The Seventeenth Raptor

I took the auto tour on Saturday. Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge is a fantastic place full of multiple habitats: Mud flats, deep ditches, vast expanses of deeper water, marshes, swamp...

The auto tour is my favorite part of the area because you can go at your own pace, and birding from a car is easy on the feet.

At one point, I had stopped (it's easy to find an 'exciting' bird, because a bunch of cars will be stopped and everyone will be out of their car, looking in the same direction). I noticed large, dark birds circling above. Vultures are around, but not like here. A large dark bird is worth checking out.
There were three birds:
1. The first one was obviously an immature bald eagle; Wings held totally flat. dark overall with lighter splotchiness.
2. The second one was too high up to tell anything.
3. The third one was holding its wings in a very shallow dihedral (a "V") and the plumage was all dark brown. It turned into the sun and I saw a golden gleam across the head and nape.
Oh my God. A Golden Eagle.

I stood there in disbelief for a minute. Golden eagles are hard to come by in Ohio. But I got my validation when the carload of people just down from me started yelping....I heard one woman say, "That looks like a Golden to ME!"

I grabbed my cell phone and left a probably maniacal message for Kathi.

I couldn't get a clear picture of it, so I just watched it until it was gone. Grinning like a fool, I got back in the car and moved on. As I turned a corner, I saw the second bird swoop low enough to ID it...an adult Bald Eagle. Whoot.

I came across another car stopped, and I got out to see what they were looking at. It was the "swarm" of dunlins. I asked them if they had seen the Golden.
This guy said, rather snarky, "Well, I saw the IMMATURE bald eagle."
I said, "I did, too. But there was a Golden with it."
He then started schooling me in raptor identification. I decided not to alert him to the fact that I don't need schooling in raptor identification.
I moved on...and began to second-guess myself. I know I shouldn't have, but he bugged me.
I went over all that I had seen, and I kept telling myself that I did see a Golden.
The next day I checked the Hawk Watch Tower list, and observers had seen FIVE Goldens. I had my validation.
I adore other birders. We are, for the most part, helpful people who are fun and who listen. And then there are those "Crotchety Old Lady From The Birds" types. COLFTB's.
Have I just created a new acronym?
So, anyway. That Golden Eagle makes my 17th raptor species. Woo hoo!

Bird stories

Here's my list of birds seen and/or heard this weekend (Thanks to Kathi, this list is way longer than it would have been if I had been alone):
Bold = LIFER
(there are only seven lifers...I must have miscounted. But still....)
***
Canada goose
Tundra swan (yes, I saw a live one)
Wood duck (In a TREE, no less)
Mallard
Northern shoveler

Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron (100's)
Great egret (100's)

Turkey vulture
Bald eagle
Red-shouldered hawk
Red-tailed hawk
GOLDEN EAGLE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
American kestrel
Peregrine falcon

American coot

SEMIPALMATED PLOVER
Killdeer
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Spotted sandpiper
Ruddy turnstone
Dunlin (500 +)

Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
COMMON TERN

Mourning dove

Northern flicker

Eastern phoebe

Purple martin
Tree swallow
Barn swallow

Black-capped chickadee
HOUSE WREN
Golden-crowned kinglet
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Veery
SWAINSON'S THRUSH
Wood thrush
American robin
Gray catbird
Brown thrasher
European starling

WARBLERS:
NASHVILLE
Yellow
Chestnut-sided
Magnolia
Cape May
Black-throated blue
Yellow-rumped (Hey, Delia! I saw yellow-rumped warblers!!! Hee hee)
Palm
American redstart
Prothonotary
Ovenbird
Northern waterthrush
Yellow-breasted chat

SUMMER TANAGER

White-throated sparrow
White-crowned sparrow

Northern cardinal
Rose-breasted grosbeak
Indigo bunting

Red-winged blackbird (there were at least two RWBB's every five feet. And that's not an exaggeration)
Common grackle
Baltimore oriole

American goldfinch

House sparrow (very very sparse, thank goodness)

And now, some pictures:


I don't have an ID for this one yet. Anyone want to throw in? It's either some sort of empidonax or a female warbler of some kind.
UPDATE: Kathi can't comment (Blogger's acting like Frogger) but she agrees that this is some sort of empidonax)


Yep, another dead tundra swan. I Chimped, but the body was too torn up to figure anything out. I looked for bands, but this one is anonymous.


This one was alive, but looked bloody! I watched, and it seemed to preen most of this stuff off. I assume that it just had its head stuck in some mud underwater, and not injured in some way. I observed it for quite a few minutes, and it seemed just fine. Scared me, though.


Ovenbirds are just color-crazy. This one was stylin' with that brown-bordered orange head.



I would very much like this to be a gray-cheeked thrush. It's not outside the realm of possibility, since Kathi saw one the day before. Anyone?
UPDATE: A Swainson's. Crap.


Poor grackle. He got into a tussle with someone.


A muskrat and a lesser yellowlegs....an odd couple.
Feel free to sing "Muskrat Love" by Captain and Tennille. I'll wait.

Story:
It was getting late in the day, and I knew that I had to start for home soon.
I walked the lake trail that Kathi had pointed out to me earlier, and I am glad I did.

First, I saw the terns that we had glimpsed the day before, but couldn't ID.
Common terns, soaring and plunging into the very cold water for fish. They didn't even care that I was standing just beyond the water, snapping photos and giggling like a maniac.


They reminded me of the black skimmers the Flock saw at Cape May.
Gorgeous, elegant, graceful birds.

I was preparing myself mentally for the actual removal of body and soul from MY Lake Erie ( I never want to come home after being there), when I noticed that the terns had disappeared before my eyes.
A medium-sized bird was flying parallel to the beach with strong, purposeful wing beats. Hmm. That looks like some kind of dark gull. No, wait. That looks falcon-ish.

A peregrine falcon. Just for me.


(This is the best I could do. My eyes were all teary and I was jumping up and down and struggling with my new birding bra and trying to get the camera up to my face)

Peregrines hold a sacred place in my heart. Lucy was the first one I ever laid eyes on, and her mixture of sweetness and nervousness, and yet that unabashed fierceness, has endeared the species to my soul forever.
So I stood there on a lonely beach on Lake Erie, buffeted by cold wind and freshwater spray, and cried because a peregrine falcon had just passed by. Yeah, I'm all crunchy on the outside, but there's a chewy, gooey center in there somewhere.

Tomorrow: The eagle that didn't get away!

Home.

I'm back in Southwestern Ohio. And thoroughly birded-out.

I will post lots of pictures and stories later, but for now, the stats:

Total number of species: 63
Total number of lifers: 8

All I want to say right now is, "Kathi, you should have stuck around. The sun came out, and I found the terns. And a peregrine. And a summer tanager."

I take back what I said about Kathi

Okay...in the past, I have called Kathi a birding jinx. I hereby withdraw that statement. Even Kathi can't jinx the birds at Magee Marsh.
I got 48 bird species today. 4 of them were lifers.

I found this one:


A Swainsons's thrush. I found it and ID'ed it! Woo hoo!
Lifer.



A house wren was nest building in a cavity right above our heads.
Lifer. How could I have never seen a house wren before?



Veery. Very cooperative, sitting in the sun posing.


A peekaboo rose-breasted grosbeak.


Ruddy turnstone.


Want to see another dead animal?
Well, too bad. Here it is:

A very dead tundra swan. And if you look closely, you can see me touching it with one finger. Just to make my mother and mother-in-law crazy.

Kathi and I split up for the rest of the day. I told her that she was allowed to peel off whenever she wanted to, since I am aware that Susan (in uber-crazy birding mode) is a lot to take for long periods. I know that I am a bit much sometimes so I let her escape.


Lesser yellowlegs


Greater yellowlegs. Looks like the same bird, doesn't it? The only real difference between the two is size. A greater yellowlegs is about 4 inches longer than a lesser. Thank goodness they were together to compare.


Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge gives lots of opportunities for good photo ops. This great egret coasted right in front of me on the auto tour. If you have the good fortune to visit here, do yourself a favor and take the auto tour. You can go as fast or as slow as you want, and sitting in your car gives you a portable bird blind.



This was fun. A huge flock of somethings swooped down the road, and I was able to catch up with them:


A flock of dunlins. About 500 of them.

The Arrival

I was supposed to have a lake view room with a Jacuzzi. The hotel got my reservation wrong.
I am now in a closet-sized hotel room next door. With no lake view...unless I stick my head out the window and lean way way out. My view is of Kathi's car at the good hotel across the parking lot. She has the Jacuzzi. She has the lake view.
Dammit.
Oh, well. This cheap hotel room means I have more $$$ to spend on souvenirs.

After dinner, Kathi and I walked the beach, looking for shells, birds, whatever. We found a spotted sandpiper....
...and a dead raccoon, face-down in the sand. I wanted to Chimp it, but I held back.



And for some reason, Kathi was looking for birds in her hotel room carpet, with a flashlight.

(Just kidding...she had dropped a tiny piece of binocular equipment...but it looked funny!)

Cellar Door

There is some question as to who exactly stated that "cellar door" was one of the most beautiful combinations of syllables in the English language. J.R.R. Tolkien definitely mentioned it, saying, "More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful."
And some say it goes back to H.L. Mencken, who repeated a story about a Chinese student, knowing very little English, finding "cellar door" enjoyable... not for what it meant, but for how it sounded.
Whatever.

A combination of syllables that is particularly sonorous to me is Magee Marsh.
Say it with me....maGEE marrssssshhhhh. A string of sounds that never fails to run a shivery finger up my spine and makes me goofy with glee.

I will spend the day tomorrow packing and jumping about like a giddy school-girl, preparing for my big drive up to Northern Ohio. This will be the second time I am going alone, but the first time I will be meeting up with a birder-buddy...KatDoc.
So I will take tomorrow night off from blogging...and the next post will be from the gorgeous, fantastic, can't-be-overestimated, birdilicious Magee Marsh.

Queen City Birding Festival

Saturday was the day for the first annual Queen City Birding Festival. This event was geared more toward kids, but there were plenty of old timers there, too.

Speaking of old timers, let me tell you a story:
I had the birds perched out for this program, with a table, chairs and the carriers blocking the public from getting too close to the birds. The red screech owl was perched on the table, as far from "petting" hands as possible. I have a sign that I printed up telling folks how to enjoy our birds; Don't yell, don't touch, ask lots of questions, feel free to take pictures, etc.
Well, this 203-year-old man came over and was getting a bit too close to the SO (the SO is a nervous bird anyway, and he was starting to show signs of stress). I stepped up to block the man from getting any closer. The old geezer was standing right in front of my instruction sign, and decided the SO needed shade (it was sunny, but the bird was fine) and he started to place a piece of paper over the screech owl. I gently put my hand on the man's hand and said, "Please don't do that." The old fart turned and said nastily, "I don't LIKE that." And I said, "Well, I don't either. My birds, my rules." And off he went, grumbling and geezering. I didn't see him again.
I mean, HELLO? Wild birds of prey? The person in charge of protecting said wild birds of prey, telling you not to do something? THAT gives you the right to be a &%$@?

The best part of the festival...this guy:

This is David Russell. He teaches ornithology at Miami University. He bands. He's fun. He's a walking encyclopedia of bird knowledge. He made me wanna go to school and get a degree in ornithology.
I saw him first at the OOS Owl Symposium last year, but didn't get to officially meet him until this Saturday. What a hoot.
Aside from bird walks, me with the raptors, etc, there was also a banding demo.


"Even at this angle, you still look like an ***hole."

This next photo is bad if you want to look at the birds (an orchard oriole), but it's the people I want you to look at:


The woman wasn't nearly as disgusted as she looks. She was just a random person helping with the data entry. Her son, to the left, looks like he's about to puke or sneeze.


Female Eastern Towhee. Subtle colors, but still that evil red eye....


...and a perky little brood patch.


Male orchard oriole...just drink that in. The rich, dried-blood color and the glossy black. The two-tone bill of black and silver. *shivers*


And as usual, Sylvester disapproves. Of everything and everyone.