptions are not always right, because apparently that was prime territory for the white pelican. The Cornell Ornithology Lab says:
These pelicans are just passing through. I haven’t seen them stay around very long, but they have been going through here for years. There is a small island on Leech Lake, just west of Big Island, where the birds nest and raise their young. I have fished around it many years ago. If you take a drive up to Fargo or Brainard or Bemidji, you will see flocks of them on all the lakes you pass. They seem to settle farther north than the Twin Cities.
The month of May is full of tragedy for baby birds, especially on a farm which is home to 12 barn cats. I keep them caged much of the day, but there are still casualties.
A nest of five baby birds fell out of a rig on the grain bin a couple days ago. The mother does not seem to be around. There were two surviving last night, but just barely. So I took them in to warm up.
They are lively and VERY hungry this morning. I googled “baby birds abandoned” and got lots of info on care and diet–bits of canned dog food and boiled egg white, etc. Prognosis is not good, of course. Have to feed them at least every hour sunrise to sunset!
Laura, you may very well have seen pelicans. Pelicans started to move into the state as they head north about a month ago. At an open house on Circle Lake at that time I watched about 30-40 brown pelicans go back and forth between the lake and the wetlands. They have such a distinctive ‘crook’ in their neck as they fly and in formation with other pelicans they look a bit prehistoric.
It is my understanding that they pass through here while heading further north. We don’t seem to see them hanging around all summer in this area.