The Absolute Hammer

In an age of re-inventions, I have decided to add another aspect to my bird blog, and as a matter of fact, it's all about building metaphoric bridges and tearing down language barriers, so it's a culture thing.
I thought it would be neat to use birds and birding to introduce my inclined readers to the fine art of speaking German. Of course I am not going to teach you German bird names (who needs them but us Germans, and the Swiss, and the people from Austria, and a handful of people in Namibia).
You are also unlikely to learn here how to politely ask for the rest room in a German restaurant (but now that you're wondering: we're rather direct. "Wo ist die Toilette bitte?" Where's the toilet please?).

Nope, not like that.

Instead, it's all going to be about some typical German proverbs and the things we say that don't make sense but are in wide use anyway.

How often have you been scratched and bitten when you walked outside while it was raining cats and dogs?

You see, that's the kind of thing I am going to tell you about.

Like the word "Hammer" which translates to - and this will be difficult to memorize - hammer.
We like a good hammer once in a while here in Germany.
Certainly this might pertain to the old Germanic god and avid craftsman Thor and as such would make for a cool story, but I am afraid it has nothing to do with it. Hammer is just a cool word, and that's all there is to it.

We use it in a variety of situations:

Hammerhart - "hammer hard" or "as hard as a hammer" is used when something is really hard to do (and not hard as in not-soft).
Hammer used by itself means "amazing".
And when we say something was "the absolute hammer", it was something that completely blew our mind and knocked us off our feet.

Like last Monday.


It is now official, and this is how the birding part begins: Geese don't like me this year.
They really don't.
I have no idea why this is the case, but they do all they can - and quite successfully as well - to avoid being seen by me. I mean, I do see them reasonably well from a distance. Like during the morning of last Monday when my job assignment was to record their daily flight path over the small city of Wolgast.


This was quite a nice morning thanks to the geese, although that particular morning was so cold that my kidneys still hurt somewhat today.
But then I set out to follow them to their feeding areas, to count them and scan their flocks for rarer species. Here along the Baltic and amongst the Anser geese, we have Greylag, Greater White-fronted, Tundra and Taiga Bean Geese on a regular basis. If you get a chance to scan through a few 1,000 you are likely to find a Pink-footed Goose as well, and if you are extremely lucky or show extreme endurance, you might find a Lesser White-fronted Goose, with the latter not having come my way yet. Not really at least. But to find these two rarer species, you've got to get decent looks at the flock, so it shouldn't be too distant and a free view is desirable.

And this latter aspect, the distance and the unobscured view, are just not working this year.

This below was the only "flock" I found that was close enough and out in the open enough to potentially allow me to find one of the rarer species. But at a flock size of less than 100 birds, it was no use anyway. Still, it contained all of the 4 regular forms, so I was not completely frustrated.


Finally I found a somewhat larger flock of possibly 2,000 to 3,000 birds. This flock can be seen here if you take my word for it.


For some reason that might make sense when you're a farmer but is a nightmare when you're a birder, the farmers this year cut the corn stems quite high above the ground during their harvest. The geese still like it, obviously.
But you don't even want to know what I think about this!
Thanks, guys!


I then remembered the lessons I learned in North America: go for songbirds!!
And so I did.

And I liked it very, very much more.

Let me demonstrate to you why:

On the way up to the Northern tip of the island of Usedom, still in a desperate attempt at finding a few identifyable or even countable goose flocks, I came across a small group of songbirds feeding right besides the road.
I stopped the car around 50 metres away and looked at them through the windshield.

Nice! A small flock of 8 Twite, or is it Twites? Anyway, of 8 Scandinavian birds that are not rare here in winter but still uncommon enough to appreciate every single sighting. Of course I wanted to take some pictures for the blog, but they were too far away and seemed to flighty to be approached any closer. Then came another car that passed me, flushed the group and guess what happened?
Had it been geese, I am sure they would have flown all the way to the Netherlands.
But these were - YES!! - songbirds, so they were flushed, flew around a bit and landed ... right besides my car!
So here they are, my pictures of the brilliant Twite: brown and plain, yet neat!


The neatest thing about those brown jobs is their rosy butt in breeding plumage. When they are here in winter, they mostly don't show this unexpected addition of colour to a somewhat drab
appearance. I have actually only seen it maybe three or four times in all those years, so the bird on the right of this picture below was hailed with exaltation.


I then decided to spend my lunch break at the beach and in the pine forests of Peenemünde, where I had been a few days before with Hendrik and Corey.
This is the beach at Peenemünde, a good spot for watching shorebirds/waders, gulls and terns.


Despite the extensive mud flats, there was nothing to be seen but Herring Gulls and Black-headed Gulls. The most exciting sight therefore was of two nutcases with suicidal tendencies who were looking for amber along the beach.


Amber in itself is a nice thing to find. But then, the word Peenemünde might ring a bell or two, and indeed, it is the very same Peenemünde where the Nazis built their V1 and V2 rockets, a place that was subsequently very heavily bombed during the war.
Quite a few of those bombs were accidentally dropped into the Baltic just off the coast of Peenemünde and some of these bombs contained phosphorus. So every once in a great while, one of those old bombs breaks open, the phosphorus escapes its rotten tomb and gets washed ashore, just to be picked up by some naive amber searchers who all of a sudden find their jackets or pants on fire after the phosphorus is ignited by their body heat!
Honestly, Peenemünde must be the last place on earth anyone should go looking for amber.

Expecting to see more birds away from shore, I ventured into the pine forest.


And as this was not goose habitat but the realms of songbirds, my expectations were exceeded.
Certainly I didn't find any Siberian vagrants, but a mixed flock of Great, Blue, Marsh, Coal and Crested Tits, Treecreeper, Nuthatch, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Goldcrests were a pleasant sight. Of course the light was lousy and this shot of a Crested Tit was the best I achieved, but it was still better than trying to spot a goose among a sea of corn stems.


Every lunch break comes to an end eventually and I ventured out again to search for more geese.
Ha, ha, very funny, I know, but I had to try, it was my job assignment after all.

And then something remarkable happened, although I don't really have a picture to come along with the story, and this will bring us back to the hammer aspect of the introduction to this post.
I drove by a small sandy field on a hill, a field that often held roosting songbirds in the past few years and was frequently checked by me for some special species. Of course, I never saw anything special there during the 20 or so visits, so I wasn't really expecting anything while I scanned through the skylarks, linnets, meadow pipits and corn buntings that hopped around on the ground. Here you can see the field with a skylark in the centre of the picture.



And then all of a sudden, this one particular bird hopped into view. It took me a second to identify but about two hours to comprehend: I was looking at a Little Bunting!

Now, this was the absolute hammer!!

The Little Bunting is a Northern species that breeds right across Siberia and reaches West into Northern Finland, with a few pairs in the far North of Norway and possibly Sweden. It is quite uncommon though in Scandinavia and as it migrates to South-East Asia, it must be considered a vagrant to the rest of Europe. However, it is one of the more regular vagrants to Germany, with roughly 5 sightings or so each year, but of course these sightings occur mainly on the off-shore islands along the North Sea coast, mostly Heligoland which must surely rate as one of Europe's best birding places.
But seeing a Little Bunting on some field in the "Hinterland" was completely amazing and unexpected, like seeing an Asian Phylloscopus warbler not on some island off Alaska but a hedge row in a backyard of Washington or Oregon.

The Songbirds delivered!!

As it was getting late and the light started to fade, I decided to call it a day (and what a way it was to end a day's birding) and drive back home to Stralsund, but of course not before I had checked the parking lot of a nearby shopping mall for the Bohemian Waxwings that had been recorded there for the past few days.
Sure enough (the songbirds delivered), they were there. And even though the light was lousy and the ISOs high, I enjoyed watching them and even took a few pictures.

I really like songbirds, I honestly do. I also like watching geese, but if they don't comply, I'll always be happy with finding a Siberian vagrant and watching Twite and Waxwing instead.

Good things come to those who bird.

Magic Mallard Moment

Well, today is sort of a "Wordless Wednesday" on this blog.

Why?

Because I have to work all day, and today's work assignment is an especially tough one:

a) drive to the nearby city of Wolgast
b) find as many geese as you can
c) map their movements
d) bird all you can when there's no geese around

And as I have to leave early, like ... 10 minutes ago ... there'll be no more words but a handful of pictures I took two days ago of a drake Mallard on the Strelasund coast.

It's funny how it looks all beautiful and nice and smooth but changes into Daffy Duck the moment it shakes its head.

Bird of the Month: Common Crane

The general as well as the birding public usually has a firm pattern of associations when suddenly confronted with a particular month. I give you a few examples. If I shouted "May", your thoughts would immediately shift to "Warblers!".
"August" - "Shorebirds/Waders!"
"October" - "Hawkwatch!"
"December" - "Gulling the local dump. Wait, I forgot: and Christmas!"

These associations are both individually and geographically variable but some are so dominant and obvious that they can be considered common knowledge. Like the month of October - and let me check my watch... yepp, it's about that time of the year right now - up here in the far North-East of Germany.

October to us is the month of the Common Crane, Grus grus.

As with so many bird species, this area of Germany must rate as one of the best to experience the migration of the Common Crane, which I will simply call "Crane" from now on in this post as it makes for more pleasant reading.
Basically all of the Scandinavian Crane population (and believe me: that's a lot) cross the Baltic Sea from Southern Sweden into this part of Germany to stay here for a few weeks, get fat in a decent way and then move on to the wintering areas of Spain or Morocco.
The largest concentrations can be found within the "Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park". Of course that is an awkward name and the German version sounds much nicer, but at least I was able to find a link to wikipedia in English here. I have tried to find other links to the area and its Cranes in English but failed miserably except for this one here, which is pretty useless.
Anyway, no links - more words.
Crane migration usually starts in the last days of September, peaks in late October and then numbers drop until almost all Cranes have left the area in early December. As with other bird species and staging areas, it is a constant coming and going here as some Cranes move on to Spain while others drop in from Sweden. The maximum number roosting here at a given time is around 45,000 in late October. This year is different however in that we have experienced a lot of coming but not much going yet, which translates to an all-time maximum count of 70,000 Cranes right now.
Some may think that's not all too impressive but while this may be true for species like locusts or even European Starlings, 70,000 birds the size of a Bald Eagle are a sight not easily forgotten.

The downside of all this however is that the Cranes are very strongly concentrated in a relatively small area, mostly north of Highway 105 between Stralsund and Ribnitz-Damgarten (in case you want to challenge GoogleEarth) and the West of the island of Rügen.
Other parts of Germany's North-East also get their share of Cranes, but flocks there will only number in the 100's or low 1,000's.
This year, despite the record numbers, I was not able to visit the main Crane areas, yet. This is why I have only a handfull of rather lousy, heavily cropped images.

Here we go, a group of Cranes the way I usually see them - a few hundred each day from my office window: flying high above the city of Stralsund.


The adults can be recognized by their nicely patterned neck and head: black and white stripes with a red dot on the head.
Neat.
This year's young birds look more like Sandhill Cranes (sweet memories) in that their head is more uniformely rufous or brown. This is quite variable though and this particular young bird here is rather pale.
Still, neat.


When seen from behind, a Crane's head looks quite appealing, too:



Thinking about it: how much do you think such an image was worth if it was taken in Florida? Surely enough to take me up North and visit Clare, I presume!



The most exciting aspect of these high concentration of Cranes is to scan them for Nearctic or East Asian vagrants and on one lucky morning this year, I was fortunate enough to find a flock of 15 species right in downtown Stralsund. Here's the photographic proof:


Well, I might have just been kidding you. No, as a matter of fact, this migration corridor is so far off the corridors of the Common Crane's North American or Siberian cousins that there has - as far as I know - never been a single record of another species. All the same: Grus grus grus grus grus.
It's okay though. Nothing is perfect, not even Crane migration along the German Baltic sea coast.

Of course it's not all sweet Roses here for the Cranes and although they (and their food supply) are being managed, they also face a few dangers while staging here.
The most recent addition is the new bridge that connects Rügen to the mainland, right here in Stralsund.
This is an image of the bridge a few weeks ago:


It surely wasn't very friendly of the engineers to put these steel wires up right into a flight corridor of Cranes and in the mind of the general public (okay, make that: the minds of a few birders), the bridge is perceived as and thus called a "Crane Shredder".
Hmmm, of course we all think and hope it won't be too bad but if you have to take care of such a treasure, you don't like to see things like this...

After a few years of construction, the bridge was finally opened to the public last weekend with a huge opening ceremony and celebration. The whole bridge was illuminated and they had something like 30 searchlights that performed all sorts of patterns and movements not unlike a giant laser show. Here's what it looked like, and it was quite a sight for sure:



Despite the bridge, Germany is still a country where we take environmental impact assesments seriously and of course, the danger such searchlights might pose during the opening ceremony to migrating birds was accounted for.
To keep those flocks of thrushes and other songbirds from following the lights and colliding with the bridge, they had some huge fireworks to scare them off, and that must have helped for sure.
Here, again, is a little visual impression of the scene:


I hope you have enjoyed my little excursion into the migration of the truly Common Crane through my home patch.
It's early morning now, the sky is pink, I am at the office and the first flocks should soon arrive over the city, heading south towards their feeding grounds.
Therefore, no more blogging for now: I am off to do some office birding!

The New Bell Tower

This is it then, my first post from Germany. It's been quite a while, more than a month to be precise, and just about a month longer than I had thought it would take.
I have missed blogging quite a lot, and reading other birder's blogs, too.

During the last month, I would have rather been bird blogging or even birding, but then there were planes to catch, and apartments to find, and jobs to do and all sorts of other nasty things to cope with that left no room for putting down thoughts in words.
I am done with most of that now, except for the jobs to do which will still go on for about ... well ... 40 years or so, 30 if I am lucky. Still, I now feel I have just about enough spare time at hand to write a post.

So now, let me introduce you to the New Bell Tower, the current territory of yours truly.

For the moment and possibly the forseeable future, I reside in the beautiful city of Stralsund, on the German Baltic sea coast right next to the equally beautiful island of Rügen.
The old city of Stralsund -which together with Wismar is actually a UNESCO world heritage site - is positioned on a small island. The eastern side of the island is bordered by the so-called Strelasund, a narrow strait that separates the island of Rügen from the mainland. All the other "coasts" of the small island are actually artificial as they comprise of several ponds that were dug out hundreds of years ago to protect the city from unwelcome visitors, like foreign armies or the plague. People today hardly ever appreciate the peaceful times we're living in.
This map gives a rough yet artistic overview of the old city of Stralsund.


In case you were wondering: No, this is not how we still write today in Germany, that's just art to make the map look even more ancient and historic.
And this is a bird's eye view of it, admittedly a view a bird might get on a very cloudy day...


This sculpture was actually designed to allow blind visitors to experience the city's architecture, which I think is a very neat and rather fabulous idea. Beat that, NYC!

My new home after the Ann Arbor flat and the in-law's closet (where I was tolerated and allowed to stay for the first 3 weeks after my return to Germany) lies right at the city harbour on the coast of the Strelasund and can be seen here.


To give you a general impression of my new home patch, here's my route to work each day!

I get up far too early - you don't even want to know, but people are serious about work here - and look out of my bedroom window.
First thought: I'd rather be birding...


Then I drag myself into the livingroom/kitchen area and check the view towards the harbour and the Strelasund there.


Second thought: Darn, still too early in the season for an Ivory Gull at the harbour.

I finally leave the house (we don't have coffee there, only at the office, so that helps a lot) and walk through the inner city until I reach the ponds.
You can cross the belt of ponds at a handful of locations, but the most beautiful spot to cross them is the "White Bridges", and as my office is right next to the White Bridges, I choose that route each morning.


Not the worst of choices, I must say...


... especially when looking back towards the impressive St. Marie's church.


After another five minutes, I let myself fall into my office chair just to glance back at the inner city, the ponds and my beloved bed in the far too far distance:



Now, to the birding, at least a few words (and you knew I'd get there eventually):
Despite the fact that this is all happening within the core area of a 60,000 people settlement, the birding around the city isn't that bad.
Take the view from my office as seen above: the window list now stands at more than 120 species, mostly fly-by's but still nice.
And the White Bridges are always good for nice views of the more common species.
Like the Black-headed Gull, surely the most easily photographed wild bird in Germany.


I like them, I really do, and it might not be a pure coincidence that I chose a picture of a Black-headed Gull both for my first ever real post on Bell Tower Birding and my first ever post on the New Bell Tower Birding.

Full cirlce, I am back again!

From A to B

The time has come.

Both dreaded and longed for, the move back across the Atlantic is imminent. The plane for Germany leaves tomorrow, on Saturday, and I'll be a North American Blogger no more:

I'll move from Ann Arbor back to the Baltic coast of Germany.

Looking back, it's been a great year. Lots of birds. Well, not too many with around 240 species recorded, but then I wasn't chasing them anyway and as so often in life, it is the Quality that matters.

What were the highlights?

Gosh, that's difficult.
Surely the (roughly) 20 lifers I found, but as it is not all about a long list, and going through my blog entries, I'd say the following birding adventures will stick with me for a long time:

Writing my first ever real post on Bell Tower Birding.
Winter birding at the Arb.
Getting prepared for and participating in my first ever CBC.
Gulling through Washtenaw County with Bruce a few times.
My research on Edgar Allen Poe's connection to birding during those long winter nights.
Meeting Laurent and watching a Snowy Owl in a way I am not likely to ever see one again.
A winter trip with my wife to Point Pelee.
Seeing a Barred Owl.
The first warbler of spring with - later - a very unexpected surprise.
Trying so hard and finally succeeding in seeing an Eastern Screech Owl.
Hosting I and the Bird #47.
Finally getting a decent camera again and entering the visual part of the digital age.
The great trips to Crane Creek in May with Bruce and others and the strange birds we saw.
Birding the grasslands of Washtenaw County with Laurent.
My trip to St. Louis about which I wrote here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Getting a taste of fall migration.

And last but not least chasing after great shorebirds at Michigan's Point Mouillee in July and August, something I never found the time to blog about, and man, these were great trips...

Wow, it really has been quite a ride, I say!!

What will I miss once I am back in Germany? Hmmm, let me think, probably these guy here...



I will also greatly miss the amazing birdwatchers I met here and was lucky to spend a few days birding with, especially Bruce and Laurent.
Thanks a million for everything, it has been a great pleasure. Happy trails and I'll be seeing you again!

But what about my blog?

Well, darn, I am sorry to disappoint, but even back in Germany, I'll just keep on blogging!
Things will very much remain the same here at Bell Tower Birding, it's just going to be another bell tower and different birds I'll be writing about.
Of course the frequency of blog post might slow down for the next few weeks until we have settled down again in Stralsund/Germany, found a new apartment, arranged Internet access etc.
But I'll be around.
And don't worry, as soon as I am back, I'll make my reappearance known to you by flooding your own blog with comments.

Therefore, no need for a good bye here, just a see you later!

And I sure can't wait.

Downy Woodpecker versus Canon Digital Rebel XTi

I unexpectedly found myself downtown last Saturday with about 1.5 hours of spare time on my hands. Strangely, as soon as I noticed this amount of spare time it was gone as I was immediately headed for the Arb.
Hey, it is September after all, in case someone out there had expected a different use of my 1.5 hours in downtown Ann Arbor.

I had barely entered the Arb when I heard a flock of Chickadees, a dead ringer for migrant warblers and sure enough, just seconds later I found myself surrounded by the most breath-taking assembly of warblers I have ever seen.
During the 1.5 hours spent there on the same spot, I was constantly surrounded by at least 10 individuals and usually got a choice of 3-5 species at any given moment. All in all, I found 13 species of warbler within the flock that I estimated at holding more than 120 individuals.

During this warbling frenzy, to get to the point of this post, I heard a distinctive tapping, neither of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, nor of a Raven at my door, but of a nearby Downy Woodpecker.

Now here's something I find interesting, as it causes me to be angry at myself time and time again after each birding holiday: I usually have a pile of pictures of rare or unusual species, but always completely forget to photograph the common ones, the Downy Woodpecker being one of them.
This may explain why, in the presence of warblers, I grabbed my camera and went looking for the Downy.
I didn't have to look for a long time as by lucky coincidence, a nice male Downy was just 10 metres away at eye level and very busy taking apart a small log to get to what must surely have been a very worthy maggot.

This was it, the chance, the golden opportunity, but alas, the light was dim and the shutter speed grim: 1/60th at a speed of 800 ISO and no tripod.

Any movement by myself or the woodpecker, I knew, would inevitably lead to nothing but a crappy black-and-white blur with a red dot somewhere mixed in.
Which was not what I wanted.
The woodpecker himself - who certainly valued a good meal more than having a good picture taken of himself - did his very best to not cooperate by literally constantly pecking away at the log. In between his vigorous bursts of pecks however, he remained still for quite a bit less than a second to check the surroundings and I had high hopes of catching him on film (as the old folks still call it in the digital age) in that very fraction of a second, crisp and sharp.

Here are the results:

First try:

Second try:

Third try:

And-so-on-try:

Well, you may say these pictures express the dynamics of the woodpecker's movement nicely or that the shades of grey mixed with the sharper areas of black and white are an artistic approach to photographing a woodpecker but honestly, these pictures are just rubbish.

As the warblers were still flowing - now unidentified - through my peripheral field of view and I really didn't have all day for that blinking woodpecker, I decided to give it a massive frontal digital attack: I put my trusty old Canon Digital Rebel XTi into Continuous Shooting at a rate of 7 images per second (I think), aimed, focused and fired!

The poor woodpecker.
It never had a chance now, did it, against the full force of 21st century photography?
But still, it was ugly: 4 seconds of continuous photography, frame after frame, hammering down mercilessly onto the innocent creature.

Of course the outcome was obvious, and scanning through the well over 50 pictures I took of it in total, I found this one:

The Downy was down.

Admittedly, it is still not the sharpest of pictures, but considering it was taken at 1/60th and of a fast moving bird, it is quite a shot I'd say.

I am happy with it, and hope you like it, too.


Returning to the warbler flock, I was exhilarated to see a nice (probably first fall) female Cerulean Warbler.
This was only my fourth visual encounter and it even scares me now, after almost half a week, as this is what it says in the "Peterson Series" guide on Warblers: "This species is very rare in fall in the northern Midwest..."
This was indeed such an unusual observation that someone from the "list" (email-forum) contacted me and asked for details. Well, he asked if it was a male or female, but I guess this was just a polite way of asking if I was sure about what I had seen and minded writing up a short description.
And for the sake of completeness and in case you are also wondering what the hay this German dude thinks he saw, here is the description, copied from my email:

1)typical Cerulean Warbler proportions (small,
short-tailed, a somewhat "chubby" impression, I have
only seen 4 Ceruleans so far in my life but find their
proportions very peculiar and characteristic)
2) blueish-green above without obvious stripes
3) two very conspicuous white wing bars
4) pale yellowish below with a certain "cold" greenish
or grayish touch (though still more yellow than
green!), a few very faint stripes along the flanks
5) white undertail coverts
6) a bold yellow supercilium above a darker eye-line
with greenish auriculars that are connected to the
greenish back (so the supercilium didn't wrap around
the cheeks)

And here, finally, are the estimates of the warblers I saw in that flock, all are minimum numbers and were just written down to establish an idea of relative abundance:

Tennessee (50)
Nashville (15)
Northern Parula (1)
Chestnut-sided (20)
Magnolia (4)
Black-throated Blue (2)
Black-throated Green (2)
Bay-breasted (7)
Blackpoll (1)
Cerulean (1) !!
Black-and-White (20)
American Redstart (5)
Wilson's (1)

A few readers may note - with pity or relief - that I did not see a Cape May Warbler that day, a bitter miss.
I actually have yet to see a fall Cape May Warbler at all, just like I haven't seen a fall Orange-crowned, or Palm, or Kirtland's, and not even a single fall Colima Warbler!
Can you believe it?

Well, I guess I just have to return to North America then, one day soon.