From time to time I am able to take some time off of work. Frequently when I take a day or half day off it is on a Friday. This gives me an opportunity to visit the Carpenter Nature Center on the day that they are banding passerines. During the warmer months the banding can get quite exciting as mist nets, pictured above, are placed in strategic locations through out the nature center. Mist nets are light weight nets that are dark in color. Built into the nets is a fold or pocket. When the wind is calm the birds do not see the nets as they are flying around in search of food. They hit the net and usually role into the pocket where they get tangled. With a little work, and the help of a tooth pick, the banders untangle the birds and place it in a bag so it can be transported to the spot where they take measurements, record data, and place the band on the birds leg, you can see a band on the bird in the nets above. During the winter it gets too cold to have birds tangled in the nets so during the colder months the banders use ground traps to catch the birds that they band. 
A wide variety of birds are banded each year at Carpenter, depending on migration, weather, and time of the year. Some times they catch a rare bird or something that is sexy but most often they catch regular birds that are in the area. Most people around here would consider the field sparrow a typical bird, not very sexy unless you are another field sparrow. Field sparrows breed in woodland opening and old fields in southern Minnesota during the summer. The males typically come back to the same territory each spring where they immediately begin to sing in hopes of attracting a mate. During the winter these birds leave the fields around here, usually before they become ice fields, and head south for the winter. These pics were taken at Carpenter in September.
The field sparrow is fairly common, during the summer time, both in Wisconsin and back at home, although their numbers are declining.
The eastern towhee is not a bird that I see and get to photograph very frequently. In fact I actually have more pictures of the spotted towhee, which I took when I was down at the Bosque del Apache in January of 2007, then I do the eastern towhee. Both the spotted and eastern towhee were considered the same species until 1995. The spotted range through out the western half of the US while the eastern range through out the eastern portion.
The black-billed cuckoo is another bird that I do not see very often. I am sure that there are black-billed cuckoos close to home but from what I have read they are secretive and not often seen.
Black-billed cuckoo eat fruit, seeds, and large insects, especially caterpillars. It is not good to find a caterpillar eating bird in the area where the main population of endangered Karner butterflies exists. However the Karner larva are quite small and the cuckoo spend most of their time hunting for caterpillars in trees and thick brush instead of lupine fields. This is good news for the Karner blue and bad news for the red-spotted purple.
One of the birds that we photographed last year on our trip to Necedah that I was hoping to see again this year is the red-headed woodpecker. We did get some looks and a few pics of the red-heads but not as good as the ones that we got last year.
Necedah is great territory for red-headed woodpeckers. There are several parts of the the park which are covered with old growth forest. Trees that fall or die in these woods are left to decompose naturally. These dead and dying trees are filled with nooks, holes and crannies which are important to the red-heads. The red-headed woodpecker is one of only a few types of woodpeckers know to cache food for future use. They will hide seeds, nuts, and even live insects in spaces in the trees, insects are often wedged in tight so that they can not escape. That is why a lot of dead wood is important to these birds. Unfortunately in too many places dead trees are removed which makes it difficult for red-heads to find suitable habitat and why the population of the red-headed woodpecker is on the decline. 
I did not find anything all that exciting but a few birds did peek out and took their turn in the spot light. This eastern phoebe are sometimes difficult to photograph because of their dark heads. One of the things that I look for when photographing wildlife is to try and get a glint of light in the eye. This helps to make the bird or animal look more life like. When a bird has a dark head the eye often gets lost in the pic. Fortunately it was bright out, which usually helps, and my new lens is much better at picking up light.
Angle of the subject in comparison to the sun is usually important when you are trying to get a shinning eye. The sun light is hitting the breast of the chipping sparrow above and it is not hitting the eye. This makes the eye look flat and two dimensional which does not help the picture to look life like.
When the angle is changed on the chipping sparrow the eye looks more three dimensional and life like.
Unfortunately in wildlife photography you can not control the weather or your subject. You can try and get a perfect angle but sometimes rivers, trees or other things make it difficult or impossible. Try as I might I could not get this field sparrow to pose correctly. This does not mean that the pic is not worth taking, especially since it is the first field sparrow that I have seen this year, some times you just have to be happy with what you get.
There is no use crying over spilled egg. I actually found this egg on one of the hiking trails. I do not know my eggs very well so maybe some one out there can tell us what kind of egg that it is. The small hole in the egg is interesting. I wonder if another bird used its beak to put a hole in the egg to retrieve the contents and then perhaps discarded it when it was finished with the rich yellow protein filled yoke?
There where quite a few american goldfinch feasting on seeds in the fields right next to the main office.
Up by the farm about a dozen field sparrow where hanging around.
At the small Crossroads Pond I found a solitary sandpiper.
There were 4 downy woodpeckers hunting bugs on a dying tree near the main office.
On the same tree I also photographed this bird. I believe that it is a willow flycatcher but I am still kind of new to birding and I had a hard time identifying this one.
Here is another angle of the bird. If anyone thinks that I have identified it wrong please let me know. It is better to find out that you made a mistake and learn from it then it is to remain in ignorance.
