Find those Bumblebees!

Doctoral student Athena Anderson at the University of Georgia needs your help. She is studying bumble bees and trying to determine nest site preferences. She has designed a simple survey that anyone can fill out should they find a bumble bee nest. She hopes the information gathered will be valuable for conservation efforts.

If you know of a bumble bee nest or are willing to look for one to help out in some research consider checking out her online survey and filling it out.

~Kirk

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Welcome I and the Bird Readers

If you landed here from this month's installment of I and the Bird, welcome!

We hope you enjoy the Twin Cities Naturalist Blog and Podcast. The blog is updates regularly with articles about nature. The posts are usually pretty bird heavy but other topics come up. There is a podcast associated with the blog as well. So far we only have our pilot episode online but we're planning to do a monthly natural history based podcast. You can subscribe on the right hand side of the blog. Be sure to bookmark us or add us to your blog reader.

You can view all of the posts about the nesting Eastern Phoebes by following this link.

Thanks for stopping in!

~Kirk & Paul

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Phoebe Video

I finally had some time to capture some real-time video off the Eastern Phoebe Cam. There are three phoebe nestlings and at least one cowbird visible. The other cowbird may be hidden underneath the pile.

In the first video, one of the parents brings a large dragonfly back to the nest. It thinks about feeding it to the nestlings but it is too large even for the cowbird. the second phoebe arrives and it looks like the second bird just decides to take the dragonfly away. (Perhaps for a personal meal?)

The second video is a little higher quality. I messed around with the settings a bit to get a higher quality capture. This video illustrates the central problem with having cowbirds in the nest. The cowbird is already about twice the size of the phoebes and this is only five days after hatching. Look at the size of that mouth! When the parents come back with food they see that huge open mouth and they automatically feed the biggest target. The cowbird is getting most of the food. you can see the three small mouths at the top begging for food. The parent considers giving them some but then feeds it to the cowbird.

There's a little bonus at the end of the second video for those scat0logically inclined blog readers. The cowbird expels a fecal sac. The parent bird picks it up and flies away. This is one way they keep the nest clean. Did you ever notice there are no bird droppings in nests? By carrying away fecal sacs, the parents keep the nest clean. Now you know.

It makes me glad to be a human. I may have to change my son's diapers but I don't do it with my mouth.

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Phoebe Nest Update

The Memorial Day holiday took me away from web access which of course means the eggs in the Phoebe Nest have hatched. According to co-workers who were in on last Friday, that is when the action first started. I was so busy today I didn't have much time to check on things but now several (if not all) of the eggs have hatched. I was able to grab a two random shots during the day, the morning one above and the afternoon one below. Sorry, they aren't the best. In the top photo I can clearly make out two birds for sure. It will be really interesting to watch over the next two weeks to see how the phoebe nestlings do with two huge fast growing cowbirds in the nest. Here's one of the parents bringing back some food. Much better pictures will be coming in the next few days. I may also monkey with the feed a little to see if we can get a little crisper image.

~Kirk

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Kiss your ash goodbye: Emerald Ash Borer found in St. Paul

Image:Image: Gerald Wheeler/USDA:APHIS

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture reported this past week that the Emerald Ash Borer has been detected in Minnesota. This is awful news for both trees and the economy in the state. There are an estimated 900 million ash trees in Minnesota and these beetles could kill all of them. I checked on the ash tree in my front yard this weekend as I live less than a mile from where the Emerald Ash Borers were found. Best case scenario, they can move 4 miles per year so it is very likely there are already ash borers in my neighborhood. Uncontrolled, they can move about 18 miles per year.

How to tell if you have Emerald Ash Borers:

photos by: David Cappaert, USDA

1) Premature Yellowing

As trees come under attack the tree is weakened and leaves turn yellow long before fall. While there are a number of reasons trees can turn yellow early this is still a good warning sign. Any tree turning yellow early should be examined as there could be other problems that need to be addressed. With the Emerald Ash Borer the tree may also be completely devoid of leaves.



2) peeling bark
As beetle larva feed under the bark it can crack and loosen. Woodpeckers may also be attracted to the trees at this point. The tree has a diseased look. An old dying tree can look like this as well.









3) "D" shaped exit holes.
While the other signs may be an indication of some other type of disease or problem with the tree, the D shaped exit hole of the Emerald Ash Borer is diagnostic. (click to enlarge)






4) "S" shaped larval galleries.
This photo shows both a d shaped exit hole and an "S" shaped larval gallery. As the larval stage of the Emerald Ash Borer grows and feeds under the bark it snakes back and forth leaving this pattern. This photo is particularly interesting because you can actually see that the gallery is narrower at the bottom than the top. As the larva feeds and grows is bores a wider and wider path.





There is no way to stop the Emerald Ash Borer. Now that it has been found in the state all we can do is slow it down and kiss our ashes goodbye.

~Kirk

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Sleepy Nighthawk

I'm working on a longer post in between a mountain of yard work. For now, I present a sleepy nighthawk. It was roosting right next to the bog at the nature center about a week ago. So cool to see one up close in the daytime.

~Kirk

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Are Those Fish Robots?

Back when I used to work as an aquatic life interpreter at UnderWater World we would get some really stupid questions and hear some amazing things out of people's mouths. If you've never been there, the aquarium is several million gallons and in 4 sections representing different habitats. Back then they were called, Minnesota Lake, Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Reef. The idea was that you traveled south from a lake to the river to the gulf to the reef.

Creative Commons photo by Rosie Argento

They changed this after I left mostly because they wanted to add new species of sharks into the large "gulf" tank and some of those species don't live in the gulf. Same for the reef, they wanted to add non-Caribbean species so the names changed.

Visitors move through the aquarium through a clear domed walkway and are surrounded by fish. We used to say it was like scuba diving without getting wet. The left side of the tunnel is a moving walkway while the right is non-moving in case you want to step off and watch the fish more. We once had a guy get about 3/4th of the way through before he had a sudden realization and said out loud, "Oh, I'm moving." No genius, you are standing still and we're rotating a 1.2 million gallon aquarium around you.

One of the questions we incredibly used to get all the time was, "Are these fish real?" Apparently a lot of people thought they were robots or something. I always thought it was a pretty stupid question but apparently researchers with Essex University are now working on robotic fish. The robots are like the roomba vacuum I have at home in that are autonomous. The idea is to equip them with sensors to detect pollution. The fish could swim around along pipelines looking for leaks. Let's just hope they are unlike my roomba in two important ways.

1) They don't break constantly and
2) They don't get stuck on pretty much anything in their way.



~Kirk

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Something Strange Afoot in Phoebe Nest

As noted a few days ago, we were up to 7 eggs in the Eastern Phoebe nest at work after a Brown-headed Cowbird added two eggs to the nest. Weirdly, on Friday there were suddenly only 6 eggs in the nest. Eastern Phoebes are not known to remove cowbird eggs so this seemed strange. I took a look on the big monitor we have in our lab downstairs. The lab feed is a direct live video feed of the nest and the image is larger than the stills we can pull from the feed we send to Cornell. I could clearly see that the two cowbird eggs were still in the nest. It was a phoebe egg that was missing. I next looked out the window near the nest and sure enough I could see a broken smashed egg on the ground under the nest. On Saturday, I taught a group of girl scouts and at the end of class we stopped by the monitor so I could tell them about the nest monitoring project and how they can take part. How's this for weird, there's another egg missing from the nest. I could see on Saturday that there were only 5 eggs in the nest. The cowbird eggs are still there but there are only 3 phoebe eggs now.


Did she knock them out on purpose? Was it an accident? Did the cowbird return and destroy some of her eggs for some reason? To try to find out I turned to the time lapse videos of the nest on YouTube. On Saturday evening, all six eggs are there at 5:57:19.


She returns at 6:03. She moves around a bit and has her head down by the eggs. There is no sign of a cowbird visiting the nest. When she leaves again at 6:11, just 8 minutes later, the sixth egg is gone and there are only 5 in the nest. The one in the upper left, which was closest to her head, is gone.


Did she eject the egg on purpose then because she thought the nest was too crowded? One clue may be this image from the same evening at 5:44. Is that an egg she's pushing up toward the edge? Maybe she tried to push it out earlier and was unsuccessful but got it right half and hour later.


If I get time I may try to figure out when the first egg went missing and see if anything shows up on the images.

~Kirk

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Welcome Birdchick Blog Readers

We hope you enjoy the Twin Cities Naturalist Blog and Podcast. So far we only have our pilot episode online but we're planning to do a monthly natural history based podcast. You can subscribe on the right hand side of the blog. In between episodes we're here blogging about fun nature topics so we hope you'll bookmark us and check back often.

Thanks for stopping in!

~Kirk & Paul

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The Jumping Turkey

What do you do when you're a turkey and the food you really want is up in the feeder and not on the ground?

You jump.

I shot this quick video today at work when we noticed a smart turkey getting peanuts from the feeder in a unique way.

~Kirk

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Now THAT'S why it's called a Cedar Waxwing!

The bird banders caught a Cedar Waxwing at work today. They get their name for two reasons. First off, they eat cedar berries and second off, they have wax-like red tips on the ends of their wings. Often they are broken and worn but this individual had remarkable tips. You must click on the photo to see the larger version. This is a beautiful bird and a feature most people never get to see unless he happen to have the bird in hand.

~Kirk

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Treating Deer For Ticks

The Twin Cities Naturalist Blog is not just a place to read about birds. I swear! Birds have taken up a lot of this blog as of late since migration is in full swing. For those gentle readers who wish to read about the non-avifauna of the world I give you this post about ticks.

As a professional naturalist, I worry about deer ticks. It seems like if you are a naturalist you can pretty much guarantee you will get lyme disease at some point. I've had deer ticks on me but I haven't come down with it yet. Many of my co-workers have had to take antibiotics to battle lyme disease. The St. Croix Valley is a hot zone for lyme disease so my days are numbered. The problem is that the deer ticks are small and hard to see. Some can even be as small as the period at the end of this sentence. If you spend a lot of time outside, you'll get one eventually. Lyme disease aside, there are other tick borne diseases, some even spread by the simple woodtick.

The scientists J. Mathews Pound and J. Allen Miller at the Agricultural Research Service at the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas think they have come up with a solution. Since deer ticks mainly feed on deer why not treat the deer for ticks? The fewer deer walking around with ticks, the fewer humans can get and the harder it will be to catch lyme disease. The ARS came up with The 4-poster.

The device is made of plastic and it has a hopper that contains food for deer. There are also four posts that are basically paint rollers covered in pesticides. I believe the pesticide of choice is 10% permethrin. Basically the same stuff you put on your dog to keep ticks off. When the deer comes to feed, the pesticide gets on the antlers, head and ears and helps kill ticks. It is a simple but brilliant idea.

According to the American Lyme Disease Foundation, when the 4-poster was used at a the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland (which is about the same size as the nature center where I work) they saw a, "96 to 98% reduction in free-living nymphal deer ticks" within 3 years of using the 4-poster. I wonder if someone could get a grant to have these installed at nature centers and parks where people are likely waking the same trails as deer? The system costs $800 and is only available though Dandux Outdoors.

Read more at Science Daily and the American Lyme Disease Foundation.

Photos: USDA ARS/Wayne Ryan

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Save Water

I've always been a fan of the principle that the best way to save water is to shower with a friend. Designer Elisabeth Beucher of the design collective Puff & Flock has taken a different direction and designed a shower curtain that slowly inflates spikes as you shower. It looks more annoying than dangerous but the idea is that you save water by taking a shorter shower due to the hassle.

I know it is just a design concept to make you think but does it really need to run off a pump the size of a washing machine? Look at that box in the background. Beucher also designed a shower curtain that inflates and slowly closes in around you like a giant wet burrito. Both are clever, but I'll stick with a low flow shower head.

(photo by Elisabeth Beucher)

~Kirk

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Uh oh: 7 eggs

I've been away from the office for a couple of days and when I returned, my co-host Paul pointed out we now have 7 eggs in the phoebe nest. This is not news to celebrate. Two of the eggs are not from the phoebe. As mentioned in a previous post, there are Brown Headed cowbirds about. A cowbird has visited the nest early in the morning for two days in a row and laid one egg each morning. It happened very quickly and it appears as though the cowbird may have kicked the phoebe off the nest to do it. I took the time lapse feed and slowed it down right when the event happened. It is unfortunately a little pixelated when the action takes place as the stills are taken from a compressed flash video of the feed. Cornell could probably make a clearer video with the raw data we send them. It is not archived locally on our end though so that wasn't an option. The video starts with the phoebe on the nest at 5:21 am. Every frame of the video is 20 seconds. The entire egg laying appears to take about 60 seconds.

We aren't going to remove the egg and neither is the phoebe. Phoebes are acceptors of brood parasite eggs. She will raise them as her own. This will probably mean a few of her own young will die. We won't remove the eggs as it is illegal to do so. Even though people don't like cowbirds, they are a protected migratory species. There's also some research to suggest that removing the eggs may do more harm than good as Cowbirds may engage in what has been termed "Mafia Behavior" Basically they check on the nests they have laid eggs in and if they find them missing they destroy the nest.

This seems to fly in the face of the popular theory that cowbirds evolved into a nest parasite because they followed herds of bison and couldn't stop to nest. If they were dropping eggs and running to catch up with migratory bison then they couldn't come back to check on nests and their eggs. Birdchick has a great excerpt from Alvaro Jaramillo on her blog in which he notes that the Brown-headed Cowbird evolved from South American members of the Molothrus genus and there are no bison in South America. Cowbirds were brood parasitic birds long before they started hanging out with bison.

It will be at least be interesting and educational to watch what happens once the eggs start to hatch. I'll be sure to keep the blog updated.

~Kirk

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Unnatural Migration

What do you do if you're an inspector at Los Angeles International Airport and you spot a middle-aged man stepping off an airplane with bird droppings on his socks, and bird tail feather's sticking out from the bottom of his pants? Apparently, if this is the same guy who in December abandoned a suitcase at the airport with 18 exotic smuggled birds in it (five of them having died in transit) you arrest him on the spot.

46 year old Sony Dong was charged on Tuesday with smuggling birds from Vietnam into the United States in a most unnatural migration. In March, Dong devised a pair of leggings to hold three red-whiskered bulbuls, four magpie robins and six shama thrush and boarded a plane to the US.

"Magpie robin" is a fairly generic name for several species of birds so I 'm not sure which he had. The Shama Thrush is also known as the White-rumped Shama. Shama's are no longer considered part of the turdidae (thrush) family.

According to U.S. attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek, the birds sell for approximately $400 in the US.

His "business associate," Duc Le, was also arrested when they found 51 songbirds at his house. Now I don't know which birds he had at his house but if we assume about $400 per bird we're looking at $26,400 worth of birds.

Red-whiskered bulbuls are listed as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red list. They are popular as cage birds as they are fairly easily caught and can be taught to sit on the hand. In the wild they feed on fruit, nectar and insects and prefer to live in lightly wooded areas or open country. They are naturalized in several parts of the US, likely from escaped pets. They can be found in Los Angeles, Hawaii and Florida.

photo by J.M.Garg

	Shama Thrush aka white-rumped shama listed as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red list. They are native to South and Southeast Asia though they were purposefully released on the Hawaiian islands of Kaua'i and O'ahu. They are popular cage birds because of their song.
photo by K. W. Bridges

I've flown with a toddler and I know how difficult and noisy a process that can be. How uncomfortable was it to fly from Vietnam to Los Angeles with 13 birds strapped to your legs? Didn't they make any sound? What a strange world.

~Kirk

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Turkey Strut

When I came to work early this morning there were two Wild Turkeys displaying right out the windows. A disinterested female fed under the feeders while they tried to win her affections. Our site manager found an active Wild Turkey nest last week so at least some males are having success.

~Kirk

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How old's that thrasher?

It was a beautiful Thursday at the Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center where my co-host of the Twin Cities Naturalist Podcast, Paul and I work as naturalists. One of the fabulous things about being a naturalist is that you get to spend time outside on beautiful days. Many new migrants showed up today and the school group coming out took the Spring Birds class so that means banding! Fairly early on, the banders caught a beautiful large Brown Thrasher. What a gorgeous bird. Check out that gold eye! I usually think of thrashers as desert birds since that's usually where I see them. There are Brown Thrashers at the nature center every year but for some reason I never seem to stumble upon them. It was a thrill to see it up so close. The photo doesn't even begin to do this bird justice.


The next photo gives you a real idea for the size of a Brown Thrasher. This particular bird had an interesting feature that can be used to age the bird. Banders need to know all kinds of tricks to figure out how old a bird is. Look carefully at the tail of the thrasher. Notice anything?

Sometimes banders look at the condition of tail feathers, the fresher and less frayed, the newer. This tail is a little worn but that isn't the important thing to notice. There's a faint light colored band on all of the feathers about an inch or so from the tip of the tail. Can you pick it out? A variation in color on a feather is not uncommon. Sometimes there are series of bands that correspond to feathers growing at night or during the day. In the case of this thrasher though, there is only one band and it was likely caused by a change in diet while the tail feathers were growing. Most likely there was a minor deficiency in nutrients. You see this from time to time on single feathers. The key thing to note, however, is that the band appears on all of the tail feathers in the same location. For this band to appear at the same place on all of the feathers, they would have all had to form at the exact same time. Adult birds don't molt all of their tail feathers all at once or it would be very hard to fly. Unless there is some freak accident where a bird is attacked and loses all of its tail feathers, the only time all of the tail feathers grow in at once is when the bird is born. Since the band appears at the same place on all of the feathers we can tell that they all grew at the same time. Since the only time that happens is at birth, we know that these are the original tail feathers this bird grew. That tells us this is a first year bird that was born last summer.

This young male was banded and released. Hopefully he'll go on to have a long successful life. From now on, even when he gets new tail feathers, if anyone catches him again they'll know when we was born because of his band.

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Day four: Egg Four

I came in to work early this morning expecting to see the fourth egg in the Eastern Phoebe nest and instead saw this.


Momma bird was still on the nest. Was she still working on the egg? When Paul came into work I commented that she was still on the nest and he said he had seen a Brown-headed Cowbirds right by the nest in the morning. Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in other birds nests and then abandon the young to be raised by the foster parents. Was the phoebe staying on the nest because she saw the cowbird?

I checked again an hour or so later and the phoebe was gone but sure enough, day four and there is a fourth egg.



~Kirk

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Migrants arrive

On the last podcast Paul and I lamented the lack of spring migrants at the nature center. Today, we spotted or heard the first Ovenbird, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Clay-colored Sparrow, Northern Waterthrush and the Baltimore Oriole photographed above. Not too shabby for one day's arrivals. Winter wrens, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Western Palm Warblers, Field Sparrows, Bluebirds, Golden-crowned Kinglets, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, White-crowned Sparrows, White-throated Sparrows and Eastern Phoebes are also putting in appearances.

Spring is really here though I noticed for the first time today that the leaves are really starting to fill in which makes spotting the new migrants more challenging by the day.

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Day Three: Egg Three

Another lunch-time update. Right on schedule, day three and the third Eastern Phoebe egg is now in the nest.

~Kirk

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Day 2, Egg 2

Following the typical pattern, the Eastern Phoebe laid a second egg this morning. Last year the first eggs was laid on June 16th with incubation starting on June 20th. Last year was a second nesting. Some years the birds use the same nest twice. You can view last year's highlights online.

Here's the data from 2008
First Egg Date: June 16
Clutch Size: 5
Incubation: June 20
Hatch Date: July 4
Length of Incubation: 14 days
Fledge Date: July 21
Days to Fledge: 17
Number of Nestlings: 4

Here's the data from 2007
First Egg Date: May 2
Clutch Size: 5
Incubation: May 5
Hatch Date: May 21
Length of Incubation: 16 days
Fledge Date: June 8
Days to Fledge: 19
Number of Nestlings: 4

I think the most interesting things we seen data-wise from the nest cam project is that every year the birds have laid 5 eggs but only had four birds fledge. This seems pretty typical. Also, the length of incubation and time to fledge can vary. In 2007, incubation took 16 days but in 2008 it only took 14 days. This is flip-flopped with the time to fledge. In 2007 it took only 17 days to fledge but in 2008 it took 19. That's a two day difference for each value so in both years the combined incubation+time to fledge was 33 days. Interesting coincidence? Could there be a connection wherein a shorter incubation means a longer time till fledge? We'll know more when we can look at this year's data as well. The 19 days to feldge seen last year is longer than the typical range of 15-16 days listed in The Birders's Handbook.

~Kirk

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Owl's White Patch Aids Visual Communication

I work with a captive Barred Owl but from time to time I get to see some of my peers in the field do programs with Great Horned Owls. Have you ever watched a Great Horned Owl call? It always struck me that they have this white throat patch that really puffs in and out when they call. If you've never seen it in action, watch the video below.



In a new research paper published recently in the journal PLoS ONE, scientists Vincenzo Penteriani and Maria del Mar Delgado of the of the Estacion Biologica de Doñana in Spain believe that the white patches aid owls by adding a visual component to calls. Visual? This might seems strange for a creature many people consider nocturnal but in reality, owls are crepuscular meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk. There are great advantages to being crepuscular if you are an owl. It is dark enough that you can hide from prey but still light enough that you can see them. According to Penteriani and Delgado, there is enough ambient light at twilight to make the white throat badge useful as a communication tool.

Numerous studies have sought to explain the amazingly widespread phenomenon of the so-called dawn and dusk chorus, i.e. the sunrise and sunset peaks in bird song output... To date, the majority of studies on this topic have focused on songbirds, which might contribute to a biased view of bird vocal communication. It seems likely that if multiple hypotheses are necessary to explain songbird dawn and dusk choruses, many others could be necessary to explain the functions of vocal signaling at sunrise and twilight in other bird families. Until we gain a better understanding of daily patterns in signaling by as many as possible bird families, we will not completely understand why birds sing. In addition, we need to examine nonvocal means of communication and how they might be associated with vocalization. It is well-known that diurnal birds use an astonishing variety of color signals to visually communicate: did crepuscular and nocturnal species find a way to communicate by visual signals? Our present study shows that crepuscular and nocturnal species appear to have evolved white patches that, shown in association with vocal displays, allow them to communicate in dark surroundings.

Their study focused on the european cousin to the Great Horned Owl, the Eagle Owl. Get your geek on and read the entire research paper online titled, The Dusk Chorus from an Owl Perspective: Eagle Owls Vocalize When Their White Throat Badge Contrasts Most.

~Kirk

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Eastern Phoebe Update; Egg!

Just a quick lunchtime update here. I checked out our Eastern Phoebe Webcam this morning when I got into work. We've been expecting an egg soon. The female has been roosting in the nest at night but absent during the day. This morning, I came into work and checked the live feed. Voila! The first egg. The bird should lay one egg each morning now for the next four days or so. She does not begin incubation until all eggs are laid.

~Kirk

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