Sundays are for the Birds

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Josh

And the birders. Today was a beautiful winter day in Minnesota with a light snow falling, making everything quiet and white outside. Our day started with going to the early church service so that we could come home, grab a bite to eat, and then head to Hutchinson to see their Middle School’s production of The Little Mermaid. We went to see it because Melissa is directing the exact same musical in less than a month for Willmar Middle School, and my cousin’s wife is the director of Hutchinson’s show. Anyhow, when we got home after church and before we headed south, we sat down to eat lunch. I had just got done scolding the kids for leaving the table before they were finished eating, when I spied Mr. Northern Cardinal at the backyard feeder. Now I had that brand new camera and an awesome bird to photograph, so I, too, left the table before I was finished. So I won’t be winning any Father-of-the-Year awards, but I got some great shots!

Here he’s enjoying one of the few pieces of cracked corn in the feeder.

Check out the picture above. Not only can you see him crack the sunflower seed, but you can see him nabbing the sunflower heart with his tongue!

Resting. Look at all that red!

Prowling. Until I got this camera, I had no idea how dark a cardinal’s back was. The gradient of red is amazing.

So after this spontaneous photo-shoot, I finished my lunch and we were off to Hutchinson. Since I go to work in the dark and get home really late in the evening, our birding opportunities are limited to the weekends. I threw the camera in the car “just in case.” After all, we were traveling 45 miles. You never known what you are going to see. Just over a mile down the road, we found 10 Ring-Necked Pheasants right in the ditch. Oh, how I wanted to get a shot of them, but I couldn’t risk being late to the musical.

We thoroughly enjoyed the performance of Hutchinson’s students, and it was nice to visit for a bit with my cousin, Brett, and his family. But they had a set to tear down, and we had to head home. With plenty of daylight left for the return trip, I was excited for the possibilities. In less than 15 minutes, here is the first major bird we saw. This wild turkey was much closer to the road before I gave my family whiplash turning the vehicle around. As I monkeyed with the vehicle and camera, he was disappearing deep into cover. However, with that camera I was able to reach out and touch him. This tom is smart and ready for the spring turkey hunt – he kept his head out of view. Look at the beard on this guy!

We got on our way, and I was excited to get back to a spot on the road where we had flushed a flock of Snow Buntings on the trip down. Sure enough they were there. Snow Buntings visit us in the winter only and prefer open fields and roads. If you’ve traveled any country road in west-central Minnesota, then I’m sure you’ve seen large flocks of these white, tan, and black birds flush from the shoulder and swirl about in the air until they eventually land again. These poor Snow Buntings were on a busy road and would get flushed by a car, fly about, land in the same spot, only to have a car come 5 seconds later. This happened over and over. I got a few shots, but I did not have much time so they are a bit blurry – you have to hold that camera super still when it is zoomed out so far. I was excited to see these images because I’ve never seen these birds up close except for in field guides.

Even my wife was amazed by these little guys and asked if there is a flight leader that directs their fast and furious cloud one way or the other. I don’t think she minded this birding stop. It helped that I didn’t pull any Gs and was able to bring the vehicle to a comfortable stop.

As we continued our journey home, we would have one more bird encounter. I spotted a Bald Eagle flying high from left to right. Again, I screeched to the shoulder and slammed on my brakes. As my assistant – my wife – fumbled to get me the camera and get the sunroof open (Yes, it was only 15 degrees) so I could take the shot as it went to the right and after I got the camera on the sports setting and zoomed out, he was almost gone. I got a couple of parting shots. They were blurry, but I think you’ll recognize this bird.

What an eventful “birding” trip! You have to take what you can get in Minnesota in the winter, and considering the limited time we have to bird, this was an excellent outing. I think my wife might have even thought so….I caught her viewing the photos on the camera before she’d put it in the case for me.

Take a Look Out Our Window

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Josh

We finally got our Canon PowerShot SX50 HS camera to improve the quality of bird photos we put on this blog. Today I started shooting pictures of our yard birds. The birds featured in this post come by nearly every day. In fact, a few of our regulars did not show today: the Northern Cardinal, Evan’s Eurasian Collared Dove (click HERE to read the story behind that), and the Blue Jay (He showed up, but not long enough for a picture.) Below is what we captured today. Enjoy.

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Black-Capped Chickadee

Dark-Eyed Junco – Slate-Colored

Dark-Eyed Junco – Oregon Race (F)

The Oregon Junco is one of my favorite visitors as we are near the very eastern edge of its winter range. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to photograph it, so please excuse the blurry shot I took.

House Sparrow

American Goldfinch (Right)

Yes! American Goldfinches stay throughout the winter. I didn’t know that until this winter. Their plumage is a duller, greener color, but they are still fun to see!

White-Breasted Nuthatch

Common Redpoll

Hoary Redpoll

This bird looks very similar to the Common Redpoll and mixes in their flocks. It is paler or frostier in appearance (compare with the picture of the Common Redpoll above), it has a white rump, and its beak is smaller and more conical in shape. See if you can pick out the one Hoary amongst the Commons in the last picture in this series.

And one of our pests…

Couch-Potato Birding…

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Josh

…also known as bird watching. What’s the difference between bird watching and birding? Quite a bit actually. Bird watching is a more passive activity in which feeders are set out and you wait to see who comes by for meal. Usually people bird watch from the comfort of their homes. On the other hand, birding is a much more active pasttime that involves going out into different types of habitat to locate and identify as many birds as possible, or it is simply an effort to go hunting a specific species. It can be quite physical as you need to do a lot of hiking and moving about. While successful bird watching requires patience and luck, birding success comes about by doing one’s homework on bird habitats, migratory patterns, and bird behaviors. Then you need to know the subtle differences in bird species to make an identification on the fly (pun intended). By actually going out to look for birds in different areas, you stand to find many more types of birds than just staying home where there is a limit on the species you’re going to see. In a future post I will describe how this more active approach played a role in turning me on to birds.

Northern Cardinal Male

So is our Team a group of birdwatchers or birders? Both. We all enjoy the hunt of going into the field, and we also love to watch what comes to the feeder. Right now in the middle of winter, my wife and I lead busy lives as teachers who are raising two kids under the age of 5. There isn’t a lot of time to go birding right now, unfortunately. It’s also really cold in Minnesota. So we do a lot of couch-potato birding – making sure the feeder is kept full of seeds and the suet cage is stocked with delicious animal fat, and then we sit inside the house and watch. We’ve never fed the birds consistently in the winter before this year. What success we have had since we started a couple months ago! I had no idea that we would get so many cool species dropping by. We had a lot of activity yesterday: a pair of Northern Cardinals, Blue Jays, a Red-Bellied Woodpecker, a Downy Woodpecker, Dark-Eyed Juncos, Eurasian Collared Doves, Black-Capped Chickadees, and a whole assortment of sparrows. One note on the Red-Bellied Woodpecker: its name is a misnomer. The only red on it is on the back of its head. Go figure. You can see this in the photograph beneath this one of the Downy Woodpecker.

Downy Woodpecker

Not all the pictures in this post are from yesterday; some are from earlier this fall. We’ve also had the Pileated Woodpecker drop by (Holy cow, are they big and prehistoric-looking!), and we’ve had both the White-Breasted and Red-Breasted Nuthatches. We even had the Hairy Woodpecker. The Hairy and the Downy look nearly identical, except one is a couple inches longer than the other. I missed a golden opportunity to highlight this difference with a photograph when both species were on the suet feeder at the same time.

I realize we don’t have high quality bird photos to show you, but we are amateurs who are just getting started in this hobby. (I just found out about phone scopes – super cool!) It is my goal to be able to photograph birds well so that we can have attractive photos for you and make our stories that much more exciting. If you are a birder who has some advice for bird photography, help us out by giving us some advice. For now, though, I hope you can appreciate some of the diversity we’ve had in our bird feeder activity.