AMB Class #12: Raptors

Oh Raptor Day!  Callooh!  Callay!  (All due apologies to Lewis Carroll.)

Our first post-holiday-break unit in the AMB program is Raptors, and boy is it timely.  On my last CBC (Christmas Bird Count) in the Barr Lake area, we had tons of raptors.  Tons!  Er, I mean, Tens!  

But with birds this large, it may be easy to see how their numbers might seem uber-large.

And the problem (well, MY problem) has always been how to call a large soaring bird anything other than Red-tailed Hawk?

Various friends - mentors, friends, well-meaning neighbors, etc. - have been trying to help me out by pointing out features of these large birds for some time, but the distinctions have not been sticking.  Maybe now, through the AMB program, I can get it.

One can only hope.

During class on January 6th, our raptor expert is Jeff Birek.  He's an Outreach Biologist for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory (maybe one day we can talk more about this organization, but for now, I'll just echo what Jeff told us:  it was founded in 1988 and has 45 FTEs and roughly 75 seasonal hires.  This seems like a grand thing to me:  all these people working on bird conservation issues, in addition to all the people who volunteer for RMBO).

And, like all our speakers, Jeff is clearly an expert in his field.  I am, as always, blown away by the quality of speakers this program serves up.

Jeff's first job is to define "raptor".  In the context of this unit, it means birds with hooked bills, powerful talons, and keen eyesight or good hearing.  The focus of the unit is diurnal raptors (diurnal, for people new to birdspeak, means "active during daylight hours"), so for now, we'll exclude owls.  We'll also exclude ravens, since they have pointed - not hooked - bills, and perching legs.  We'll also exclude vultures, as they may have the keen eyesight and hooked bill, but lack the powerful talons (after all, those talons aren't so necessary when your prey is served up dead).

Magnificent Frigatebird.  Sadly, not in Colorado.

After the introductory stuff - including not only the descriptions above, plus great factoids (raptors typically soar on thermal updrafts, and in the soaring, they use less energy than I use sitting here typing out a blog entry;  raptors don't migrate over water because you don't get thermals over water - with the exception of Swallow-tailed Kites who somehow *do* find thermals over water;  Magnificent Frigatebirds are the birds with the lowest wing loading of all birds, so they soar effortlessly) - we get into the meat of the thing: specific ways to ID raptors in the field.  That's a good thing, as our Saturday field trip is exactly on that point:  identifying raptors in the field.

After the lecture, to drive home the point of how difficult raptors can be to ID (it would be tough enough just to differentiate species if they did *not* have such variations as dark and light morphs), I have my own solo difficult-ID experience between our class session and our field trip.  I'm in Denver, but birding in an area that's a little sketchy - the Platte River at Globeville, where a Red-breasted Merganser has been reported.

And there, standing in the middle of the river, under an overpass, is a hawk.

I'm amazed.  This seems like crazy behavior, so I try to get around the bird for a better look but by the time I find it, it's flown and landed in a tree (more where I would expect it).


What the heck is it?  

I'm hoping for something less "usual" than a Red-tailed Hawk, so I check out every field mark I can identify.  The back has a lot of white, there is not a red tail, and there's no distinctive belly band - at least not one that i see until I later download my photos.

But still, I can't make it into anything else (try as hard as I might), and finally I send my photos off to an expert birder friend for ID.

It's a young Red-tailed Hawk.

On one hand, I'm disappointed that I didn't find something a little more rare, but on the other hand, I'm thrilled that this was the ID that I had guessed.  I'll have to wait for our field trip the coming Saturday to see a raptor that is not a Red-tailed Hawk.

And in the meantime, I'll have to keep looking for that Red-breasted Merganser.

AMB Requirement #12: Participate in at least one Christmas bird count........

.....and at least one Fall or Spring Count.

Well, I had such a grand time on my Fall Count:  I knew that I wanted to do at least one (and probably more than one) Christmas Count.

So I did three.

Which, if you're not a birder, might seem like a lot.

But the birders know: it's just a drop in the bucket.  This stuff is addictive.  

Why?  I wish I could tell you.  Maybe because everyone is so focused on seeing every single bird possible that each outing turns into a bird-a-palooza.  Maybe because the great birders turn out for the events in droves, and I'm finding that the best way to learn is by hanging out with the great birders.  Maybe because it's a pretty damn fine excuse to dispense with all the holiday hoopla and commercialization and just get out there and enjoy nature.

Or maybe it's just because of the birds.

My first Christmas bird count is at the start of the CBC (that's "Christmas Bird Count") season, on December 14.  I responded to a query that Doug Kibbe sent out, asking for volunteers for CBCs that he was leading.  I thought the Pueblo count on 12/14 sounded like fun, so I volunteered.  He said, great.  Cool!

Then he said, we need to meet at Castle Rock at 5:something on Saturday morning.

I thought, Oh Crap.

But I couldn't gracefully get out of the thing, so there I was, setting my alarm clock for 4 a.m. (which, in case you haven't been up at 4 a.m. lately, is dark, dark, dark), and heading south.  I met Doug and Sue, another fool - er, um, I mean volunteer - in the parking lot of Lowes.  I pulled in first, then a car pulled up, and I thought, great, we're all here at the same time.  But no.  It was somebody else.  Then somebody else, and somebody else.  At first I thought hunters, but nobody was really outfitted for hunting.  Then I got scared and thought "drug deal".  But pretty soon - within minutes, actually - there were too many people to be a drug deal.  Then - duh - I realized that it was the early crew showing up for work at Lowes.  All this in a few minutes.  Still, I was relieved when Doug and Sue arrived.  Whew.  Time to go see some birds.

And the birding was fabulous.  We covered the Pueblo State Wildlife Area, where the only remaining scariness was the presence of duck hunters (and the fact that at least one wanted to impress us and fired off a number of shots, too close for this reporter's comfort).  

The thing that had attracted me to Pueblo - the fact that the area is just far enough south to have different habitat and different birds - paid off in three new life birds:  Northern Shrike, Juniper Titmouse, and Thayer's Gull.

Sadly, I do not get usable photos of any.

But I do get nice views of a Ferruginous Hawk 

and a Rough-legged Hawk

I also get some nice looks at "year birds" (birds I have seen before, but not yet this year), like Canyon Towhee and Golden Eagle.  So by day's end, I'm thrilled with our count, even if it's not a super photography day.

My second Christmas Count is post-Florida, post-Christmas, but decidedly cold Christmas-like weather:  January 1.  I've chosen to be a part of a team led by Marilyn Rhodes and Bob Santagelo here in the heart of Denver, where I live.

What I didn't count on - what nobody really counted on - was the snow.

We all (a good-sized group - maybe 20 or 24 to start) meet up at Denver Botanic Gardens to start at 8 a.m.  That seems eminently reasonable, given that it's New Year's Day.  But as we gather, it starts to snow.  And then it snows some more.  And it just won't stop.  Brrrrr.

People tell me that the Botanic Gardens are usually a good birding spot. But maybe not so much in the snow.  We go next-door to Cheesman Park, which might be dead, too, if not for this gorgeous juvenile Cooper's Hawk that someone in our group spots right off the bat:

(Here's an AMB tip:  we know it's a juvenile because of the striping.  Adults are barred - in other words, the strips are horizontal.  On juvies, the striping is vertical.)  Unfortunately, that's one of the few good looks at birds that we get all day. Later, we'll pick up a few ducks at Washington Park:

Common Mergansers
You can tell the female is a Common by the white chin/neck - if the males (a dead giveaway) were not right there.

And a few other species:

Crow, with Fish;  why wouldn't this be a Fish Crow?  After all, I saw lots of Fish Crows last week in Florida.

My CBC teammates will only let me count this as an American Crow, not a Fish Crow.

And I'm willing to accept that not everybody loves gulls, but, really, on a day that is mostly cloudy and cold and snowy, when we get a moment of blue sky and sun, who can argue with this Ring-billed Gulls taking top billing?

In case you want to play "name that bird" at home, note the yellow legs, ringed-bill (okay, that's kind of cheating), and light eye of this bird.  It will at least steer you along the right path to a gull ID.

Finally, as if two CBCs are not enough, in addition to my week in Florida, where the only thing I did was bird (well, and maybe eat and sleep) (on further reflection, nope, pretty much just birded, eating and sleeping were tough to come by), I signed up for yet another bird count on Sunday, January 5.  It seemed like a good idea when I signed up, but then - after making the commitment - I looked at the forecast.

Oh dear.  What have I done?

It's gotten frigid in Colorado again, and this count - the Barr Lake Count - is out northeast of Denver, where urban ends and plains begin.  That means cold, snow, cold, snow, wind.

I think about just not showing up, but since I've already had one cold-weather-dropout in the AMB program in early December, that feels wrong.  And when I check the temp when I get up on count day, it's a balmy 12 degrees at my place.  That's actually 20 degrees warmer than it was on the AMB test that I skipped.  What's a girl to do but to put on the ski clothes I planned to wear that day (6 layers on top;  I'm not exaggerating, and I'm not sure it's enough), and head north and east?

Once again, I'm on Doug Kibbe's team, and that feels pretty comfortable to me;  he's a fun guy.  I'll admit to hanging back when Doug asks for volunteers to do the walking part of our territory.  Normally, I'd be first in line for getting outside and walking rather than driving.  But when it's barely ten degrees (yeah, it's a bit colder out here than at home) with the wind whipping and snow falling, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a wimp, and I let some of my (much-admired) teammates take that route.  That means that I'm teamed up with Doug and Judy (yep, that's right) for the driving part of this count.

We leave the Stone House at Barr Lake, and I'm expecting a dead day.  But oh, holy moses, am I wrong.  To start out with, we get a Rough-legged Hawk.  Doug makes me ID the bird, in the distance, and I have a memory of him noting - on the Pueblo count - that Rough-legged Hawks are the only raptors that hover.  Thank heavens I've remembered that fact.  Then we happen upon a field that has some black birds.  A flock of black birds.  In fact, a huge flock of black birds - that we determine to be Red-winged Blackbirds, as the entire flock - we estimate it at 2500 birds - flies over our vehicle.  Oh wow.

And that's pretty much the way the day goes:  raptors and large flocks of birds.  We see three Bald Eagles, two Great Horned Owls (one flies right over my head!), a couple of Northern Harriers and a couple of American Kestrels, twelve Red-tailed Hawks, and eight Rough-legged Hawks, including one dark-morph.  We see a flock of 600 or so Horned Larks;  I've never seen anything like that, and the bonus is that we see a couple of Lapland Longspurs in the mix.  We see - mixed in a large flock of Canada and Cackling Geese - a single Great White-fronted Goose.  We see plenty of American Robins and Blue Jays and a smattering of other ducks and small birds.

Of course, the photo ops are incredible, but I've left my camera at home, thinking that the weather isn't suitable for photography.  Chalk one up for the Boy Scouts and Always-be-prepared.

When we wrap up the morning's birding back at the Stone House, we run into a few of my AMB classmates and friends, and we have friendly exchanges about what we've seen in the morning.  I'm actually sad that I have to leave for other commitments now;  who knows what birds are out there, waiting for me to find them.   As I drive off, away from all the birding activity, I wonder if maybe - just maybe - there isn't another CBC left that I can take part in.  After all, it's really only early January.  Surely there are more counts to do?

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

The AMB schedule has been intense, and it will be intense again soon, but there is a heavenly break in December of four entire weeks.  Four weeks!  Life is good.  I love the learning and the speakers and the field trips and all, but what a joy to have four entire weeks to myself!

So, of course, because I'm looking for a break from all of this, I head to Florida to spend Christmas week with my friend Melissa.  I may have mentioned that Melissa was responsible for getting me interested in the birding nonsense as well as the photography nonsense.  It was a similar trip two years ago that led me to where I am now, and that might best be described as bird-obsessed.  Yes, two years ago, I was a complete neophyte and was taken in by the big and beautiful wading birds.  They are, as we all know, the entry drug of birding.

This year, Melissa has prepared an itinerary so intense that - by the end of the week - I'll be praying to get home just so I can get some sleep.  And have a meal that isn't shoveled down between birding locations.

And mind you, that's not a complaint;  not by any stretch of the imagination.  Because, friends, Melissa led me to 11 new life birds:

Short-billed Dowitcher (sandwiched between two Willets)

Muscovy Duck

Monk Parakeet

Nanday Parakeet

Common Eider

Wilson's Plovers

Snowy Plover

Swamp Sparrow

Black-and-white Warbler

Blue-headed Vireo

Dunlin

.....and countless year birds..........

Wood Stork

Florida Scrub-Jay

Royal Terns (the guy in the back is the youngster, relentlessly begging the parent for food.

Sandwich Tern

Limpkin

Roseate Spoonbill

Little Blue Heron (juvie)

........as well as fabulous photo ops of other birds..........

Pileated Woodpecker

Boat-tailed Grackle

Red-shouldered Hawk

Common Gallinule

Osprey (with lunch)

Burrowing Owls

Northern Cardinal (female)

Tufted Titmouse

Bald Eagle

Anhinga

Of course, there were a few on my target list that were "guarantees" that we didn't see:  Piping Plovers and Red Knots and the much-heralded and much-reported Bar-tailed Godwit that's been hanging around Fred Howard Park for many weeks now.  But who has time to bemoan the missed birds?  After all, that just gives me something to go back for. 

Plus, I can't be worried about the ones that got away, not when it's my turn to plan an itinerary for when Melissa comes to see me next summer, and I get to share all the mountain and western birds with her.  Oh wow, where to start?  Well there are Black-capped Chickadees, and Mountain Chickadees, and Clark's Nutcrackers, and Steller's Jays, and both Western and Mountain Bluebirds, and .................

AMB Field Test #2: Everything's Not Ducky

I have been looking forward to our second field test, which is scheduled for Saturday December 7;  the schedule says the target is "Ducks". 

Ducks?  Hell, ducks are easy!  Well, except for female ducks.  And ducks in eclipse plumage (that's birdspeak for non-breeding plumage, where males and females kind of look alike).  And ducks in flight.  And dabbling ducks with their heads submerged, butts skyward.  Or diving ducks that dive before you can get a good look at them.

But really, ducks in winter, coming into their breeding plumage, all just sitting there on the water?  What could be easier?

Certainly not gulls.  Or flycatchers.  Or anything soaring overhead.  Or any number of small hyperactive birds, the kinds my friend Leann calls "tweety birds".

So I'm stoked.  Of all the field tests, this is going to be the easiest.  In testing, we need to identify 100 birds by sight.  This test has the potential to already catapult me over the 50% mark.

Oh my.

So I'm stoked.

But then the weather here gets cold.  Bitter cold.  Face-freezing and toe-numbing cold.  Lung-searing cold.  "Sorry, I know we were supposed to get together but it's too damn cold" cold.  AAA-best-week-of-the-year-jump-starting-cars cold.  Wearing my baggiest jeans so I can put on long johns underneath them just to go to the store cold.  

I'm certain that the test will be canceled.  Or postponed.  Or something.

Especially when I get up on test morning and see the weather service temperature:  -8.

That's MINUS 8.  That's EIGHT-BELOW-EFFING-ZERO.  That's too damn cold to hold a test.  Surely, they won't hold the test.

But they do.

So I have a choice.  Go out in the too-freaking-cold-for-words cold, and stand around in the too-freaking-cold-for-words cold for hours on end while trying to write bird names with numb fingers and a frozen brain, all while worrying about how I'm going to end up in the hospital with pneumonia and then who will feed my cats?  

Or blow the thing off.

The first option just seems stupid to me.  And I keep hearing Forrest Gump say "Stupid is as stupid does".

So I blow the thing off.

My friend Leann says, "you may not have passed the AMB Test, but you passed the Intelligence Test".

The only problem is that I'm so angry about this turn of events that I write (and delete) long blog posts, vilifying people and organizations and, pretty much, everyone who birds (or ever birded or will ever bird) in Colorado.  I can't get past the missed opportunities.  Mallards and Northern Shovelers and Teals and Scaups and Buffleheads and Grebes and Ruddy Ducks and all those other fabulous ducks.  It eats me up. 

Then my friend Melissa calls.  Melissa is the friend responsible for all of this birding nonsense.  And photography nonsense.  Come to think of it, she was responsible for the marathoning nonsense, too.

When I whine some more about the missed Duck Test, she tells me that life is too short.  I need to let it go.  Really, in the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter?

And then she starts to talk about the birds we'll see when I go visit her in Florida for Christmas.  

Oh.

My.

Birds I've never seen before that she guarantees me:  Black-and-white Warblers.  Dunlins.  Short-billed Dowitchers.  Nanday Parakeets.  Birds that I've seen before, but not this year:  Mottled Ducks.  Wood Storks.  Sandwich Terns.  Black Skimmers.  Birds that I've seen and photographed, but from far away in lousy conditions, that she tells me I'll get close to:  Burrowing Owls.  Long-billed Curlews.  Pileated Woodpeckers.  Birds that she can't guarantee, but tells me are good bets:  Snowy Plovers.  Piping Plovers.  Red Knots.

All of this, and more.  The Brown Thrasher at her feeder.  The Tufted Titmice who land on her camera lens!  The Sedge Wrens and Marsh Wrens.  The Swamp Sparrows.  The Northern Cardinals at her feeders.  The Painted Buntings, the Florida Scrub-Jays, the chance at seeing Northern Gannets, at least from a distance.

Oh, and the punchline:  it's been in the 70s and 80s, sunny, beautiful.

Did someone say something about ducks?

AMB Class #9: Everything's Just Ducky - Part 2

Since a few readers expressed an interest in some of the duck details that might be old hat for true master birders, and since I'm still trying to get this stuff down, let's start off with a review of what we covered in the Dabblers and Divers post, and maybe hit a few things I missed last time around.

• Mallards:  for males, there's no coordination between bill color and leg color (yellow bill, orange legs);  the females have it all right with matching legs and bill (all orange)
• American Wigeons:  blue bills!  Very distinctive when you know to look for it.  This is true for both males and females.
• Northern Pintails:  blue bills!  Wait!  Wasn't that supposed to be the wigeons?  Really, why not a few rules that stick!  But it's really hard to mix up a wigeon and a pintail...unless, maybe you have two females
• Gadwalls:  "white wall" = a bit of white speculum that shows up on the water's edge.  Except when it doesn't.
• Eurasian Wigeons:  okay, we didn't cover these birds in class, because they don't show up in Colorado, but here's a gratuitous photo of one of these cool birds that I saw - quite unexpectedly - on a rainy day last March in the vicinity of Point Reyes National Seashore in California.  Just like an American Wigeon - blue bill and all - except for the copper-colored head.

Eurasian Wigeon (male)
3/27/13
Point Reyes National Seashore, CA

Then, those Teals, how could I not include a few photos?  Skot tells us we are more likely to see the Teals in the spring, and my photo archive bears that out.

Blue-winged Teal (male)
4/20/12
Cherry Creek SP, CO
*notice the large bill.  Not quite as big as a shoveler, but clearly bigger than the wigeon.

Cinnamon Teal, with Blue-winged Teal
4/18/12
South Platte Park, CO
**notice the big bills on both of these guys

Green-winged Teal (female & 2 males)
4/19/13
Cherry Creek SP, CO

And the darling Ruddy Ducks:  

Ruddy Ducks
1/19/13
South Platte River, CO (north)
can you guess why they are called "stiff-tails"?

We covered all these ducks - dabblers and divers - in a fly-by session.  I thought it was time for a break.  Scot Latona thought otherwise, and moved on to geese.  Simple, right?  There are just those big honkin' things that are everywhere you look in city parks, right?

Well, duh.  If you're paying attention, nothing in birding is that simple. Check your assumptions and simplifications at the door, please, and follow along.

Yep, there are Canada Geese.  (And please, if you're around a birder, do *not* say "Canadian Geese".  There is, I think, no greater sin among the tried and true.  Well, maybe if you say "seagull" you can get yourself in more hot water, but just barely.)

But really, big-shot birders don't even talk about Canada Geese;  they say "White-cheeked Geese".  Really.  It's like a secret handshake.  I'll probably get thrown out of the club for telling you this.

But wait, I'm not really in the club.  So what the heck.

So, "White-cheeked Geese" are actually much more complex and nuanced than just a single species of Canada Goose.  What fun would that be?  There are Canada Geese, and there are Cackling Geese. Further, there are 7 subspecies of Canada Geese, and 5 subspecies of Cackling Geese.  But wait!  There's more!  These classifications keep morphing and evolving.  If you look at my Peterson guide, you essentially get Canada Geese.  If you look at the full-blown Sibley's, you get the whole shebang.

And "the whole shebang" keeps shifting, like the San Andreas Fault.  You just can't trust it.

So those geese you see in the park?  Could be one of the Canada complex, or one of the Cackling species.  The basic differences are size (Canada are larger, but you can get into trouble real fast if you think that's your key fieldmark, since there is considerable overlap), and bill size and shape (this is more reliable:  Cackling Geese have significantly smaller bills with a very different angle in the profile - much steeper forehead, and much straighter bill.  The Canada Goose bill, by comparison, looks more like a ski jump.)

Canada Goose and Cackling Goose
11/27/12
Green Valley Rec Center, CO

Snow Geese (both white and blue phases)
2/29/12
West Gothenburg WMA, NE

Then there are the light geese, and, of course, why should they be any easier?  There are Snow Geese, and, in keeping with the theme of *not* making it easy, there are Blue phase (really a morph, since once a blue Snow Goose, always a blue Snow Goose).  Western populations of Snow Geese tend to be white, and Eastern populations tend toward blue;  being at the convergence of the east and west, we tend to get both.  And then, of course, if you weren't already confused enough, there's the Ross's Goose.  Yeah.  That one.  The one that looks *way* too similar to the white morph Snow Goose for my taste.  The key difference in the Ross's Goose is that it has a smaller head than the Snow Goose, and no tomia.

Snow Goose (blue morph) with Cackling Geese
1/15/12
Denver City Park, CO

Huh?  "Tomia"?  That's birdspeak for a black smile patch.  When you see it, it's very apparent.  It makes the bird with the tomia (that would be the Snow Goose) kind of look like a wise guy. Or a kind of weirdo.

Ross's Goose
11/27/12
Lakewood, CO

But I like these birds!  Truly I do.  Even so, it was time for a much-needed, and too-short break.  Cuz, really, what else is there to cover?

Well, there's a bunch more stuff.  Holy Moses.  Who knew that there was so much waterfowl around?  And we've already covered a bunch of it with Doug Kibbe many weeks ago.  Yikes.

There are scoters.  Not huge in Colorado, but we get a few passing through, including Surf Scoters and Black Scoters and White-winged Scoters.

There are mergansers.  Hello!  We have tons of mergansers, only three species, but what cool birds.  There are Common Mergansers, and Hooded Mergansers (you will never forget a male Hoodie after you've seen one with his hood raised), and Red-breasted Mergansers (the birds that always look like they are having a bad hair day).

Common Merganser (female)
9/30/12
Chatfield SP, CO

Red-breasted Merganser
3/27/13
Point Reyes National Seashore, CA

Hooded Merganser
1/5/13
Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, CO

Hooded Merganser (juvenile/immature)
1/5/13
Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, CO

Hooded Merganser (female)
1/5/13
Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, CO

Finally, there are swans.  Oh my.  Such grand birds.  Mute Swans are increasing in numbers in the Midwest;  not native to North America.  (When I lived in England, in the late 1980s, friends told me that all of the swans - in this case, all Mute Swans - are the property of the Queen.  Apparently this is at least partially true, so if you're in London, don't go messing with the swans in any of the parks there.)  Tundra Swans are smaller, and have a yellow lore (or at least most of them do, although it's small and not always easy to see), and the larger Trumpeter Swans (these guys have an all black bill with a red tomia - remember the tomia from our Snow Goose above?).  Trumpeters crook their neck when they take off, and, if they're in a mixed flock along with Tundra Swans, the Trumpeters are the last to land.

Mute Swan
12/2/12
London's Regent Park, UK

Tundra Swans
3/2/13
Boulder, CO

Trumpeter Swans
7/31/11
Cordova, AK

Whew.  That was a lot of Anatidae Anatomy.  It's a pretty good thing that I didn't go with my impulse to skip this class.  Oh my.  I'm swimming (is that dabbling or diving?) with information overload, once again.