MBS and BWD

I received my brand spanking new edition of Bird Watcher's Digest today, cracked it open, and was pleased to see this full-page ad for the upcoming Midwest Birding Symposium (MBS). Not only that, the ad features Dave "Birds From Behind" Lewis and his infinitely better half, Laurie Boylan, both of whom are stalwart Ohio birders.

If you've been to MBS, I don't have to sell you on this birding extravaganza, and I trust that you'll be back in 2013, September 19-22 to be exact. If you've not been, well, please do put MBS on your calendar. It may not be the biggest avian fest, but it's the best! And with some 1,000 birders converging on the idyllic Lake Erie village of Lakeside, Ohio, MBS is certainly no small potatoes! There's outstanding speakers galore, an amazing vendor's hall, excellent local birding at the peak of fall migration, and so much more. CLICK HERE for a pictorial recap of the 2011 affair.

It's never too early to plan one's calendar, so click on over to the Midwest Birding Symposium website and PREREGISTER NOW!

A quick plug for the mag that sports this MBS ad. Bird Watcher's Digest is, simply put and in my totally biased opinion, the best general interest birding publication on the market. It launched in 1978 - I purchased and still have the inaugural issue - and is still ticking strong. If you haven't read BWD, try it, you'll like it if you like birds. A subscription also makes for a fine Christmas present! GO HERE to learn more about BWD.

Inquisitive otter investigates camera

Back at the tail end of October, I shared a wonderful video of a family unit of River Otters, Lontra canadensis. The videographers were David and Laura Hughes, who have taken trail cam cinematography to a fine art and are achieving amazing results. The previous otter video can be seen HERE.

Well, Dave and Laura have done it again, with the following crisp vid of momma otter rooting around with two of her offspring. The sharp-eyed elder otter spots the camera, and takes a gander at it. This film was shot at the Hughes' now legendary Monroe County, Ohio game trail.

Thanks, as always, to Dave and Laura for sharing their work with us. Their videos offer glimpses into the lives of mammals that are normally very hard to observe, at least for very long, in the field.

Owl Symposium! February 15-17, 2013

Mark your calendars in ink for the weekend of February 15th thru the 17th. The Ohio Ornithological Society is putting on a conference that's all about those wisest of birds, the owls. The venue? The fabulous Mohican State Park lodge, nestled in the thick of a 5,000-acre forest full of wonderful birds. GO HERE for details about the Owls of North America Symposium.

 

A sleepy Barred Owl, Strix varia, fails to acknowledge your narrator. I photographed the animal as it slumbered in a gnarly Swamp White Oak along a back road in the Killbuck Marsh Wildlife Area. Barred Owls are one of only two owls that occur in Ohio that have dark eyes. I'm sure you can guess the other. We'll be out looking for owls in their natural haunts at the symposium, and there's usually an obliging pair of Barred Owls a mere stone's throw from the lodge.

This Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia, did acknowledge your blogger, although I wasn't nearly as close to the animal as the photo suggests. The bird pierced me with its fierce yellow eyes as it perched at the entrance to its burrow in Cape Coral, Florida. Believe it or not, there are four Ohio records of these lanky-legged ground dwellers, and we'll probably have others. Burrowing Owls have a broad but patchy distribution throughout the Americas, and western U.S. and Canadian populations are highly migratory.

Our keynote speaker hails from the west, just like this owl. Denver Holt is director and founder of the Owl Research Institute and one of the world's foremost experts on owls. He is a dynamic speaker, and a hoot to listen to. The chance to hear Denver is worth the price of admission alone. His subject is awesome - Snowy Owls, Bubo scandiacus, and his work with them on their home turf, the high Arctic of Alaska.

Its "ears" flopped down like a hound dog, a plump-looking Long-eared Owl, Asio otus, looks down in wonderment. I luckily espied the bird from afar, long before it saw me, and managed to furtively sneak near enough for some photos before it detected my presence. This, apparently, is what a Long-eared Owl in repose looks like - fat, fluffy, and ears adroop. Seconds later, it snapped to attention, sleeking its body to impossibly slender branchlike propertions and erecting the ear tufts to complete the illusion of a broken off snag.

Gail Laux of the Ohio Bird Sanctuary will be on hand and giving a lecture about the various Ohio owls and their amazing anatomy and habits. She'll have props, too - live owls that the Sanctuary has taken in, but which can't be released due to injuries. In addition to up close and personal owl encounters, we'll also be out-of-doors and finding wild owls, in addition to all manner of other birds, As you probably know, this has been a bonanza year for crossbills, and the hemlock-choked Mohican Gorge usually has them.

Photos of Northern Saw-whet Owls, Aegolius acadicus, often elicit involuntary "aahs" from people, and I've got to admit - they're cute. You wouldn't be oohing and aahing if you were a White-footed Mouse and saw this thing swooping in, I'll tell you that much. To the rodents, this is a feathered Freddie Krueger come to life. This one was photographed during a banding operation.

Bob Placier and Tom Bartlett, who have banded hundreds of saw-whets between them, will give a program about their fascinating work with eastern North America's smallest owl. As a major perk, they'll set up nets and try to capture saw-whets on Saturday night.

There's much more, including live music by the inestimable band of birders, the Rain Crows, on Friday night. These symposia are a lot of fun, and a great chance to learn, see lots of birds, and meet lots of like-minded people. Even if you live in far-flung places such as Uzbekistan or West Virginia, I'd encourage you to make this scene.

Registration and all of the other details are RIGHT HERE. Hope to see you there!

Coyotes caught on camera!

Once again, the amazing trail camsmanship of Laura and David Hughes is on display here. This time, they've bagged a pair of Coyotes, Canis latrans, at their traditional Monroe County game trail hotspot.

Coyotes, while very common in most areas, can be quite furtive and are prone to doing most of their wandering at night. Thus, we don't often get to see how they operate, especially when the "dogs" are unaware of our presence.

Thanks again to David and Laura for another awesome peek into the secret lives of Ohio's mammals!

Caterpillars are fascinating - really!

A pair of jumbo Cecropia Moth caterpillars, Hyalaphora cecropia, make mincemeat of a black cherry sapling. This spectacular "cat" is but one of about 3,000 species of moth larvae eating their way through our woods and fields.

I'm giving a program entitled "Growing Caterpillars: A Tale of Birds, Plants, and Conservation" at the Columbus Natural History Society next Monday evening, December 10th. The price of admission is just right - free! The Society meets at the Ohio State University's Museum of Biological Diversity at 1315 Kinnear Rd., Columbus, Ohio 43210. Doors open at 7 pm; the show gets under way at 7:30 pm. All are welcome.

A Checker-fringe Prominent caterpillar, Schizura ipomoea, does its best to become one with a black maple leaf, and it's doing a pretty darn good job if you ask me.

I've had a casual interest in caterpillars for a long time, but really started becoming passionate about studying them in the last five years. Why? I began to realize just how important these tubular eating machines are to our environment. It's hardly an understatement to say that caterpillars make the world go 'round.

A tiny work of art, painted and shellacked, a gorgeous caterpillar known as The Asteroid, Cucullia asteroides, chows on flat-topped goldenrod. All caterpillars are intriguing on some front, whether it is beauty, camouflage, toxicity, bizarre defense systems, ecological value, or any combination of the above.

If you were able to toss all of Ohio's caterpillars into a pile, and a honking big pile it would be, their collective biomass would exceed that of a more conspicuous herbivore, the White-tailed Deer. If it were not for all of these caterpillars, many songbirds would go extinct, forests would largely fall silent, plant diversity would plummet, and our humanoid world would suffer greatly.

Sporting bright coloration warning would-be predators that it is poisonous and unpalatable, a Black Swallowtail butterfly, Papilio polyxenes, caterpillar noshes on cowbane, Oxypolis rigidior, one of our native parsleys. Even though butterflies garner the lion's share of attention, they are outnumbered by moth species by a factor of 20 in these parts. Even though they may be underappreciated, it is moths that do the heavy ecological lifting, especially stage II of their four-part life cycle, the caterpillars.

If you're in the Columbus area next Monday and want to learn more about a strange and mysterious world with far-reaching impacts, come on down to the Columbus Natural History Society's get-together. Directions are RIGHT HERE.

Bohemian Waxwing!

A trio of Cedar Waxwings, Bombycilla cedrorum, silky and dapper, pauses from plundering an ornamental crabapple. I made this image almost exactly four years ago in Wyandot County. Then, as would be the case now, I was excited to see these animals and lingered to admire them. To me at least, just about all birds are worthy of admiration, but waxwings require an extra glance. They are avian Clark Gables: sophisticated, impeccably tailored, unflappable and refined. A waxwing is the model sashaying down the runway; chickadees, robins, and jays are merely coarse and ill-mannered louts shouting and gawking from the seats below.

The family Bombycillidae is a small one:  it represents just .0003 of the world’s birds. Pictured above, courtesy WikiCommons, is the Japanese Waxwing, Bombycilla japonicum, one of only three waxwing species on the globe and the one least familiar to North American birders. This eastern Asian species gives up nothing in the looks department to its American counterparts.

Photo: Dane Adams

And finally, the third species in the waxwing trio, the robust and showy Bohemian Waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus.

Bohemian: “An itinerant person; a vagabond”

In this part of the world, the appearance of Bohemian Waxwings always causes a stir. They’re rare – quite rare – here, and their appearances are utterly unpredictable in any given locale. Thus it was a momentous occasion last Saturday when a group of Columbus birders stumbled into a flock of eleven BoWax pilfering fruit from a crabapple tree at Maumee Bay State Park. Word soon spread and before long many other birders were basking in the presence of the regal waxwings. Dane Adams, who has kindly shared many of his excellent photos with this blog, made the scene and provided this beautiful image.

A Bohemian Waxwing is like a majorly gussied up Cedar Waxwing. If your firsthand familiarity of the waxwing tribe extends only to the latter, get ready to pick your jaw up off the sod when you first encounter a BoWax in living color. They’re jumbos; a classic example of Bergmann’s Rule. A plump Cedar X-wing might tip the scales at 32 grams; BoWax are honking big in comparison, like nearly 60 grams big. That’s like comparing Richard Simmons to Arnold Schwarzenegger. The artists also worked overtime when painting the Bohemians. True, Cedar Waxwings have those cool little red waxy nubs on their wing feathers. So do the BoWax, but their wing adornments also include bold white and yellow brushstrokes. The undertail coverts are a luscious shade of cinnamon-brown, and the forehead and cheeks are tinted in the same reddish-brown hue, making the bird look as if it is blushing. The bird in Dane’s photo is an adult; the extent of yellow on the tail and coloration in the wings increases with age.

This map, via the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, helps to explain why Bohemian Waxwings are a BIG DEAL in Ohio and adjacent necks of the woods. They breed about 1,500 miles away, throughout the northern and western reaches of the great boreal forest. While the short northern summers bring a bounty of insects, and the waxwings certainly hawk for those, these birds are primarily frugivorous (fruit-eating). But not just any fruit – waxwings specialize on soft sugar-laden fruits such as those of mountain-ash, grapes, various members of the rose family, etc. Such fare tends to be ephemeral, not lasting long on the vine, so to speak. Thus, the waxwings must adopt a nomadic, or Bohemian, lifestyle in their constant quest for berries. Occasionally large-scale food shortages drive large numbers out of the core range and far to the south and east. And it is during such irruptions that we hope to find BoWax here in Ohio.

On average, one or a few Bohemian Waxwings turn up in Ohio every three or four winters, if that. We used to see more of them. At the time of earliest ornithological records, in the early to mid 1800’s, Kirtland and others mentioned BoWax flocks as a seemingly fairly regular occurrence. Even by the early 1900’s flocks were reported with some regularity, such as 75 in Lake County in January of 1920, which must have been a stunning sight.

This winter is shaping up to be a good one for Bohemian Waxwings in this region, or at least good for birders who are seeking them. This eBird map shows, in purple, the extent of their eastward sweep. Keep a close eye out for waxwings and scrutinize flocks when you find them. Sometimes Bohemians get in with the Cedars and can be easy to overlook. Waxwings, of either species, are often drawn to ornamental fruit-bearing trees such as crabapples, hawthorns, and the like and thus the birds can appear even in very urban areas.

Photo: Brian Zwiebel

Ace photographer Brian Zwiebel, who lives but a stone’s throw from Maumee Bay State Park, got to the waxwings in time to snap this stellar image, and I appreciate his allowing me to share it. Be sure to check out more of Brian’s work RIGHT HERE.

Congrats to Andy Sewell, who was with the group of birders that first stumbled into the Maumee Bay waxwings and recognized them for what they were. He quickly got word out and as a result many a person added Bohemian Waxwing to their state and/or life lists.

A Merlin in the prairie

An immature male Merlin, Falco columbarius, surveys his domain. This is the third winter in a row that I've found a Merlin in this massive restored prairie, and in every case I've found the birds sitting on this very fence post.

I stopped in this Pickaway Plains prairie last Friday after work, stopping along the way to pick up a fellow raptor enthusiast, Deb Bradley, who doesn't live too far from the site. Our primary mission: Short-eared Owls. It seems to be shaping up to be a decent flight of these floppy-flying grassland hooters, so I wanted to check this locale for them. We weren't disappointed; at least four short-ears emerged from the tall Indian Grass at dusk, and began hunting. There were also about five Northern Harriers working the grasslands.

I took this shot several years ago, and it shows the Merlin's favorite fence posts. If you visit, you'll have a darn good chance of seeing the speedy little falcon atop one of these posts. Just slow down and check them from afar before moving in too closely. Part of the massive grassland disappears in the distance behind the posts.

If you want to visit this spot, this map may help you. The yellow north-south road is U.S. Route 23, and Circleville, Ohio is just a few miles to the north. Turn west on the upper road traced in blue - Radcliff Road, and then just follow the roads that I've outlined. This route makes a big rectangle and dumps you back out on 23. The red arrow points to the exact spot where the aforementioned posts are located. The best birding, where the roads bisect the grasslands, is shown in red.

This is a spectacular site. Located along the Scioto River (seen on the far left of the photo), this land is smack in the middle of the former Pickaway Plains prairie, a long linear swath of prairie that roughly followed Rte. 23 from present-day Circleville and extended perhaps seven miles to the south. About six years ago, one of the landowners put over 1,000 acres into the Conservation Reserve Program, and the land is now an ocean of prairie grasses. Birds have responded accordingly, and now the "Charlie's Pond" prairie is a fabulous birding locale.

If you're a songbird, this is the last thing you want to see staring needles at you. And it probably will be the last thing you see. Merlins are consummate bird-hawks, deftly flying down and snatching up lesser birds, ripping them up, and eating them.

I admire the Merlin's sheer insolence. They think very little of our species, and it shows. Had I not been as near as I was, with a long 500 mm lens bristling out the open car window, the bird probably would have paid me no mind. In general, we are not worthy in the world of the Merlin. One time, a bunch of us were at Green Lawn Cemetery, admiring a big female Merlin perched high atop a dead Sycamore snag. A woman, who had never before seen one of these falcons, finally burst out in semi-exasperation, "why won't it even look at us!". I had to break the news that, to the bird, she was a lesser species, not suitable for food or any other purpose, and therefore was not worthy of the bird's attention.

Note the acute wing tips, a characteristic of falcons. Merlins put those powerful wings to good use, and are feathered bullets capable of astonishing bursts of speed and remarkable veers and jags. They're very clever animals, too. Merlins have been documented following much larger Northern Harriers as the "Marsh Hawks" course low over grasslands, hoping to surprise voles. As a byproduct of their hunting, the harrier sometimes flushes songbirds, which are typically of little interest to the raptor. But songbirds are of great interest to Merlins, and when the harrier spooks one the Merlin is there to pounce.

An even better Merlin hunting story was published in an ornithological journal and described Merlins that flew in tandem with a speeding locomotive, up near the front of the train. When the train kicked up birds as it sped along, the Merlins were there to grab them.

In recent years, Merlins have become much more common in Ohio and many other parts of their range. We've even had two breeding records in the past few years, and I will guarantee that there will be more nestings. It's great to see these exciting and charismatic little raptors rebounding, even if they don't like us very much.