Winter camera-trapping

This is the camera I’m currently 

using: A Bushnell Trophy Cam HD.

If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I LOVE using camera traps, or game/trail cameras. I love sticking them out in the woods and seeing who comes when I’m not looking. This set of pictures doesn’t contain anything too exciting, all common critters, but I got some multi-species pictures. I love it when that happens, I feel like I’ve totally breached the code of wildlife and am a secret agent spy. “HA! I KNEW you all hung out like in Disney movies!” Well, in this case, several members from different species hung out together, because I sprinkled a handful of black oil sunflower seeds on my favorite camera-trapping log.

Enjoy!

(BTW, I had around 1,500 pictures from 3 days. Once the seed was discovered, critters descended and burned up all my battery by December 20th! The camera was set until January 5th, but due to lots of action and/or frigid temps, the camera died.)

The normally EXTREMELY territorial red squirrel is shown here sharing the log with another red. They are known for caching food in an accessible hiding spot, and then defending it. If you’ve walked in a conifer stand, and heard someone “yelling” at you from the trees, it was probably a red. I’m assuming because it’s winter, these 2 were able to put aside their differences and munch amicably on the seed within feet of each other.

400 pictures “later” than the duo of squirrels, I caught many pics of these 4 American Crows together. Crows are often seen in groups, but what interests me now, is that they appear to be eating the seed! Crows are opportunists, so they WILL eat anything, but are not typically seen at a bird feeder eating bird seed. Well, I suppose in the winter I’d eat bird seed too, if I had to.

A handsome Blue Jay makes a brief appearance!

Here are two species eating in harmony! The red squirrel and a Mourning Dove.

Another multi-species picture. I see the American Goldfinches and Dark-eyed Juncos.

Here’s Red, looking guilty? Did he just chase off the birds?

 

 

And the last picture I found to be of interest, has 3 different species in it! Can you find them all? From the bottom of the picture up: Dark-eyed Junco, red squirrel, and a Black-capped Chickadee.

Backyard bird buffet

Addie and I on Christmas Day visiting
Chimney Bluffs State Park, Lake Ontario

Today was so snowy!

I usually hate the winter months, but this year I kind of like it. Probably because I’m on break for a month from school and I have literally nothing to do. I have a big, safe SUV to get around in, and the snow is kind of fun to play in with my pup! I’m at my parents house in Wayne County for a few weeks over the holidays, and we got ~18 inches last night of snow. Luckily my Dad plowed out the driveway this morning, and since I was home all day while they were at work I worked on shoveling out the decks and the doorways.

I also noticed the bird feeders were all covered over with snow, so I trudged through all the snow to clear off the feeders. I swear, within moments there were a large flock of songbirds of all shapes and sizes feasting on black oil sunflower seeds.

Happy birds!

I sat in the picture window for 30 minutes and was able to watch 7 species of birds come and go: Northern Cardinals, Blue Jays, Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrows, Black-capped Chickadees, Titmice, and Mourning Doves. With the backdrop of the fresh snow, picture taking was prime!

Female Cardinal munching on a black oil sunflower seed.

A male Cardinal, White-throated Sparrow, and a Dark-eyed Junco sharing the birdseed buffet.

Female Cardinal

1 Cardinal, 3 Mourning Doves, and 2 Blue Jays

 

A pair of Cardinals

 

A Blue Jay on the suet

 

Mourning Dove butts.

White-throated sparrow

Blue Jay

 

Dark-eyed Junco

I wasn’t able to capture any pictures of the Chickadees or the Titmice this time, they were too quick for me and didn’t want to seem to compete with the bigger birds on the feeder. They kept to the bushes mostly.

Backyard birding is really fun and something you can do as long as the birds are there. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been called to the window to see this or that and learn to identify it. That’s what happens when your Dad is a bird nerd.

The Sibley Guide to Birds
by David Allen Sibley

If you are looking for a GOOD birding book- perhaps not a book for beginners, but if you are serious about birding and plan on travelling, check out The Sibley’s Guide to Birds.

This book is $24 and change right now on Amazon.com and worth every penny. I have brought this book with me all over New York to the Outer banks of North Carolina and all the way up to Denali National Park in Alaska. The birds I was looking at were all in this book. I would consider this book more of a “reference” than a field guide. It’s larger than other field guides I have, and is a little heavy. Sibley also has an East coast and West coast field guide. Basically the big book is split in half. I don’t have either of the smaller ones since I have the one big one, but maybe they’re a bit more on the beginner or novice level of birding.

Whatever your favorite book is, it just has to be able to show you what the birds look like and where they are found.

I’ll be off the ‘net for a few days, I’m heading down into the heart of the Finger Lakes region to spend some time eating, drinking, playing the snow, and ringing in 2013 with some of my family!

Happy New Year!

My first solo birding adventures!

This past semester I became more interested in birding. Birds are so much more accessible than mammals, and to be honest- I knew very little about birds. I could identify common feeder birds, and birds of prey...but that was where my knowledge ended.

I did a bunch of birding in the Finger Lakes region of NY this spring with faculty and staff at school to study for a test that included NY birds, as well as just to get a taste for it.

Then I got hired to work in Alaska for the summer and many of the bird species that I'm comfortable with, aren't here! SO I've been spending time outside with my binocs, a notebook, a camera, and my field guides. The guides that I'm using these days are Sibley's Guide to Birds (the big one including all North American birds), and the Audubon Birds app for Android. Some people aren't big on apps as field guides, but Amazon.com gives away an app a day, and this one was one back in April. It's awesome...has tons a of calls, images, natural history, and the ways you can look up birds in ingenious. I can select a "type", so chicken-like for example, type in Alaska, and pick the month I'm in, and it will bring all the birds that fit those descriptions. So cool.

Anway, the following are some pictures I've gotten in and around Soldotna, AK which is where I live.

Gray Jay (Perisoreus canadensis)

I called 3 of these birds into me at once! Super curious, not exactly "tame", but definetely not shy. They've been known to thieve a campsite or picnic lunch. I love them!

Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)

I also called several of these little sparrows in as well (did you know D-EJ is a sparrow?!), which the Audobon bird app. I heard a bunch of birds calling, so I played the D-EJ call to see if it was them singing, and it was. This Junco above was particularly enamored with me/the app. It actually landed on my knee before uttering a sparrow version of "OH S***" and taking flight again. The picture above required little zoom action, this bird was very close to me!

Allright, here we go with the gulls. I'm going to make it my summer mission to learn to ID local gulls.

For this guy here, I'm going with Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens). I know these birds are common here, but I'm just a little stumped by the wing tip color. In Sibley's it says "wingtips patterned in gray, about the same color as the mantle (shoulders/back)". I think that this Gull's wingtips are much darker than the mantle, but nothing else really seems to fit with bill coloration, eye ring color, leg color...etc etc. I'm soliciting input here! 

Lesser yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes)

I'm going with the Lesser and sticking to it! After careful consideration of all the other photos I didn't post, I'm saying Lesser because: the barring on the flanks doesn't seem to be AS pronounced as described for the Greater, the bill does not appear to curve upwards like the Greater, and it just was a delicate looking bird. Not to say Greater isn't, I just feel it was. And since I was with a bunch of 'Fish-heads" who don't care about it unless it's scaly and has fins, then I was the local expert and so I say Lesser!

Stumped. Here are my choices: Bonparte's Gull (Larus phildelphia), Black-headed Gull (Larus ridibundus), or Franklin's Gull (Larus pipixcan). I guess I can be happy that I got it down to all the same genera...but I'm just perplexed! The leg color and hood shape and eye ring and bill color are all mixy-matchy with these 3 species, nothing seems to match up. I am LEANING towards Bonaparte's.

Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea)

Bald Eagle - adult (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

Bald Eagle - juvenile (2-3 year perhaps?)  (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

Bald Eagle - adult (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

And that's pretty much my birds so far. It's a personal goal of mine this summer to get "good" at birding...and I don't think I mean being able to ID things right off the bat, but to be able to recognize key features that can differentiate species, and perhaps even sex of the bird. We'll see. There is a birding group that works out of the refuge I'm living at, so I'm going to try and hook up with them and take it from there! For now though, I'll just keep fighting with myself and Sibley's over what bird I just saw :)

Wildlife Wednesday - Passerine bird banding

Today was our 2nd Wildlife Wednesday of the semester, and today's theme was mist netting and bird banding any of the Passerine's that came our way.

What does Passerine refer to? Perching birds, and commonly referred to as our song birds.

Several students, myself, and Professor John, and Conservation Dept Tech Sasha all met up at our East Hill Campus in Naples this morning. Last week John and Sasha went to the EHC to scope out a place to mount the mist net, so today all we had to do was set up the rebar and netting and walk away.

In my opinion, we were wildly successful, meaning many birds were caught, and there were a variety of birds!

Sasha, John and Adam setting the rebar.

We set the net between the woods/shrubby area, and the bird feeder :) , and walked away for 10 minutes to set up the banding station inside the house (doesn't everyone get to experience field work and animal processing in the comforts of indoor plumbing and heat???).

Sasha pulling the mist net across.

After 10 minutes had passed, we went out to check the net: 3 Black-capped Chickadees! Never have I personally been so excited to see such a common animal. I find myself realizing this time and time again recently- some of the most common animals are still REALLY cool! I see them often, yet at a distance, I just take them for granted. Up close though, those BCCs have beautiful plumage and such bright little eyes!

Here's the net completely set up.

The net is so fine and light, that the birds don't even see it, and easily get VERY tangled in it.

See below.

Black-capped Chickadee thoroughly tangled in the mist net, but comfortably being untangled while in the banding grip!

Before I continue on with the cool bird pictures, I want to show the "tools" of the trade.

John's banding tackle box with all of the essentials such as: different sized bands, special pliers meant for banding, cloth bags to store the birds during processing, and hand sanitizer.

Two different sized bands. On the left, probably appropriate for woodpeckers, and on the right, appropriate for BCCs.

Here are the pliers and the size bands we used for most of the birds.

This card is used to determine band size, if you are unsure. Just slip the bird's leg into a slot until you find one that's not too big, not too small...but just right!

John has one freed BCC and Sasha works on another, while students watch...

Inside now, John has the BCC in a 'photographer's grip', commonly used for getting good pics of the birds! About to clamp the first band on!

Because birds are migratory, and can be relatively long-lived...bands are managed on the state and federal level. Age, sex, location of banding, species, and band # all have to be recorded on a data sheet and submitted. I don't BELIEVE there are 2 numbers the same (someone correct me if I'm wrong?), kind of like a license plate. So, the theory is...if one of the birds we banded today, migrated to Tenessee, and caught there...it could be traced back to NY with all it's information in tow. With mammal tags, they are not as closely regulated because, and especially small mammals, they have VERY short life spans. Like, less than a year. And, they don't mass migrate over long distances like many birds do. In the picture to the left, it may look like John is nipping that little BCC's leg off, but no fear- he's not! The pliers have a hole in the nose that fits the specific band sizes and NO SMALLER. So, you can only clamp it as small as the band, which is just larger than the diameter of that birds leg. I'm sure accidents do happen where the ends of the band don't line up as they should, or it over-pinches/crimps, but that happens less than when all goes the way it should.

I was given a bird to release! I think I stated this in an earlier blog...but it's QUITE the rush to release a wild animal from your hands! I try not to think of it as a terrified little creature trying to escape, but as an amazing tiny organism full of energy and life returning to the wild!

The NEXT capture, was very exciting! A lively, vivacious, "bitey"...

Blue Jay! By the way, all of those above adjectives are all good things for a wild animal to be while handling them.

Sasha struggled a bit getting this guy/gal out of the net because of the height of it...and because he was clenching his feet around the net in a death grip! ...(perching bird)...

Inside, we got to check out the beautiful plumage.

My dear friend, and NON Conservation student, Julie tagged along for the morning. She had never experienced bird banding before, and was a little nervous to tag a little guy. So, with some gentle encouragement, she agreed to band the Blue Jay!

She just sent me a text message, and she had a great time!

Looking forward to having her along for the ride again...

We also caught many Dark-eyed Juncos, but my phone died (and that's what I was taking pictures with...I know, get a real camera!). If I can beg, borrow, or steal some pictures from someone else who was there, I will add Junco pics below! They are a pretty, slate-colored little bird...

Thanks to John and Sasha for facilitating and thanks to the birds for flying into our net!