The Mysteries of Owling

My problem with owls is actually not as much my problem as it is theirs: for some reason, they seem to avoid me at all costs. Sure, this is sometimes a well of frustration for me but the effort owls must put into avoiding me must surely work hard on their nerves as well.

This is plainly revealed by taking a look at how quickly owls had to adapt to my presence here. Normally they are quite reliably found by scanning the forest floor for white-wash, which is birder slang for an accumulation of big white splashes of owl poop underneath their favourite perch. Any bird's droppings are easy to spot due to their white colouration caused by uric acid (their way to rid themselves of nitric waste as opposed to our rather clear urea). Here however, owls were forced to switch from uric acid to urea excretion within days of my arrival, as can be seen below:


A forest floor underneath a tree full of ... invisible-wash!
Well, a skeptic might say now that I cannot be sure there are any owl droppings at all on this picture, after all an invisible-wash looks just like no wash at all.
Yes, that's true and I asked myself the very same question but was finally convinced by the structure of the tree above the invisible-wash site.


It's just far too good to not be used by owls as a perch during their night time hunt, so there you have it: evolution revolution!

They are really making it hard for me.

I have spent many months now working through all the dense bushes and trees throughout the Arb and have as yet - today, 3:39 pm - located no Eastern Screech Owl at all. As a matter of fact, I haven't found any owl myself yet, but as I only deliberately searched for Eastern Screech Owls this lapse is most apparent.

It was mentioned to me by local birders that there should be a pair of Eastern Screech Owls hanging around the Arb. The place to go and have a good look around was supposed to be Rhododendron Glen in the heart of the Arb. Well, apparently there used to be a pair, which is not a pair anymore, but possibly there is at least one left.
The picture below shows the southern end of Rhododendron Glen.


It's not that big really and there are not too many nice old trees with cavities around or shrubbery attached to trees that might be suitable to hide a Screech Owl.

To any other birder or at any other location, this hollow tree below would surely be used by an Eastern Screech Owl as a daytime roost.


I don't see an owl there. I never see an owl anywhere. Unless shown by others.

And to anyone but me, a family of Eastern Screech Owls would surely dance a little ballet along that nice horizontal branch whereas all I get to see is a nice horizontal branch.



And I am sure after posting this, a reader will comment that there always used to be an Eastern Screech Owl roosting in the tree seen below, right until they started the construction of the board walk, and that this was bad luck but the board walk would surely be nice in May for watching warblers.
Yes, surely, I agree. Very nice.


Quite as nice as the comment this following picture is going to generate about how beautiful it was to watch the Eastern Screech Owls nesting in this particularly nice tree cavity for many years until they suddenly and inexplicably stopped doing so, even using it as a day time perch, some time in late October 2006.



Oh, wait, I can see now that you doubt my birding abilities. No, no, it is not as if I wasn't spotting stuff, I am. I just can't seem to get my bearings on the right taxonomic group of the targeted species.

Close, but no Cigar

A few weeks back I had a short but intriguing sound detection from this little stand of evergreens, seen below. They are right next to Rhododendron Glen, just across the central grassland, and were thus predestined to be incorporated into my core search area.



A search of the forest floors beneath these trees revealed an exciting piece of evidence, a smallish Owl Pellet. The picture is admittedly pretty bad but I must be said that the pellet was pretty old anyway and if it wasn't for the freezing and conserving effect of winter, I doubt it would have been recognizable as anything more than organic matter by the time I found it.


Could this pellet have been produced by an Eastern Screech Owl?
It was sadly too old to have it DNA-tested, so I can't be sure it wasn't of a vagrant Western Screech Owl, a wintering Boreal Owl or maybe a Burrowing Owl. But at least I was intrigued.
Well, it is possibly most likely it was formed in the crop of an Eastern Screech Owl but even if I'd have had a means to find out, it might have been just the very same individual that - according to the feathers I found - ended up forming a vital part of a Great Horned Owl pellet. So yet again: tantalizing hints and detections but nothing definite, no indisputable evidence.

mind you, I have read about these things before, somewhere.

But of course, I did not spend a total of 2 years tracking mammals in Southern Africa for nothing: I looked up and considered inspecting the branches above the pellet:



Hmmmm, there could have well been interesting scratch marks and small injuries on the branches that might have been caused by the claws of an Eastern Screech Owl. Of course, one would not be able to be completely certain but it could potentially be intriguingly similar to known Screech Owl scratches but what would they prove? Not much, for sure because how do we differentiate between Eastern and Western Screech Owl scratches or rule out an aberrant Boreal Owl with claw deformations leading to Screech-owl-like scratches?
Thank goodness therefore I didn't bother looking for any scratches because even I thought that was a dumb idea.


I have now come to the conclusion that I probably won't find Eastern blinking invisible Screech Owls at the Arb myself. But with so many other birdwatchers, dog-walkers and joggers around, it would be foolish to not make an effort at trying to incorporate them into the search. So what I did is I installed two Call Boxes at the Arb, which are small telephone units powered by solar energy that directly connect any potential finder of an Eastern Screech Owl to my cell phone.

I think this is rather smart and I don't see why this shouldn't work as well along the White River or the Choctawhatchee. Maybe because no-one would use them there either?
Good point...

Frankly I suppose they have just decided it was too crowded at the Arb. It was probably quite bad already with all those joggers and dog-walkers around, but when even Bell Tower Birders started to walk the park, the Owls just had enough and decided it was time to move out, to ride across the river, deep and wide, ride across the river to the other side.

The tree cavities always look better on the other side of the fence, don't you think?

Or maybe, just maybe, my failure at finding Eastern Screech Owls might be explained by other things...

Now that I mention it, and come to think of it, there might be something about them worth another post some time later, don't you think?

Something I had found hard to believe

"This has to be a joke."

"Surely, they are just kidding."

"They can't be serious."

Nope, all wrong!
This wasn't, they weren't and they were, I should have trusted the weather forecast:

Winter is back!

After more than a week of what felt like summer, it is stormy again, cold to say the least and while I am typing this the white lines of snow flakes zipping past my window are pointing straight to Florida again.

It sounded far too bad to be true, but then again, there were signs - literally - that were giving fair warning of what has descended upon us again.



The Museum of Zoology informed us quite plainly that due to global warming, we'd have to expect wild weather from January all the way to April this year.
Had I only taken it seriously, I could have prepared myself for this.

I just hope "April" doesn't mean until the end of the month!

I and the Bird # 46

Today is another one of those very important days where roughly half the world-wide Birder Community can't be bothered to leave their computer even if there was an observation of a flock of Emperor Penguins (ringed in Antarctica) hanging around the coast off Cape Cod - and - news of a wild Spectacled Eider frequenting a backyard feeder in Arizona - and - a breeding colony of Slender-billed Curlews was discovered driving out Avocets along the entire coast of the UK by their sheer numbers - and - a news report supported by a crispy sharp video of a dog-walker's furry darling being run over by a stampede of Moas in New Zealand circled the globe, all happening on the same day.

Because if we are all honest, we know that these things are utterly unimportant. What really counts nowadays in the Birding Empire is the bi-weekly blogging carnival of I and the Bird!
Miss it and you'll never be kept up to date with the very best writing, news and pictures birding and birders can provide to each other. A prime example of the educational effect of I and the Bird is today's edition:
Corey (or "Scott Catskill") over at Lovely Dark and Deep has taken up the opportunity of hosting I and the Bird #46 to introduce the bloggosphere to yet another exciting scientific fact he recently discovered:

While birders bird birds, birds birder birders.

If you are interested ... wait, make that: As you surely must feel interested now, you WILL check out the adventures of a true world-birderer over at Corey's blog, so here's the link to his edition No. 46 again.

Incidentally, you'll find a small hint at the end of the birderer's post about some Bell Tower Birder hosting the next edition, which will be # 47, with participating posts being requested sent in by April 17th (either to joroederATyahooDOTcom or to Mike over at 10,000 birds).

Oh dear.

We can only hope that Corey's excellent edition gives I and the Bird enough drive to make it over that little bump...

Cool Birding on a Hot Day

Tomorrow is supposed to be a nasty sleety-snotty day, so I thought to myself I might as well go to the Arb for a short lunch break while the sun is still out and we still have the chance of enjoying some spring weather.
And so I did.
All of the above: go to the Arb and enjoy the spring weather.

As I only went there for an hour or so the bird list is neither long nor prolific and actually quite lame and lousy in the light of a Mountain Bluebird that's hanging around near Port Huron right now, a roughly 2-hours drive from here.
But what the hay, here's what I saw:

Both Pine Warblers are still around and I managed to obtain some very fine looks at one of them. The one most easily seen is always singing high up in the pines, so you only see it from below from where it looks only yellow and white and the blue bit that is making it such a great bird is missing, but if you know it's there, it is still a great bird, even if you can't really see the blue.

The best areas bird-wise at the moment are the bushes adjacent to the central grassland and here I was pleased to find a Winter Wren (only my second), 2 Hermit Thrushes, my first pair of Brownheaded Cowbirds this spring and a small group of Northern Flickers.
I eventually crossed the grassland to reach the spot where Fox Sparrows had been so dependable within a group of Dark-eyed Juncos last week. Well, no luck with the Fox Sparrows but the Juncos were still around as was another Hermit Thrush. Turning my eyes off the ground, my heart skipped a few beats when I spotted a single bluebird, but upon closer inspection, it tuned out to be an Eastern Bluebird - so close and yet to far...
I must say however that the Eastern Bluebird is one of the few species where every observation feels like a lifer. It is an amazing combination of pigments, that one. And it is a friend: while watching it and following it with my binoculars, it lead me to my first Field Sparrow of this spring and showed me a female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that I otherwise would probably not have seen. Following the female, I eventually came upon a male Sapsucker as well and with a Hairy calling in the distance and Downies everywhere, this was yet again a 5-woodpeckers-day.
Upon leaving the park, a small bird party mostly of Golden-crowned Kinglets and Black-capped Chickadees hosted two Brown Creepers as well and just before reaching my apartment, the female Peregrine was yet again flying around and observing the Turkey Vultures distrustfully.

Well, it might not have been a day with a state-wide rarity, but the Arb yet again managed to deliver enough to make me a happy birder and to re-charge my batteries to deal with the weather that's ahead of us now.

I'm just glad I am not a hummingbird.

You'll Know What I did last Monday

You know why I am not seeing Yellow-rumped Warblers?

Because these guys are smart, really smart.

Sure, we had a week of fabulous summer weather, but look at that, the weather forecast for the next few days:

Take a look at Wednesday, a drop from 21°C to 4°C, that is going to get pretty rough and let's hope these apparently somewhat more naive guys are not facing troubled times.


Monday a week ago started very good: Bruce called to ask if I wanted to accompany him to look at a Red-throated Loon at Lake St. Clair.
Fabulous, I hadn't seen a Red-throated Loon since one flew past Whitefish Point in May 2005 and had never seen Lake St. Clair, so was I tempted?
Yes, of course I was.
If I was interested, he'd be leaving around 10 o'clock.

... Raindrops keep falling on my head ...

No, it wasn't raining, the weather was actually fabulous, no, it was so sad: I couldn't go!
It was an ordinary work day for me and due to the time shift between here and Germany it was not possible for me to leave my laptop until around 1:30 pm, too late to drive to the loon.
Of course Bruce found it and watched it nicely and of course I am very happy he did and here is the link to a picture he took, but what was I going to do with the wonderful day's birding potential?

Sure bet: go to the Arb and Gallup Park after the German work period, which translated to Michigan time meant after around 1:30 pm - as I have already mentioned.
A few short emails and Laurent and we were to meet at the Arb at 2 pm to see what was going on.


Question: how do you recognize a good birding day?

Answer: leave your downtown apartment, look up and spot 2 Peregrines, a Turkey Vulture and a Sandhill Crane circling over the high rise buildings.

Simple as that, the day was going to be brilliant.

I arrived at the Arb at bit too early and decided to take a small detour through a more remote corner of the Park where I thought there might be an owl or two hanging around a few pine trees.
Well, there weren't, there are never, but I came across my first Hermit Thrush of the day and a bunch of King Sparrows (which are commonly called Fox Sparrows, but I like King Sparrows much better because they rule) hanging around with Dark-eyed Juncos. Good start!
I failed in finding the Chipping Sparrow that was singing which was not good because I found it the next day and it turned out to be not a Chipping Sparrow after all but a Pine Warbler which I would have liked Laurent to see. Now, don't make fun of me, I am still learning the bird songs around here and they are somewhat similar.

After meeting Laurent and a fly-over of 5 Sandhill Cranes, we went straight to a section of the Arb where he had found a flock of Fox Sparrows the same morning and sure enough, there they were again and it seemed the forest floor was just a bubbling layer of Fox Sparrows kicking up leaves. OK, I might exaggerate a bit, but to see 7 of them together after having had quite a tough time finding them during Fall migration, this was a sight worthy of a King - see, King Sparrow would indeed be a much more suitable name!
We subsequently climbed a small hill with a few dead pines because Laurent wanted to see if he could show me a Thrush he saw that morning. We didn't find a Thrush. Frankly, we couldn't have cared for a Thrush at that moment - and that from me is a rare statement - because what happened next was the best woodpecker moment of my life.
OK, I had three Black Woodpecker once in a territorial fight around 5 to 10 metres around me for a good 10 Minutes (sorry Charlie) and that was also pretty good, but there, at the Arb and at ranges less than 5-10 metres, we had within minutes close and prolonged views of a Red-bellied Woodpecker, 2 Downy Woodpeckers, a Hairy Woodpecker and 2 male Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers at a "tree tab" and finally a Brown Creeper and a handful of White-breasted Nuthatches completed the show. Oh, I know what you think, that's not all that special, a handful of woodpeckers up close, what's the big deal here?
Well, just to get an impression of how close the woodpeckers were and how nice the situation was, check out Andreas' gallery, because he went there the next day and photographed those Sapsuckers, the link is right here (go to "Woodpeckers").
Later on down towards the Huron we even added - amongst new arrivals like Eastern Phoebe - a handful of Common Flickers (the first ones I saw this spring), making it a 5-Woodpecker-Day.
Upon reaching the Huron, we chanced upon a small group of American Tree Sparrows which in itself is not all too unusual but strangely both Laurent and I struggled to identify them with the confidence we usually have - after a winter full of Tree Sparrows - in identifying them. We were really hesitant and I actually had to rationally go through their field marks, like the bi-coloured bill, to clinch the identification. They looked so neat and pale and maybe - after I have consulted the field guides - might have belonged to a more western population migrating through, hence differing from the birds that stuck around the Arb all winter. But that's just a guess...
It had gotten a bit windy and the open waters of the Huron down at Gallup Park were not as full of waterfowl as we had hoped. The shores were dotted with Red-winged Blackbirds and the usual Canada Geese, but it took actually even some sort of effort to find a duck, like the few Buffleheads that were around. We were not too disturbed by this as we were headed for the lower part of the Huron anyway where there had been a few nice reports of Common Loon and a few Horned Grebes.
If you look closely at the water surface below, you can still see that the waves show the typical pattern of having been disturbed by a Common Loon until very recently, but we were too late, the Loon had gone and so this is nothing but an empty picture of the lower parts of the Huron in Gallup Park.
It isn't quite completely empty though as we still managed to find 2, possibly 3 Horned Grebes there. To our sincere delight however, the Common Loon had apparently only left to give a small flock of Double-crested Cormorants some room, yet another first-for-2007 species and quite appreciated.


Horned Grebes are always nice, but the best - in my opinion - was yet to come. In this part of Gallup Park, a railway line separates the water seen above from another pond, called south Pond. South Pond is difficult to access and look at with the railroad dam in the way, but if you climb one of the many benches, you can just about scan the water. And surprise, surprise, it was not frozen anymore and there were quite a few Gadwall that really tried but had no chance at hiding a male Northern Shoveler and 2 Ruddy Ducks amongst them, and a small flock of Common Mergansers is always a treat, and was there as well or I wouldn't have mentioned them.

Walking back towards the car, we passed a small isolated pond close to a playground and pick nick area and amongst the usual Canadas and the local gang of Manky Mallards (seen in the background) ...


...there was this:



Didn't spot them? Well neither did we - almost- as they were so unexpected, but once I zoom in on them some more, you'll see what we were delighted at finding so approachable:


A pair of Blue-winged Teal! Very neat, indeed, and not only my first ones this spring and Laurent's first ones ever but actually the first ones I saw since May 2005 as there weren't any last fall!
OK, by now I suppose the picture has been conveyed that there was a fine and selective assembly of waterfowl, but just before we reached the car, at the very last instance, a male Ruddy Duck in non-breeding plumage was asleep close to shore on our side of the pond and it was this last and close encounter (maybe 10 metres) that brought this fabulous spring day's birding excursion to a glorious end.

First Record of a Melanistic Yellow-billed Loon

Scanning through my bird picture archive from the Baltic coast, I today found a picture I had taken exactly one year ago but never really analyse and which upon closer inspection nearly knocked me off my chair, realizing what I had unknowingly captured on film:

The World's First Ever Record of a Melanistic Yellow-billed Loon!

The consequences of this finding for the way humanity sees the world or at least part of humanity see birds and birding are immense and in the course of a few years, even Darwin, Einstein and Poe will be forgotten by history over this new discovery.

Only my extensive experience allowed me to recognize the bird on the picture below for what it really is! You can plainly see the typical shape of a diver or loon of the genus Gavia, cigar-shaped, with a long neck and bill and with feet at the rear of the rump to allow for maximum propulsion underwater. The bill is ivory-coloured with a hint towards yellow, clearly identifying the bird as a Yellow-billed Loon / Diver. What is so peculiar however is the almost complete lack of white or pale colouration on the bird, which can only be explained by it being a melanistic individual. Some traces however remain, particularly around the base of the bill and the breast, and a faint patterning of the back allow us - despite its aberrant colouration - to age it as a juvenile bird.




And it proves for the first time, too that divers / loons are actually quite fond of sitting on rocks, another World Novelty courtesy of yours truly,
Bell Tower Birder.

Must Read - Must Link To

I - am - amazed!

Two old friends of mine, Axel Bräunlich und Konrad Schleicher, excellent birders and conservationists who moved from Germany to Mongolia recently have started a blog!

Here is the link to it!!

This is so great, bird blogs are starting to cover the entire planet, but I still haven't heard of a German bird blog . . . sigh.