Thank you Horned Larks

This morning on the way in to work I spotted some birds on the side of the road. The road goes through a farm field and each year I find this same little stretch is reliable for American Kestrels in the summer and if I am lucky, Horned Larks in the winter. I love this little stretch of road. I saw a Northern Shrike there earlier this year and a Bobolink last summer.

I've been slowing down through this stretch each day patiently waiting for the Horned Larks. This morning, I saw some birds on the side fo the road. They were too large to be the tree sparrows and juncos I'd seen earlier in the season. I quickly pulled over and fumbled to get my binoculars out of my bag while I hoped no cars would come and scare off the birds. Predictably, the zipper on my bag jammed. I finally pulled out the binoculars and was delighted with a splendid view of Horned Larks. There were six of them in total.

It was a great feeling to see a new bird for the year. I'd been in a dry spell lately as I hadn't seen a new bird for the year since January 15th. That's more than a month without adding a bird to my list. Granted, I could have added some if I was trying harder or say, retired and not raising a toddler.

Here's the list thus far.

January 1
I started the year off on January 1st with my best first day of the year ever as we took a fmily trip down to La Crosse on the first of the year to visit family. A quick but unbelievably cold stop at Point Douglas helped. The Harlequin Duck was a lifer for me. Not bad way to start off the year.
1. House Sparrow (at my house)
2. Rock Pigeon (at my house)
3. Red-tailed Hawk (driving past the MSP airport)
4. Trumpeter Swan (point douglas)
5. Canada Goose (point douglas)
6. Mallard Duck (point douglas)
7. Harlequin Duck (point douglas)
8. American Coot (point douglas)
9. Ring-billed Gull (point douglas)
10. Ring-necked Duck (point douglas)
11. American Crow (point douglas)
12. Bald Eagle (near Wabasha)

January 2
On the Second day of the year I woke up to take in some of the birds at my in-laws house. To my toddler's disappointment, there was no chickadee at the feeders but the Tufted Titmouse did finally show up.
13. Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco (LaCrosse, WI)
14. White-breasted Nuthatch (LaCrosse, WI)
15. Red-bellied Woodpecker (LaCrosse, WI)
16. Tufted Titmouse (LaCrosse, WI)
17. European Starling (LaCrosse, WI)

January 4
Back at work, I quickly picked up the usual suspects at the feeders.
18. Blue Jay (Warner Nature Center)
19. Hairy Woodpecker (Warner Nature Center)
20. Downy Woodpecker (Warner Nature Center)
21. Black-capped Chickadee (Warner Nature Center)
22. American Goldfinch (Warner Nature Center)
23. Sharp-shinned hawk (Warner Nature Center)
24. Pileated Woodpecker(Warner Nature Center)

January 6
One more day, one more bird.
25. American Robin (near Warner Nature Center)

January 7
An unexpected surprise, while sitting in a meeting at the Science Museum, a Peregrine Falcon repeatedly flew past the windows of the conference room.
26. Peregrine Falcon (Science Museum of MN, St. Paul)

January 11
On a school outreach trip I picked up two more birds. Marine on St. Croix is a good place for birding in the winter with open water from the Mill Stream and numerous springs.
27. Northern Cardinal (Marine on St. Croix)
28. American Tree Sparrow (Marine on St. Croix)

January 12
On the morning drive in to work I saw two more birds and then the Turkeys were finally at the feeders. The Northern Shrike was a real winter treat.
29. Ring-necked Pheasant (near Warner Nature Center)
30. Northern Shrike (near Warner Nature Center)
31. Wild Turkey (Warner Nature Center)

January 15
The house finches finally appeared at my fly through feeder at home.
32. House Finch (at my house)

February 23
After over a month of new birds...
33. Horned Lark (near Warner Nature Center)

The list has some surprises thus far. It was nice to get the Horned Lark, Sharp-shinned Hawk and Harlequin Duck. There are some really obvious omissions though. I have yet to see a Cedar Waxwing, Brown Creeper, Mourning Dove, Pine Siskin, Common Redpoll, or a Barred Owl. I think I am the only staff person at work who has not spotted a Barred Owl in the woods this year. Maybe this is my week.

~Kirk

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My Top 10 Birds of 2009

I saw a lot of good birds this year. In fact, I set a new year list record helped in no large part by a trip to Arizona. Sitting here at the end of the year I can see that I added 33 birds to my life list as well. There won't be many years where I can say that. It is hard to pick my top ten birds of the year. Some are because they were just so beautiful while others were just exciting to find or a long time coming. Eight of the ten were lifers.

10. Partially Leucistic Purple Finch

Starting off at spot number 10 is something a little weird. I saw a lot of partially leucistic birds this year. One of my favorites was this female purple finch that had a strange white collar around her neck. It was very distinctive. I wrote a post about it. I wonder if this same bird will show up this winter? That would be really fun.



9. Eastern Towhee
The Eastern Towhee is one of those birds I see most years but they don't stick around and if I miss them in the spring then I've missed out. This spring was one of those years where I didn't see any. Imagine my surprise when I learned one was still hanging out in Minnesota in December. I took part in a Christmas Bird Count this year and got a lead that a towhee was hanging out just a mile or so from where I work I headed out with my camera on the count day and sure enough here was a crazy Eastern Towhee in Minnesota in December.

8. Varied Thrush
I haven't done a whole lot of twitching in the past. That's running after rare birds for those not familiar with the term. I see reports of strange birds all over the state but I don;t have the time to go running after them. Last winter there was a report of a Varied Thrush just a mile from my house though so with the inlaws in town to help watch my toddler son I grabbed my bins and field guide and made the short drive to the site. I saw the bird from a distance and managed to catch the photo below. Paul and I also talked with Liz Harper who lives on the street where it was hanging out about what it was like to live at the center of birding madness. You can listen on the pilot episode of our podcast.

7. Sedge Wren
The Sedge Wren was a cool discovery close to home. No travel necessary other than going to work. I took a photography class out on a hike to take landscape shots and a little wren teed up on a tree and chatted at us. I knew it was a wren immediately but something seemed off. It didn't feel like a house wren. I looked closer and was delighted to discover it was a Sedge Wren. I didn't even know they were on the property so it was fun to see them.




6. Orchard Oriole
The orchard Oriole made the list because I've been trying to see one for a while and they have eluded me. We get them at work but for some reason I can never find them. I finally stumbled into one in the yard of my wife's grandmother in South Dakota. It was completely unexpected and delightful.



5. Canyon Wren
Another wren! The Canyon Wren made the list because it was such a fun discovery. I was in Arizona birding unfamiliar habitat looking for unfamiliar birds. I found the Canyon Wren in the Superstition Mountains. It was teed up perfectly on this rock slab and was very cooperative when it came to photos. What a cool bird.




4. Loggerhead Shrike  
Just before seeing the Canyon Wren I spotted a bird teed up in the canyon we were hiking though. It was fun because it was one of those moments where I could feel my birding skills evolving. A few years ago I would have had no idea what this bird was. Now though I instantly recognized it as a shrike. I studied it though the bins and then snapped some photos before studying it more. What struck me was that the bill seemed shorter than the bills of the shrikes I'd seen in the winter at home in Minnesota. I double checked the field guide I had with me and sure enough, Loggerhead Shrikes have a shorter bill than Northern Shrikes. It felt good to have not only seen a new species but have correctly made an ID like that in the field.



3. Harris Hawk
The same hike as the shrike and the wren yielded a handful of other lifers. The most exciting was a Harris Hawk but it technically came after the hike. We were heading back to town when I almost put the rental car in the ditch. I had spotted a large raptor flying in our direction. I rolled down the window and it landed in a saguaro cactus maybe fifty feet from our car. A second then flew in. We could see a nest in the cactus. The birds flew off one by one and I got some decent photos. Even my non-birding wife thought it was pretty cool.



2. Black-necked Stilt
I just loved these little guys. This Black-necked stilt was hanging out at the water treatment plant in Gilbert, AZ. These are just gorgeous birds and I could watch them for hours. They are fun to photograph too.



1. Mountain Bluebird
Sure, it isn't the rarest bird nor was the adventure to find it the most exciting. I just love this photo though. I took it while on a family reunion trip out to the Black Hills in South Dakota. We stayed at a campground and this little guy was hanging around the whole time we were there. I ended up making him the desktop image for my computer at work.  There's something incredible about that blue that just makes me happy every time I see it. This was the same trip where I saw the Orchard Oriole. The post I wrote about it won a contest for writing about birding and life listing. The prize was Olivia Gentile's book Life List. If you're interested in listing it is a must read.



Well, that's it for 2009. In just a manner of days I'll be back to 0 birds for the year and the adventure begins again.

~Kirk

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South Dakota Road Trip

Twin Cities Naturalist on the road! I spent last week in South Dakota. It was a family reunion trip for my wife' side of the family. All birding and natural history behavior thus had to be done in little stolen moments or while careening down the highway at 75 mph in a rented minivan. While I didn't return with a multitude of new western bird species sighted I did make some nice observations and saw a few lifers.

Our first stop was Doland, SD. Aside from numerous mourning doves and house sparrows, there were some other birds hanging out at the edge of town. I quickly spotted a kingbird but even without my binoculars I could see the white stripe on the tail indicating that it was an Eastern Kingbird. I see the Eastern pretty much every day on my way to work. I was hoping to spot a Western Kingbird. I thought maybe we weren't far enough west. Realizing I had a few minutes while my son napped, I went inside to get my binoculars and camera. I was glad I did! The Eastern Kingbird was gone but it was replaced with a beautiful Western Kingbird just a short distance away.

It stuck around for the two days we were there so it much have been nesting nearby. The Western Kingbird was a lifer for me.

I walked along a row of trees and saw a bird fly in and land. When I put up my binos I was rewarded with not only an American Robin but an Orchard Oriole. We have Orchard Orioles at home and we band them once or twice a year at work but I have never stumbled into one in the wild so this was a lifer for me as well.

Here's a photo of the Orchard Oriole sitting next to the American Robin for comparison. The Orchard Oriole is smaller than a Baltimore Oriole. It's also brick red instead of bright orange. Another difference is that the tail is all black whereas a Baltimore Oriole also has some orange on the tail.


I also saw this Brown Thrasher in the same area. This would have been a lifer last year. For a while this was a nemesis bird of mine. I could never find them. Now, for whatever reason, I've seen something like three or four of them this year.


While doing a little yard birding I heard a Western Meadowlark and followed the sound out to the road where he was perched on a power line. He was facing away from me so I didn't get any good photos. Out on the road it was fun watching the Western Kingbirds chase the Killdeer. There were numerous killdeer around and the kingbird would chase after them if they flew under the powerline he was sitting on. I snapped a few photos of the pursuit, this was the only one that came out. They were moving really fast. You can see the bottom of the city's population sign, "Pop. 297" There are probably more birds than people. Heck, there are probably more house sparrows than people.


We pushed on a few days later to the black hills for the family reunion. We narrowly avoided a forming tornado along the way. I had my eye on this storm cell for a while and as we drew closer I could see this interesting looking area on the tail end of the storm. When we got closer I could see little tendrils spiraling down out of this area. They would form and disappear pretty quick so I didn't catch them in photos very well. Luckily we were traveling perpendicular to the storm at 75 mph and we cleared the area without so much as a drop of water on the windshield.

There wasn't really any time for birding when we reached the Black Hills but I did manage to see a Spotted Towhee outside the entrance to Sitting Bull's Crystal Caverns and a number of these gorgeous Mountain Bluebirds at the Rushmore Shadows Resort.


~Kirk

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Lifer Wren

While teaching my Digital Nature Photography camp today I took the kids to a spot where we'd been earlier in the week. One of the girl's camera batteries had died right when we got there last time so she really wanted to go back. Boy am I glad we did.

While the kids hunted around for flowers and dragonflies, a sound caught my ear. A bird was calling from within some tall grasses near a large pond but I couldn't see anything. It seemed to call with no regard to the kids. I could tell it was close so I stepped off the trail and into the grass to see if I could make anything out. There was nothing but the calling of the bird. I walked a little further in and suddenly a bird flushed up out of the grass about ten feet from me. I only caught a glimpse as it immediately popped back down into the grasses further away and resumed singing. I knew this was not a song I had heard before. It started with two notes and then ended with a faster trill of sorts. I tried to commit it to memory before rounding up the kids for lunch.

Back at the nature center I listened to a few guesses online at lunch. None were a match. I then tried another guess. I played the call of the Sedge Wren. Bingo. That was it! "Wait a minute," I thought. When I was in this same spot on Tuesday with the kids I saw a small wren in a shrub just a few feet from where this bird had been. I'd been too busy this week to go back and look at my photos. I scrolled back through the photos and sure enough, the bird I'd photographed at the beginning of the week was a Sedge Wren! It was fun to get photos since they usually spend most of their time hiding in grass. This was the first sedge wren I've ever seen so that made it even more fun.




~Kirk

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