Red-tailed Hawk

Probably the most common raptor that we see around Minnesota, and one of the most common raptors found throughout North America, is the red-tailed hawk. The red-tailed hawk can be found as far north as the arctic circle, during the summer, and as far south as the southern tip of Mexico and into Central America.

The red-tail is highly adaptable which has allowed them to flourish while many other species of raptors have been in decline. Red-tail hawks can be found in many different types of habitat including dessert, tundra, grasslands, fields, rainforest, parks, and even cities. They are ambush hunters often perching in a favorite spot waiting for prey to come into view and then pouncing. As a generalist they eat many different types of prey including mice, voles, rats, rabbits, squirrels, birds, snakes, lizards and carrion.

Red-tails have many different types of color forms and sub-species which can sometimes make it difficult to identify them. This bird, which I photographed near the Carpenter Nature Center in September, was very light, with a lot of white on the head and very little streaking on the belly. It is possible that this could be a Krider's red-tail, which is a light subspecies of red-tail, or it could just be a light phase standard red-tail or possibly even an immature broadwinged hawk. The more that I look at it the more unsure that I get. What do you think?

Sky Watch Friday

Monarch

American Avocet

One of my goals for the past year or so has been to build a website to go along with the blog. My hope is that when it is finished the website will become a resource for birders and naturalists. I plan to have as many different pictures of each species as possible, pictures at different angles, in different lighting, different times of the year and varying stages of development, so that it can help people to make identifications. So I have been pouring through pictures, cutting them into a standard size and then organizing them in preparation. While going through California pics, that I took in 2007, I found a couple of pics that I never published in the blog and I decided that this would be as good a time as any. I photographed this American avocet at the Elkhorn Slough located near Monterey Bay, CA in February of 2007.

The first pic from California would be an example of an American avocet in its winter plumage. This second photo was taken in May of 2007 at the Medicine Lake NWR in Montana. This is an example of an American avocet in breeding plumage. This would be an example of the type of differences that I hope to illustrate through my photos when I eventually get the website up and running.

Winter Birding - Golden Eagle Survey

With all of the summer pics that I have been posting you might think that I am hibernating over the winter. Spending all winter sleeping in a nice warm place sounds good, at least for a few minutes, but its not my style. So I have been out taking pics and participating in some fun events.

In January I participated in the Annual Golden Eagle Survey, which is coordinated through the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN. Each year we count the golden eagles that winter in southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. This is my third year doing the survey so I contemplated asking for my own route but I was not sure that my car could handle the back roads and hills in the area, especially if the weather was not cooperative.

So I headed down to White Water State Park to join the group that was counting down there. When I arrived I found that there were about 20 cars, that were broken into two groups, that were surveying the park area. Since I thought that there were more then enough people to cover the park, in 2009 we had 4 or 5 cars, I decided to work some of the back roads between the park and Wabasha on my own, the weather was very cooperative this year.

While traveling the back roads I found a dozen bald eagles, one of which was an immature, and three red-tailed hawks but unfortunately no golden eagles. So I stopped back at the Eagle Center so I could get a shot of Don, the education golden eagle at the center. This year, the 6th year of the count, there were over 130 volunteers and 93 golden eagles were counted. Most of the eagles were in Buffalo County in Wisconsin where 25 volunteers covered 15 routes and counted 60 golden eagles. Next year I think that I will have to see if I can get a route in Buffalo County.

Meadowhawks

One of the dragonflies that I typically see late in the year is the Autumn meadowhawk. These dragons are often still flying into November, as long as we do not get a hard frost, these pics where taken in October. According to the book Dragonflies of the North Woods, by Kurt Mead, autumn meadowhawks can survive, meaning fly and feed, at temps slightly below 50 degrees.
Unlike many of the other red meadowhawks, mature males are red in color while mature females are either red or gold and immature are usually gold, autumn meadowhawks are easily identified by the color of their legs. Other meadowhawks have black legs while the autumn meadowhawk has yellow legs, which is why they were formerly known as the yellow-legged meadowhawk.

I am not sure which type of meadowhawk are in the photo above, I know that they are not autumn meadowhawks because they have black legs. These dragons are in what is referred to as the wheel position. The male, who is red, holds the female behind the head with his claspers. Before entering into the a tandem position the male will transfer sperm from testes, which are located on the bottom of abdomen segment nine, to his hamulus, which is located on the bottom of segments 2 and 3. the female will then arch her abdomen up to his hamulus to accept the sperm. Afterwards she will lay the fertilized eggs in the water, often while he guards to make sure that she does not copulate with another male until after she finishes laying the eggs.

Tropical Waterlily: Jack Wood

Photographed at the Como Zoo water garden.

Field Sparrows at Carpenter Nature Center.

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.

Sky Watch Friday

Snow Bunting

Bufflehead Duck

With all of the lakes, rivers and other wet lands that we have around we see quite a few ducks her in the part of the world which I live in. This is especially true during the spring and fall migrations when some of the ducks that we do not usually see stop over to rest and feed. One of the more colorful ducks that we see during migration is the bufflehead.

During the spring migration I often see mated pairs of bufflehead traveling together on their way to their breeding grounds up north in Canada. During the fall migration usually males and females travel separately on their way to the southern US and Mexico. The top pic, the female, was taken at Crex Meadows in October. The male, above, was photographed at Black Dog Lake in April.

Rieck's Lake Park

On the western border of Wisconsin, located right off of the Mississippi River north of the town of Alma, WI sits Rieck's Lake Park.

For many years Rieck's Lake Park was "the" location to go and see tundra swans during the fall migration. Thousands of swans would converge on the lake each fall to feed on wild celery and arrowhead tubers. This made the lake popular with birders and so a deck was built to accommodate all of the visitors coming to see the swans.

Unfortunately near the end of the 1990's the lake changed. Large amounts of silt filled the lake bottom making the lake more shallow. The emergence of burreed has also changed the habbitat of the lake. Burreed grows rapidly in shallow water. It grows in large beds that do not die down during the fall and winter so it filled up much of the open water areas of the lake.

Work has been done, including dredging, to try and make the lake habitat more suitable so that the swans will again return in large numbers. At this point though there are usually less then one hundred birds that use the lake during the migration. However many of the birds that do use Rieck's Lake are with in close view making it one of the best places to view migrating tundra swans.

Darner Dragonflies

Dragonflies are fierce predators through out their life. Most of a dragonflies life is spent under water in their larval form. This typically take one to three years. Even at this early stage in their development they are already on the hunt. Almost anything that moves in the water is potential prey, including mosquito larva, aquatic insects, other dragonfly larva, tadpoles and small fish.

The larva eat with a voracious appetite. As they grow they go through a series of molts until they are ready to emerge. At this point they go into a rest state for a day or two, called diapause, when the finally changes between aquatic and flight form take place. These photos are of a type of blue darner dragon. Unfortunately I was unable to get a good shot of the side stripes on the thorax and so I can not identify it. It was taken in the Minnesota Valley NWR in October.

Hardy Waterlily: Inner Light

From the Como Zoo water garden.

Saffron-winged Meadowhawk

This is a female saffron-winged meadowhawk. The identifying characteristic is the gold or saffron color of the veins on the leading edge of each wing. If you look carefully, especially on the photo below, you can see that some of the other wing veins are also gold colored.

Other things to look for when identifying saffron-winged dragons are a solid colored stigma and yellow and black striped legs. Females and immature males are a golden color, like those pictured here, while mature males are primarily red, including their stigma. I photographed this dragon near the Old Cedar Ave Bridge in the Minnesota Valley NWR in October.