Two reasons why I don't want to be an Owl

Owls.
Shy, elusive, nocturnal and as a general rule no friends of Bell Tower Birders.
Not very cooperative, not very nice.

Nevertheless, they still deserve my sympathy because they have a rough life and as I will show below, I am quite happy about not having to live and owl's life which often - apparently - tends to be shortened rather unpleasantly.

You certainly still all remember the Snowy Owl Laurent and I went to see at Allen Park. If not, here are the two links, links to my blog posts.
Or marvel again at the incomparable pictures Andreas Kanon took (follow this link, go to Galleries / Avian Galleries and click on Owls).
Now, this was one friendly dude of an owl, obedient, showy and sticking around for a while allowing many, many birders to see it repeatedly and very nicely indeed.

Well, what can I say: it is dead now.

What remains of it was brought to the Rouge River Bird Observatory (cool site, well worth a good look) where it was examined by Julie Craves who wrote the following short report on the local birders email forum (reproduced here in part with her kind permission):

Someone found the carcass of the Snowy Owl
at Fairlane Green shopping center in Allen
Park that was present earlier this year.
(...)
I examined the bird and while there was some
minor animal damage the wings, legs, and
skull appeared unbroken/intact. The various
small wounds did not appear to be bullet
wounds, and I found no pellets or shot when
I probed, nor was there much blood. The inner
tissues were still somewhat frozen, but the
smell indicated that it probably died around
when it was last seen in early February.

What I didn't find was any fat; the breastbone
was easily felt and prominent, typically a sign
of emaciation.  I will be taking the bird to
the MDNR for a necropsy, but if I had to guess,
this bird starved to death, despite the
impressions of many observers that it appeared
healthy and not under any duress.

All of a sudden, it doesn't appear to be so desirable anymore to be a Snowy Owl, to spend the summer in one of the most amazing landscapes up North and travel around a bit during the winter.

So, that's reason No. 1 for me not wanting to be an Owl: you'll have to eat mostly rodents and if you can't bear the taste anymore, you starve to death on a construction site besides an Interstate close to Detroit. Not quite the classy or heroic end one would expect for such a fabulous creature.

Now to reason No. 2: the life of an Eastern Screech Owl.
I had asked around a bit for possible sites to find Screech Owls around Ann Arbor and was told that there used to be one very dependably at the "Beach" section of the Arb but that the owl had to give up this roost site when some shrubbery was removed during park maintenance. But sure enough, there should still be a pair around at Rhododendron Glen, a swampy part of the Arb next to the Beach.
However, Rhododendron Glen received much attention - yet again? - by park maintenance this winter and now they are even building a new path there with a small bridge. This is surely going to be a very nice path once warbler migration sets in, but I can't help but wonder just what a resident pair of Eastern Screech Owl would think of all this human activity. I still checked the many hollow and old trees there regularly and last Sunday, during a pleasant walk through the Arb along Rhododendron Glen with my wife, I looked down onto the forest floor besides the path and spotted a few brown feathers. Closer inspection revealed them to have belonged to an Eastern Screech Owl and judging by the number of feathers, this one particular individual would never need its flight feathers again because inside of a Great Horned Owl it is too dark to fly.

This was basically the end of my hopes of seeing an Eastern Screech Owl at Rhododendron Glen. It was also the end of what must have been an owl's stressful life of constantly shifting roost sites and it was surely hard for the owl to not take all the park maintenance personal.

So there you have it, reason No. 2: You get pushed and shoved around by human interference and have to move your bedroom constantly, with all the lack of sleep during the day due to the time needed to adjust to new roost sites and in the end, when you are so tired you can barely stay alert anymore, you get eaten by another Owl.
Terrific.

At least we now know there's a Great Horned Owl at the Arb.
Laurent has actually heard it calling lately and will probably look for it today during a short lunch break. Even though the Screech Owl seems to be a bit of a problem to find and see, we should at least manage to find a Great Horned Owl soon.
And if we do, then we know at least where not to search for Eastern Screech Owls...

Birds I really like: The Redwing

There are some birds I like and some birds I really like. Whether a bird species is grouped with those I like or those I really like is dependent upon me having seen it or not. Basically you can say that I like a bird species as long as I have not seen it. As soon as I do, the species is upgraded to the small (but growing) elite of those species I really like.
I recently spent some time figuring out if there is a particular bird species I have seen but don't get very excited about. There was one until recently, as a matter of fact, and that species was the good old Mourning Dove. It is nothing personal but somehow I just couldn't really get that certain hurrah-feeling I usually get when spotting a bird (any one bird really) whenever I found a Mourning Dove.
Luckily - for me at least as it enhances my pleasure of birding, I don't think the Dove itself really cared that much about my affection - this has changed. The last few times I saw Mourning Doves, they were not just sitting around somewhere on a branch or a wire minding their own business with their own business being to sit somewhere minding their own business which in this case means just to sit somewhere. No, they were walking around on the ground in some brushy rural open area with a few trees, high grasses and bushes and really looked very much like a Sharp-tailed Grouse. So there it was, the special aspect of the Mourning Dove: the Grouse resemblance.

A few days ago Michael Luhn, a birder and bird photographer from "my" part of Germany, posted a few photos of a Redwing on the local email forum. He took the pictures on March 19th at Kieshofer Moor (visit here and scroll down or rather read the complete post to get an impression of the place) and I really, really like them a lot. In a remarkable twist of fate, I also happen to really, really like the Redwing as a species and am always excited when I see them, so I just had to ask Michael for a permission to use his great pictures for a post on my blog.
Yet again, incredibly, he agreed and I am very proud that this site now is host to the following pictures of a Redwing. Of course I would like to kindly ask any reader to respect Michael's copyright. It is very nice of him to let me use his pictures and if you violate his copyrights, be assured I will send a few friends to your place.

Here now are the pictures of a Redwing enjoying a well-deserved petite snack.


What makes this Redwing a Redwing?
A question easily answered: the combination of red flanks, a broad supercilium and stripes on the breast. In a North American context one could say it resembles a Waterthrush with red flanks.

The Redwing is a rather common breeder in Northern Eurasia that only very occasionally breeds in Germany. On the German Baltic Sea coast we mostly encounter it on migration.
In autumn, the sharp calls of a flock of migrating Redwings echoing down from the black nightly skies are a sure sign that winter is approaching or that you are once again returning home late from the pub. They barely stop over though on their southward migration and the real Redwing season is from late March to the middle of April when they return North. During this time, you can often find a few Redwings scanning through the large flocks of Fieldfares and at times they can be quite common, with several Hundred being encountered in one flock spread out over a large meadow or field. Even though we usually watch them out in the open, like on preferably moist grasslands, it is also very nice to find a flock of Redwings in the forests of spring. The Redwing is a species that starts singing on migration and the chorus of 50 or 100 birds in full song within a small patch of forest is a more than memorable encounter, it is breathtaking.
But to really, really like a bird, one has to look beyond beautiful. And here the Redwing also provides us with a multitude of possibilities.
First of all, the Redwing - like all thrushes as far as I know - can be aged even in spring. Let us take a look at one of Michael's pictures again:


The magic is in the Greater Coverts of the bird: most Turdus-thrushes show pale tips to their Greater Coverts in juvenile plumage and retain a few of these coverts until the next spring. On the bird above, the inner coverts have already been exchanged for adult-like feathers but the outer coverts still show the pale tip. This bird therefore is approaching its first breeding season.
This character is also fit for ageing most North American Catharus-thrushes with the exception of the Hermit Thrush which also shows pale tips on its adult Greater Coverts. In this case, we must shift to another field character of the Greater Coverts that allow us to even age the Hermit Thrush, and this additional character is the length of the feathers. Adult-like coverts are distinctly longer than juvenile coverts, as can also be seen above, and this is also the case in the Hermit Thrush as can be seen here and here. It seems the pale wing bar in adult Hermit Thrushes is most pronounced in fall/autumn and much less so in spring, but I don't know enough about this yet, so this is only a wild guess.

So now we know that the Redwing is a sign of autumn/fall, a sign of spring, is pretty good at pulling worms out of firm soil and can be aged. Is there anything more we need to know?
Yes, the subspecific identification of the Redwing.
The Redwing occurs in two distinct subspecies. The nominate form, Turdus iliacus iliacus, occupies basically the whole breeding range from Northern Europe all the way to the North of Asia. But there is a distinct race on Iceland (with a few on the Faeroes) referred to as Turdus iliacus coburni, and it is this form that mostly occurs as a vagrant in North America.
Good pictures of Turdus iliacus coburni can be found here, here, here, here and here. A short discussion on the Redwing's subspecific identification can be found at Birdforum here.
In comparison to nominate iliacus, coburni is
- larger,
- darker in general,
- shows a more heavy spotting on the breast with single spots often "melting" into stripes,
- has a more distinct head pattern
- and darker legs.

These are all characters that are difficult at best to assess in the field unless you are lucky to spot a single bird of one form within a flock of the other. I have searched for coburni on the German Baltic sea coast for the last few years (in vain) and have found most of these characters to be of only limited use because iliacus is - surprise, surprise - quite variable.

Characters like "darker", "larger" and so on are all relative and even if we find a "larger" bird, how can we know it is not a large extreme of iliacus?
The only (almost) "absolute" character I have found to be probably useful is the rather dark colouration of the legs. I have yet to see an iliacus with dark legs (haven't found one within a couple of Hundred birds I checked but am not saying it is impossible) and even though a few photos from Iceland show birds with rather pale legs, the leg colouration seems to be dark on the majority of the Iceland population and hardly ever / never as bright pink as on nominate iliacus.
Another character that might be useful is the dark colouration of the upper flanks, between the red flanks and the neck/head. In coburni, this area often appears as a solid brown extension of the brown back colouration whereas in typical iliacus this area is patterned like the rest of the breast: pale with dark stripes and spots. But this is also a rather tentative approach that probably doesn't work on all birds and needs to be tested more extensively in the field - should occasion occur.

I am now at the end of my little excursion into why I really, really like the Redwing and I hope you have also started to take a liking for this little bird of almost unlimited possibilities.

For an interesting gallery, visit Surfbirds, click on "Search Galleries", type in "Redwing" and see what happens. Most of the pics were taken in the UK and North America, so the subspecific identification is quite a hot question to investigate!
Enjoy.

1 0 0 0

To talk about milestones may be a bit exaggerated, but I was more than delighted to welcome the 1.000th visitor to Bell Tower Birding yesterday, since I started at the End of last year's November. Sadly, I was asleep when someone from Long Beach, California - for the 1.000th time - had a typo and ended up accidentally at Bell Tower Birding, or otherwise we could have had a little on-line celebration.



Right now I have somewhere between 25 and 30 visits per day and I know that other sites get 1.000 visits easily in one or two days or even a handful of hours, but this baby of mine is meant to be growing slowly but steadily, and as they say: "the road is the goal" (in German anyway, don't know if it works in English as well), I am enjoying the ride and don't mind if reaching the top of the pops takes a bit longer.

By a lucky coincidence, Mike recently had a great post on blogging, I know you've read it and know what I mean, but here's the link anyway.
In this post, he quotes Jason Kaneshiro (visit here if you - like me - have no idea who he is and what he does) who presented 9 tips for anyone who wants to "move forward in the blogosphere". John at "A DC Birding Blog" has also covered the issue here.
So when I reached a Thousand visitors - and with it realized the responsibility I have for not wasting so many people's time - I thought I'd check how I am doing regarding these 9 Tips.
So here goes ...

1. Blog Often
Bad, bad blogger!
Shame on me.
Below is a small graph that shows how "nicely" the number of my posts per month has developed.
Well, blame it on a lack of time or any other excuse, but this trend just has to be reversed now!

I promise things will get more diverse again.

2. Figure out a Niche
Oh, that's difficult. What could my niche within the birding blogosphere possibly be? It's not "birding in South-East Michigan", because that niche is already occupied by excellent blogs (e.g. Nuthatch or WoodSong).
Birding at the Arb? Ha, if ever I'd get there!
German Dude trying to find his way through North American birding?
Well, maybe.
Hey, I suppose my niche is to have no niche at all?

3. Learn the Technical Stuff
I'm quite happy I manage the basics of blogger, but I'll try to shift into advanced mode soon, as soon as I start posting more than once a week again so it's worth it!

4. Read other people's Blogs regularly
That's easily done, I always check the links on my site on a daily basis, mostly even several times!

5. Comment on other blogs
I try. If I have something to tell, which doesn't happen all too often.

6. Read up on how to write
No, I won't. My job is writing assessments day by day by day, sometimes a 150-pages document within not even a handful of days. I am not going to read up on how to write because if I get some time off writing to do what I please, I try to go birding!

7. Write posts that you want to read
You mean like a post I'd stick to even if I accidentally landed on my blog? Hmmm, actually this is part of the reason why I didn't blog regularly in March: no ideas, brain drained. So here I might say again "I try".

8. Figure out why you're blogging
Well, for fame and fortunes, why else? Or maybe because Charlie said I should? Or - gasp - because it is fun to do? I'm still working on this one, stay tuned... Funny how I never reflected upon the why, yet.

9. Set some goals for yourself
Goal No. 1 is easy: start blogging on a regular basis again. That should be achieved soon.
Goal No. 2: expand your blogging and the fun you get out of it
Goal No. 3: fame and fortunes


All right, so I am all set, ready for 2.000!

Let's go on then!

Superior Birding

Winter is back.
Well, at least it isn't 20°C anymore, there are occasional incidents of sleet or rain and even though most of the lakes are almost freed from their cover of ice, the little puddles and muddy paths are mostly frozen over again.
Last Saturday I went birding in Superior Township with Laurent. The local email forum has been full of reports from Superior township all winter, with observations of Snow Buntings, Lapland Longspurs, a multitude of Rough-legged Hawks etc.
I never knew really where Superior township was but it sounded so Nordic, like somewhere on the Upper Peninsular close to the shores of lake Superior and therefore was full of those sought-after northern migrants but I someday found out that Superior township is directly East of Ann Arbor and I could have gotten there even without a car by bus and hiking boots.
Two roads lead through it - well there's more but these two are the good ones to go birding along - which are called Vreeland and Cherry Roads. Vreeland goes through a lot of open fields whereas Cherry leads back towards Ann Arbor through more wooded areas.
Having heard so much about birding in Superior township I was full of expectations when Laurent picked me up in downtown Ann Arbor on Saturday morning. As if the weather had decided to show some sympathy regarding my erring about Superior township being somewhere up North, it was unpleasantly cold. The cold was in fact so unpleasant that it instantly inspired me to a birding poem which goes like this:

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor birds we ken-
The ice was all between.

The ice was here the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled
Like noises in a swound!

I thought that was kind of a good few verses but later found out that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had almost the very exact idea when he wrote his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in 1797-1798.
What an astounding coincidence! So that proved that I shall stick with birding rather then try to make a fortune with poetry.
So here are the birds:

Was birding in Superior township really superior?
It was pretty good, honestly, but sadly the analogy between our birding day and Coleridges "Mariner" ended after the word "swound" and not after:

At length did cross an Albatross

Well, maybe pelagic birding in the fields of Washtenaw County in Michigan is asking a little bit too much.
No, even without tube noses, the birding was really good. It started at the first corn field we came by where we spotted 4 Sandhill Cranes. After parking the car and getting out to look more closely we at first could not relocate them because the field was divided by a line of trees with the Sandhill Cranes being hidden from direct view. Nevertheless we were quite happy at finding the field right in front of us covered in a total of 8 Killdeer (or Killdeers?) and a few American Robins. There was a constant honking of Canada Geese from a small wetland in the background and the occasional Red-winged Blackbird and Common Grackle flew over. Finally we spotted the Sandhill Cranes again but just as I had gotten my scope onto them a nice military jet flew over quite low and they flushed.
Wow, thanks, that was army strong timing...

the land of Cranes and Killdeer

We proceeded along Vreeland Road until our next stop a few hundred meters further where we checked a hedgerow that sheltered a nice assembly of Dark-eyed Juncos, American Tree Sparrows, a Song Sparrow, White-throated Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, American Robins and 2 Eastern Bluebirds from the icy wind. Nice assembly, especially the Bluebirds.
A small wetland besides the road had an American Black Duck amongst the Mallards and Canada Geese but the birds were so close that we couldn't really stop and enjoy them because they would probably all have fled the pond upon us getting out of the car.

Further on to the East the landscape opened even more with extensive fields to both sides of the road. It was here that we encountered the star bird of the day in the form of an immature Northern Shrike.
I am not a good bird painter. Actually I am not a bird painter at all. And I am also not very experienced with North American birds in general. So all in all I am not in a very good or comfortable position to question Sibley's work. But this was the second Northern Shrike I saw this winter in Michigan, both were immatures (and I would guess most birds reaching this far South in winter are) and both looked not even remotely like the paintings Sibley presents in his field guides!
After our rush of Shrike Enthusiasm had abated somewhat we proceeded and finally found one of the species we had set out to find: the Horned Lark. We actually found quite a few on eastern Vreeland and along the road to the North that connects Vreeland with Cherry. All were of the local breeding population (Prairie subspecies) and were in a full swing of spring mood, singing and chasing each other and showing off. We even saw a single female amongst the many males which helped to explain what otherwise would have appeared as childish courtship misbehaviour. Oh and there was another distant Sandhill Crane flying West.

Horned Larks all around us

The drive back along Cherry Road proved to be not quite as productive as the forests seem to be almost devoid of birds during the migration periods. I have also noticed this last fall/autumn. In winter there are always a few sparrows around or cardinals and chickadees, but as soon as migration sets in it seems the woods and forests spit out all their birds onto the hedgerows and fields and enjoy a few moments of silence before the breeding frenzy of May sets in.
What we did find however while checking a few road side pines for owls was a Red-breasted Nuthatch. This was only my second encounter with that species, quite to my surprise as they were rather common in May 2005. The Red-breasted Nuthatch-site also hosted a show of a Sandhill Crane flying directly overhead, which we decided to enjoy. Highly recommended. It is funny how the flight behaviour and silhouette of the Sandhill Crane seems to resemble a White Stork much more than a Eurasian Common Crane.
The last bit of Cherry Road has a small pond to its eastern side which we quickly checked for Wood Ducks. Well, no luck this time, but 2 immature Trumpeter Swans and a bunch of Ring-necked Ducks and Lesser Scaup weren't too bad to see either.
Those two paler spots below are actually the swans, and that light little pixel in between might be a duck.


We finally left Superior Township and drove back towards Ann Arbor. On our way to a coffee and cake break downtown we quickly paid Gallup Park a visit which rewarded us amongst others with views of Bufflehead, Common Merganser, a lone male Red-breasted Merganser and a Horned Grebe, the latter two pretty good birds for Gallup Park.

After our downtown coffee break we headed out for an afternoon at Ann Arbor's Matthaei Botanical Garden. As before the woodland trails proved to be almost devoid of avian life forms. Even the more open spaces in the garden's East didn't produce any thing but nice landscape, as seen below.


Around the main office and its pond however we finally found Black-capped Chickadees, a Downy and a Red-bellied Woodpecker and plenty of Red-winged Blackbirds that have now added the incredible flashing of their red shoulders to the already intense effect of their voice. And of course there were a few Canada Geese around.



The skies (all day actually, not only here) were often decorated by the silhouette of a Turkey Vulture and a single male Wood Duck flew over.

By now it was 6 p.m. and time to head for home after a superior day birding through Superior township. I would however not go as far as saying birding in Superior township is superior to a day's birding through the Arb and Gallup Park, although this might change if I don't find that Screech Owl there any time soon...

Hunting for the Ivory-billed Woodowl

Before I start, a short comment on the weather here in South-East Michigan:
On Tuesday we had 63 degrees Fahrenheit (equivalent to almost 20 °C) and on Thursday morning there was fresh snow on the ground. Madness!


OK, what is this post all about? Dare to guess?

No, it is not a report of a newly described species of Owl in Africa, the Wood Owl there remains (systematically) alone (nicer picture here).
No, sorry, wrong again: it is also not a typo, I did mean Woodowl, indeed, and not 'pecker.

Yes, all right, I tell you:
You see, as a new arrival to North American birding, I am absolutely fascinated by the Ivory-billed Woodpecker story. Hey, to most of you, this is probably a debate that's been going on for the last ... well ... roughly 60 years, sometimes more intense (like now), sometimes more subdued. But to enter the show now and really dig into it with a still unspoilt sense of humour is just great.
Just the number of blogs and websites on the topic is quite something and with everyone waiting for the definite photo to be shot any day now (or never?), checking these web sites for news is more exciting than checking the latest opinion polls for Ohio or Florida during an election in the US.
Back to the title of my post:
What do all the blogs and web sites on the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker have in common?
Well, apart from a repetition of the words "intriguing", "interesting", "data" and "evidence", they are characterized by a conspicuous scarcity of recent Ivory-billed Woodpecker encounters and especially photos. But one species we often find mentioned or even depicted there is the amazing Barred Owl, e.g. here. This is not all too surprising as it is apparently relatively common in the south-eastern United States.
The Barred Owl also occurs, be it in a reduced density, in South-East Michigan and the local email forum was recently just buzzing with reports of up to two birds showing very well at Stony Creek Metropark north of Detroit. And you see, this is where another factor suddenly makes quite a massive appearance: It is an owl and as such an impossible, invisible and de facto non-existing creature (see here), it is nice and big and most important of all, I had never seen it before.
So when Laurent and I were discussing the options of half a day's birding last Tuesday, there was a certain tendency to go for the owl. But of course, it is a far drive and there had been a multitude of reports of White-winged Scoters around Washtenaw County, so we were indeed a bit reluctant on reaching a verdict on where to go. These pictures then probably triggered the final decision: we went for the Owl!

So there you have it, the title of my post:
We went "hunting" for an owl that lives in the woods, is somewhat connected to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker thereby profiting from the mystique surrounding it and if you look closely here, well, it even has an ivory-coloured bill!

And here's how it went:

Driving from Ann Arbor to Stony Creek Metropark is not all that easy or quick when you don't know how best to get there and the road we decided to take would surely have terrorized even a Congolese Bush Taxi driver but at least on the way there the birds were with us. Best of all was probably a Sandhill Crane standing on the ice of one of the smaller - still frozen - lakes wondering where on earth his swamp went. This link here depicts the scene rather nicely, and all I can contribute is a Sandhill Crane from Michigan's Upper Peninsular taken in May 2005, but a picture is better than not a picture.


Eventually we got to the park entrance with the car still in one piece and inquired at the main office if there was any news regarding the Owl. The only information we got however was that the staff there didn't really know anything about the owl apart from the fact that a lot of people had come up to them recently and asked, so we were grateful for the description of the site in the email Laurent had printed out before the trip.

So off we went into the park and on to the parking area described in the email. On the way there came the next nice species of the day (after the Sandhill Crane) in the shape of a bunch of Wild Turkeys. Well, there may be scarcer birds in North America but the Turkey will always be an impressive bird to watch, so we were already starting to feel quite well and pleased. The Turkeys finally left the lawn and disappeared into the undergrowth, so we continued on our quest for the Owl, parked the car and proceded into the wilds of Stoney Creek Metropark.
Allright, admittedly, venturing into the wilderness there was not quite the same challenge as, say, the Yukon because the Barred Owl had been found in a bunch of pines along a small forest track right next to the parking area, but we still made only slow progress along the path checking each and every pine tree along the way. No owl yet, but looking up, a sudden flash of pale white blinded our sight and we became aware that what had just flown over us and pushed our retinas to their limits was not a Red-tail, not a Coop, nope, it was a plain brilliant adult Northern Goshawk! What a day! My first ever encounter with the North American subspecies of Goshawk, a form I had been searching for around Ann Arbor (well, around the Arb, to be more down-to-earth) all winter long finally made an appearance! Great!

That sighting however meant that we had at once used up a whole lot of our daily portion of birder's luck and I feared we would later regret it...
We had finally covered the whole area as described for the owl in the emails without success and I had a sudden rush of comprehension: it was indeed an OWL we were looking for and that Snowy Owl was indeed the exception to the rule and I was just a very naive fool to have thought times had changes. We had run out of pines and there was no owl in sight. Oh dear.
Beyond the trail was a small stand of around 30 or so dense and high spruce trees and I heard a single Black-capped Chickadee warning angrily. Oh, I know what you think now "that's the owl, that's the owl", but those chickadees have darn far-reaching warning sensors and I have chased a few of those angry bundles of feathers through the Arb to later find that - even though I had been probably 50 metres away at first - I myself was the likely source of disturbance that had caused the calls.
So I remained calm, but Laurent and I followed a foot path (seen on the picture below) into the spruce stand towards the chickadee (which by then had come to us and continued its scolding, proving me right in my less than optimistic approach towards owling by following angry chickadees).

Somewhere out there might be an Owl

We eventually split to check out each single tree from different directions for better coverage and what can you say, I needn't have worried all day with Laurent "Owl Scout" by my side. It was probably less than two minutes and he quietly called me over to look at ...

Can you see it ??

Y E S !!

The Barred Owl.
Yes, the Barred Owl, and a beauty. I know I shouldn't be saying this without a firm background of Barred-Owl-Experience but I am sure it was the most amazing of all the Barred Owls in the world, and I knew that by intuition even without having seen them all!
Below is a photo Laurent took of our owl in case you haven't found it on my picture above.
Here's our bird!!


Needless to say, the looks through the scope were just ... yeah, as I said: needless to say, you get the picture.

THANKS TO THE FINDER FOR POSTING ITS WHEREABOUTS

After around half an hour with our owl (of course it was "ours" by then), we continued our birding day down on Belle Isle. There had been posts about Scoters around the island so we were curious to go and look for them and Belle Isle is often a good spot in general. Well, it is unfortunately also a good spot for anyone in Detroit to enjoy a bit of outdoors recreation on a sunny day and we weren't what one would describe as alone on the island. So of course, with people everywhere the birds were not - everywhere that is.
First stop was at one of the duck feeding sites which hardly ever produce extraordinary species but the feeding frenzy is nice to watch and you get close-up views of a few species which are always appreciated, and a Black Duck amongst the Mallards and Canada Geese was a nice surprise.

Using binoculars here (above) means you are really getting down
to the details, the fine tuning of bird identification

Nice drake Black Duck - I had never seen that species so close before

Here too, like everywhere else in the world apparently, the ducks had a very hard time defending their own against the mobbing gang of the much more agile gulls.


Ever read "The Lost World", with the deciding battle between the humans and the ape-men?
Challengers words after the battle that left the ape-men mostly dead: "We have been privileged to be present at one of the typical decisive battles in history - the battles which have determined the fate of the world. What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another? It is meaningless. Each produces the same result. But those fierce fights, when in the dawn of the ages the cave-dwellers held their own against the tiger-folk, or the elephants first found they had a master, those were the real conquests - the victories that count."

One of these days, I predict, the ducks will rise against the oppression of the gulls at the feeding sites and finish them off once and for all in a decisive battle that will determin the fate of the world - if you're a Guller. So enjoy this image of a Ring-billed Gull in flight, it might soon be a rare sight and replaced by a hovering Mallard.


In the North of Belle Isle is a small lagoon which is a safe haven for birds unless frozen, which it mostly was when we got there. A small area of open water however had remained and we were pleased to watch a small flock of Canvasbacks trying to get some rest while a few Bufflehead were giving them a hard time doing so because of their energetic courtship / competition behaviour, chasing each other around like little puppies on the lawn. Oh yeah, there were also Canada Geese. One somehow tends to neglect the mentioning of them. Maybe it is because they are everywhere? Well, possibly.


The open river to the north of the Island was a maze of open water in between numerous small sheets of ice floating down. I suspect the quick movement of the ice made it a place too annoying for most ducks to stay at because there were none around. Not even a single Scoter we had counted on ... unreliable little rascals.


We finally had to leave Belle Isle to avoid the rush hour in Detroit and on our way out saw that quite a few ducks were stationed along the last bit of coast we had not checked, so we had missed the main attraction of Belle Isle that day by an unlucky accumulation of bad luck, but at least we made it through Detroit quite allright and in time to pay Ford Lake a short visit. There, we found (or rather re-found as it had been reported as being reliable at the site) a nice Horned / Slavonian Grebe and a mixed flock of Aythyas, mostly of Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, Redheads and a few Canvasbacks as well as a Ruddy Duck but honestly, after Goshawk and Barred Owl that was all just the nice decoration, like the fruit and paper umbrella on your cocktail that you appreciate but that was not the main reason for really having enjoyed your drink.

So, what's next?
That's a question easily answered: Eastern Screech Owl and Great Horned Owl.
Laurent mentioned how much he'd enjoy seeing a Burrowing Owl. We are a bit far here in Michigan from its regular haunts, but who knows: up to now, owling's been easy enough to regain some optimism.

Finally, here is a link you've probably all seen before, but it is just too good to not include in this post. Nature does have a sense of humour!

Spring, Spirng, Spring, 3 days of Spring!

Yes, I actually managed to get some real first-hand out-in-the-field away-from-the-laptop birding done.
Who'd have guessed it?
Well, me.
Because: the last few days were marvellous and we finally are enjoying a taste of spring. Since last Friday, the skies have been blue (cloudy today again), the sun's been out and - gosh - I didn't even need to put on my extra warm underwear before leaving my apartment.
OK, here are the failures of this hopefully past winter birding:
- No Thayer's Gull
- No looking for Snowy Owl at Ann Arbor Airport
- No twitching of Harlequin Ducks
But that's all history now, and here and now are the promises of Spring !

Friday was the best in a series of three consecutive days at the Arb. Yes, three days!

It was the first warm day this year so at around 2 p.m. I decided to call it a work day and head off towards the Arb and Gallup Park to see what was floating on the Huron.
Walking past the Bell Tower I looked up and there was a Turkey Vulture circling over downtown Ann Arbor. Oh, I missed them so much, such a long time without watching TV! That was arrival No. 1!
The Arb was rather busy with Joggers - hmmmm, I had successfully managed to forget there were also non-birders using the Arb - but I nevertheless managed a very, very fine encounter with a Hermit Thrush. And as always, Catharus-thrushes proved to be the true friends of birders. Just by following it with my binoculars through the brushy forest floor, it lead me to 2 Northern Cardinals, a handful of Dark-eyed Juncos, one of which had a few white feathers around the eye, and a Carolina Wren. That was neat. I was surprised however that the woodpecker activity was very low with only a few calling Downy Woodpeckers.
Upon reaching the Huron, I walked along the bicycle trail downstream towards Gallup Park, soaking in the delight of watching Red-tailed Hawks, a Sharp-shinnedHawk and a Cooper's Hawk. Songbirds were also plenty along the river, more than at the Arb, and I quickly added another Carolina Wren, an Eastern Bluebird, a flock of American Robins, Cedar Waxwings, White-throated Sparrows, Tufted Titmouse, Black-capped Chickadee, lots and lots of Mourning Doves and White-breasted Nuthatches to my list.
Then came arrival No. 2 in the form of a singing Song Sparrow. Also very nice as I had hardly seen them before their departure last fall.
But the real star of the day, no matter how common, the real treat, the price beyond anything, the ultimate superlative was...

The Return of Red-winged "The Voice" Blackbird!

Seriously, NO bird has a song that's so much beyond cool, and I tell you: they are great to have around again.
OH, and a few bad ass Common Grackles were there as well.

The Huron was extremely productive regarding waterfowl and upon reaching Gallup Park, I had found Pied-billed Grebes, Mute and Trumpeter Swans, Canada Geese, Wood Ducks, Mallards, Gadwall, Canvasbacks, Redheads, Ring-necked Ducks, Goldeneyes, a single Lesser Scaup, Common and Hooded Mergansers and American Coot.
Very, very nice.

Returning home through the Arb, it got a bit late and I came across a very angry Hairy Woodpecker whose behaviour however afforded me a deep scientific insight into woodpecker anatomy:
It was apparently about to go to bed in one of the small tree cavities when I disturbed it and so it started its scolding peek, peek, peek. Of course I retreated somewhat and the woodpecker eventually approached and entered its tree cavity but even after it had submerged completely, I could still hear its warning call, somehow subdued by the tree trunk.
Now, you see, that is strange: if it is a warning call, the 'pecker obviously still regarded me as a danger to himself when it approached the cavity. So it shouldn't have entered in the first place with me still around. And even after it had entered it kept on calling, a really stupid use of a warning call because it would guide any potential predator to its hiding place.
So here's my new hypothesis on why so many woodpecker warning calls are this high, sharp staccato "peek, peek":
These calls are not warning calls after all. The woodpecker doesn't even utter them on purpose.
No, very likely, the special anatomical adaptations to hammering one's head against hard wood to make a living have rendered these woodpecker species prone to hick-ups.
So as soon as they get nervous, their hick-up kicks in and they can't stop for a long, long time, in this case even after a safe retreat into a tree cavity.

Well, am I glad I was trained as a scientist. The world would be so much less exciting without a good piece of science to finish one's birding day.

[Short comments on Saturday and Sunday to follow]

Owling in the Rain

After the Snowy Owl incident I had decided to also show some good will and improve my relationship towards owls, trying to shift from non-existent to peaceful coexistence. More precisely, I came up with that idea, a little citizen science project:
I had planned to check (and count) as many of the conifers around Ann Arbor as possible and register all the owls I see, then use Google Earth to count all the conifers in Washtenaw County and calculate the total number of owls. Pretty smart, as you'll surely agree.
So while out hunting for groceries to the North of town today, I went to Deer Hill again, because that is a fabulous place for conifers and thus was bound to hold a fabulous amount of owls, especially with Long-eared Owls supposedly on the move.
I have - I must confess - encountered a slight problem with my little citizen science project: a total lack of owls. Well, on the one hand I don't mind having and easy go at doing the maths but then again, what good is using aerial photography to count all the conifers when there's no owls to include in the calculation?
So off I went to the bus and off I got at Deer Hill. Strangely, going to Deer Hill to look for owls sounded like such a good plan at the apartment, but now that I was outside, the part that made this plan look so good seemed to be missing. Maybe it had something to do with the sleet and icy rain that came down heavily, maybe with the fact that each time I looked up into a tree, the wind shook a gallon of icicles and water drops out of a branch and right into my face or maybe it was the fact that an owl's white-wash is so hard to spot in the snow, but I somehow had the impression I was in perfect harmony with the sky above in being not very bright standing out there in the rain and staring at empty trees.
OK, I have to back off a little here: I did find a Blue Jay and two squirrels and had two Mallards flying over and an American Crow nearby.
I eventually decided to forget about the owls and go for some groceries. They are much more dependable in their occurrence and easy to find as well, and their ecological attachment to heated malls was another advantage. I only wish Eastern Screech-Owls would feed on shredded cheddar.