Holy moly, I'm not sure how a month has gone by since my last post. Actually, that's bull pucky--I know exactly how--I've been birding! Since my last post, where I was at 102 species for the year, I've added 76 more. I've been all over the state, chasing rarities and uncommon birds. I've apparently gotten over my reluctance to jump in the car and drive three hours to see a bird.
Another shift away from my usual mode of birding is that I have not been concentrating on photographing them. I do my best to get shots of rarities for the sake of confirmation, but for the most part my camera never leaves its bag. I go out with my scope and my iPhone and use that combination for getting images. Not the highest quality, but at least I can usually get diagnostic images with it. So for a photo-heavy blog, I don't have a lot of great photos to share, except for some of a Great Horned Owlet I got in Ann Arbor last month.
March 9th was Lisa's birthday and we drove down to Grand Rapids to do a bit of shopping. It was unseasonably warm, reaching 63° in the afternoon (at least 20° above average) and we planned a walk in a nearby park. Before that though we stopped at Red Robin to get take out lunch. Red Robin has a dedicated fryer for their French fries so Lisa, who has Celiac, can have them without fear of contamination from breaded chicken or onion rings. While eating in the car in the mall parking lot I heard a Killdeer call for #103.
We ended up at Millennial Park which has a sprawling tail system along the Grand River. It felt so good to get out and walk without being covered from head to toe with winter clothing. I actually got hot from the sun. We saw lots of birds but nothing new until we found the "nature trail" (basically meaning an unpaved trail in the woods) and found some Common Grackles and Brown-headed Cowbirds for #104 and #105.
On March 13, after a couple of days "off," I drove down to Eaton Rapids to go birding with my friend Kirby Adams. He had a bead on Rusty Blackbird, but really it was just an excuse to get together and bird with a buddy. I was up at 5am, on the road by 5:45 in order to get there when the birds would be most active and easier to find. He took me right to the spot and we found seven "rusties" for bird #106. From there we drove to Crandell Park, a converted gravel pit, where we heard and then saw an Eastern Meadowlark singing for bird #107.
We hit a few more locations including a lake where there were lots of ducks and mergansers. On the far side we both saw what looked like a large gull, but it was too distant to tell for sure. He went back to his car to get his scope, got on the bird, then stepped back and asked me to take a look. Uh oh, I thought, he's testing my gull ID skills, which are seriously lacking. I took a breath and took a look.
Instead of a gull what I saw was a board, maybe a hunk of 1x6, weathered and gray, floating in the water with two white, round balls of some kind (perhaps Styrofoam), looking for all the world like a white-headed, gray-backed gull. It's not the first time we've been fooled by some inanimate object that looked like a bird, and it surely won't be the last.
From there I drove to Ann Arbor to take a stab at the Great Horned Owls that have nested in a park in town for several years now. Owls are one of the trickier species to find, as secretive as they tend to be, so I felt it wise to get this species while they were at their nest site and easy to see. But I had a heck of a time finding this nest. It should have been obvious--it was in a big willow with a busted-off branch where the nest was. I'd seen photos. I had the eBird hotspot location, which was Island Park, literally a tiny island in the Huron River. I wandered around that park twice but came up empty. No nest, no owls, and no crowd looking at owls. Just some teens/20-somethings working on a dance routine. So I phoned a friend, who directed me off the far side of the island and to the left. Bingo!
I have never seen an owlet in the wild and I gotta tell ya, they really are the cutest darn things. All fluff and attitude.
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| OMG. |
The little fluffernutter was alone in the nest. It had a nest mate but apparently that one kept falling--or getting pushed--out of the nest. It had already happened once and a rehabber had been called in to rescue it. It happened a second time just days before I arrived. There was some debate about whether it should have been rescued again, or if nature should have been allowed to run its course. But that second option was never really an option--many people had become attached to this family and there was no way in hell humans weren't going to come to the rescue. (Some time after I saw the birds the second chick was returned successfully to the nest.)
I took my first shot from the walkway along the fence behind the soccer fields, then moved into the woods to set up my tripod nest to the other photographers and curious onlookers. There was an area roped off so over-zealous people didn't get too close. Their nest tree was literally a few feet off a well-worn footpath, so walkers and joggers had to make a slight detour. The owls seemed utterly non-plussed by all the human activity. Mom and dad were both nearby, one napping, the other preening, and Jr. sat quietly in the nest, looking around, preening, and yawning.
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| Well hello!! |
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| I love how the bits of nest floof are visible. |
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| Parent #1, napping |
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| Parent #2, preening |
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| Beebee, watching. |
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| What's dat? |
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| And dat over dere? |
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| Who dat? |
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| Who dis? |
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| I know you. I seen you before. |
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| All dese questions make us seepy. I take nap now. |
The day was rounded out with a visit to my mother for a late lunch/early dinner in my car at Culver's. By the time I got home it was 8:30 and dark, and I was fried. Plus, that night we switched to Daylight Saving Time so I lost an hour of sleep!
Woodland Mall, Grand Rapids, March 9
#103) Killdeer
#104) Common Grackle
#105) Brown-headed Cowbird
Eaton Rapids, March 13
#106) Rusty Blackbird
#107) Eastern Meadowlark
Island Park, Ann Arbor, March 13
#108) Great Horned Owl
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