What is Your Caption?

I have a big project at work this weekend so I do not really have time to get creative with my Camera Critters post this week. So I was hoping that you guys could help me out by suggesting a creative caption for the photo above. Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

Happy Halloween

This year I decided to do something a little different for Halloween. This is Nero. He is a turkey vulture and one of the education birds at The Raptor Center. I decided that I would give him a treat this year for Halloween.

Turkey vultures are very intelligent birds, perhaps as intelligent as some members of the corvid family, and because of this we try and give Nero enrichment whenever we can. Usually his food is placed inside of something, such as mush style dog balls or egg cartons, where he has to work his mind to get the food out.

I was told that pumpkins were very good for enrichment for vultures, the stringing texture of the pumpkin simulate what vultures would experience when eating carrion out in the wild, so I purchased a pumpkin, carved it up a bit and brought it for him earlier this week.

At first he was curious but cautious. I have been told that he has had pumpkins in the past but that it has been a while, Nero has been around a while he hatched back in 1974. We placed his food inside the pumpkin and had pieces sticking out for him to find. He managed to get all of his food out and then began to pick slowly at the pumpkin himself. I did check in the following day and found that much of the pumpkin was still intact but you could see where he had been picking at parts of the pumpkin.

Bird Banding at Carpenter Nature Center

Every Friday the folks over at Carpenter Nature Center catch and band birds. On the last Friday of the month they open up the banding to the public so that ordinary people can get a close up look at the birds and learn how and why people band birds. Birding has been a bit slow lately, on most trips I just keep seeing the same birds, and we just got a bunch of snow dumped on us so I figured that watching the banding would be a different change of pace. So today after I got of off work I stopped over to check things out. The snow seemed to bring the birds out, as quite a few birds were caught while I was there, even though the variety was not that unusual. Most of what was banded were juncos with a vicious female cardinal and a redpoll being the exceptions. Even though I did not really take any pictures I did have fun talking with people who have spent a lot of time looking at birds close up and in great detail.

This was not my first visit to see the banding, I try to go 5 or 6 times a year, so I do have some pics that I took back on September 26th. Each fall we are lucky to see both white-crowned and white-throated sparrows as the migrate from Canada down to the southern United States.
The field sparrow is a common resident in Minnesota, except during the winter, which is why they are frequently caught and banded.
White breasted nuthatch are year round residents but they are not caught as often during the winter. This is mainly because during the winter birds are trapped using ground cages which are less likely to catch birds like nuthatches. During the warmer months mist nets are used to catch the birds, and they are much more likely to snare a nuthatch as it flies between trees or to a feeder.
Late September is a fun time to check out the banding because there are many different types of birds that are migrating through the area at that time. When Nashville warblers migrate south most of the younger birds follow the east coast while many of the mature birds will take a more westerly route.
An unusual catch this day was a brown creeper. While creepers can sometimes be seen on the trees around the park they banders typically only catch a few each year.
While the banding is always very interesting I never like to spend too much time inside when I am at an amazing place like Carpenter Nature Center. So I took a short hike around the grounds during a lull in the banding. I did find a couple of interesting birds to photograph that were very unlikely to be captured for banding, like this northern flicker.

I also spotted a passing turkey vulture. Since Carpenter is situated on the bluffs of the St Croix River just north of where it joins the Mississippi it is common to see raptors flying over. They usually take advantage of the air currents caused by the river bluffs to fly using less energy.

Sharp-shinned and other raptors at Hawk Ridge

After spending a bit of time down at Park Point I headed up to Hawk Ridge. The weather was still pretty cloudy but every once and a while the sun would peak through. There were still plenty of raptors flying through though. Most of them were either sharp-shinned hawks or red-tailed hawks.

Every once and a while a different type of raptor would fly by like a harrier, eagle or turkey vulture.

But they were rare compared to the sharpies and red-tails which was obvious by what they where trapping down at the banding station. Shortly after I arrived a boy who adopted a sharpie got to release his bird.How cool it is to hold a bird like this in your hands? I wish I would have had an opportunity like this when I was a boy. The smile on his face says it all. I did not need any more persuading. It is easy to adopt a bird at Hawk Ridge all that it takes is a donation, which is used to support banding and educational programs at the ridge. Adoptions start at $20 for sharpies and go up to $200 for eagles and gyrfalcons. I gave them $100 and asked for the next bird that they had no matter what the type, although if they got an eagle I would have had to add another $100.

The next raptor that they caught and banded was a female first year sharpie.

She was a feisty one. She let the handlers and everyone else know that this treatment was not acceptable.She was trash talking and even went after the handlers fingers while she was doing a short educational talk about sharpies.I loved her spirit and even though I had donated more then the $20 required for a sharpie I was happy to adopt this bird.So I released her and as soon as I receive the picture that they took of the release I will post it. Meanwhile they took the banding number and will give me information on the bird and if it is ever captured in the future they will update me. They also have a program to adopt a passerine. While I was there they released a ruby-crowned kinglet and a dark-eyed junco.If you are ever in the area in the fall I would recommend a trip to Hawk Ridge. With great raptor viewing, during migration, and their wonderful activities and educational programs it is a one of a kind experience. But even if you can't make the trip to Hawk Ridge you can still help support their work through the adoption program. You wont get to personally release the bird, if you adopt one online, but you will still get to adopt a specific bird with it's own individual banding number and at the same time help the good work that they do at Hawk Ridge.