There's a first time for everything

Today was the barn owl's first program. I was scheduled for a presentation at the Cincinnati Museum Center (they do a "Harry Potter" camp every summer...owls, owls, owls) and it was a perfect opportunity to try him out. A small room, mostly-behaved children.
I am happy to announce that he was great. Awesome. Better than I expected.

I asked one of the counselors to take a few photos for me. But she failed miserably.

When I brought the owls back, I set up the camera to catch the action I knew was coming. You see, the barn owl doesn't like the "second glove", i.e. the glove that sometimes is worn on the other hand, especially if the bird is a bitey-sort. Which the barn owl is. He was in rehab for months as our rehabbers tried to save his wing. They were always coming at him with both gloves on, and you can imagine that he is not a happy camper when he sees two gloves.
Anyway, I use two gloves to handle him because, while he usually holds back on the actual bite, he has landed a few.

As I wound the tether up on my left hand, he was watching my right hand like a...hawk.
And screaming.





Another first today was a new caterpillar for our yard. There's something to be said for not yanking up every single Queen Anne's Lace plant.


Credit goes to Isabelle for this find. She saw this little spiky guy and called me over. Then, I saw another one on a nearby plant (turns out that these are the same species, just different instars.


Black swallowtail caterpillars! This one is even showing us his osmeterium! He actually looks mad, doesn't he?

What a weekend!

I have lots of photos, so if you are still one of those poor dopes with dial-up, go get a massage or a few beers and wait.


Da da dum dum, da da dum..............
Ready?

THURSDAY:
Isabelle graduated from Kindergarten. I cried. A lot.

(photo by Swami)

FRIDAY:
Caught some teeny hummingbird tongue action.







Powder thought my nice Longaberger bread basket would do for a bed.

Makes her look like she forgot her body somewhere.


SATURDAY:
I took the bird-sicles that Kathi gave me, to RAPTOR. I thawed out a starling and gave it to Lucy.


I left her alone, and by the time I came back to put her back she had de-headed it.

I did some glove training with No-No:

I could look at him all day. What a mixture of textures...pure white, copper, chevrons of dark grays...and let's not forget those big liquid eyes....Ooooooo.

Our first yard bird babies of 2008 showed up to learn how to use the feeders.
House finches:

Why is it that the last of the baby feathers are ALWAYS on top of their heads, like bad haircuts?

"Dad? Dad? Dad? Daaaaaaaaad? Daaaaaaaaaaad?"


This one hovered awkwardly for about 10 seconds trying to get back up to the feeders.

SUNDAY:
Picnic at Germantown Metropark.
My first kingfisher nest, on a cliff above the dam backwater:

Carrying a fish back to the babies!

This sign is by the fence above the backwater, just for those dummies who would think that a swim in an active backwater would be a great idea. I asked the girls to stand in front of it with frowns on their faces, and Lorelei, without any prompting, struck this pose:

Yep, that's my kid.


We took a nature walk and found a red-backed salamander:

Look, Nina! A Sally-mander!

I started turning over buckeye leaves and found a little blue caterpillar:

What kind of caterpillar uses buckeye for a host plant? Anyone know?

And a life dragonfly:

A Carolina Saddlebags. A goofy name for a spectacular dragonfly.

I didn't even include all the gardening I did in the past few days. I am typing with most of my fingers wrapped in Band-Aids. I will have to save all that excitement for the next post.

I went birding!!!

Swami and Swamette took the girls for the night, presumably to give us a break, but Swamette just wants to go shopping for school clothes. Hell hath no fury like Swamette with a credit card.

And look at Swami's new pet:

This is Stanley. He enjoys music and shedding skin.

A cute-burrito...with an extra helping of girliness.

I went to Kelley's Nature Preserve, and I saw more bugs than birds, but I was just happy to be out in 75 degree weather, so it was okay.

I like praying mantis's. Is that right? Mantis's?
This one checked me out while upside down...

And this one was giving me the evil eye right side up.

I jumped up and down with this one: A Viceroy!
The difference between monarchs and viceroys...the black line on the hindwings and smaller size. A life bug for me.

The Little Miami is so low, I was able to walk out to the middle of it. I stood there so long, soaking up the WARM sun and cool breeze and bird song, some neighbors poked their heads up and went about their business:

Some killdeer...

And let me say it now...give me a million ambiguous hawks ID's, but you can keep the sandpipers! I am lost on this one. Fairly clean grayish back, dark eye line, yellow legs and mostly white underparts with just a bit of gray/brown wash on the throat.
I need the Birdchick! She's the expert sandpiperess now!

I think this is a juvenile wood duck. That whitish chin strap is all I can see every time I look at this picture.

It's a bird! It's a plane!




I added a few new caterpillars to our habitat. I found these guys on some milkweed...milkweed caterpillars, soon to grow into milkweed tussock moths!

1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Who goes there?
King Arthur: It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Pull the other one!
King Arthur: I am, and this is my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: What? Ridden on a horse?
King Arthur: Yes!
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: You're using coconuts!
King Arthur: What?
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together.
King Arthur: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through...
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Where'd you get the coconuts?
King Arthur: We found them.
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Found them? In Mercia? The coconut's tropical!
King Arthur: What do you mean?
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Well, this is a temperate zone
King Arthur: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
King Arthur: Not at all. They could be carried.
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: What? A swallow carrying a coconut?
King Arthur: It could grip it by the husk!
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.
King Arthur: Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here?
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?
King Arthur: Please!
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Am I right?

"Houston, we have a pupa..."

(I was so proud of that title when I thought it up, I had to call Geoff and tell him about it)

Snookie is wrapped up in a sweet, surprisingly tiny chrysalis. I was surprised at how small it was...in pictures on other's blogs, etc, they look big, like the size of a bowl of a spoon...but it's less than 2 inches long. And you can't really call them cocoons, because they don't spin silk like moths do. Chrysalis or pupa.

I wanted to be there to videotape it turning into a pupa, but we were gone.
But you can bet your bippy I will be there to videotape the emergence!

You know other birds point and laugh.


And a totally different bird:


I found this juvenile male cardinal yesterday (with just a beginning of sheathed red feathers), weakly "chipping" near the fountain. I had my camera, so I got one quick pic, examined it to see if it was flighted (it wasn't) and took it in to get a box and to call Marilyn, one of our RAPTOR rehabbers who also treats songbirds.
The poor bird died in my hands in less than two minutes.



This is one of two emotions that owls have.
One is disgust, and the other one is this...startled.
News: Our gray screech owl has made a full recovery from her foot infection, and should be back at RAPTOR tomorrow! Yippee!
Now the red SO won't be publicly humiliated anymore. He can molt in peace. And by the way, I have seen "Molt" also spelled "Moult". They are both correct, right? English is stupid sometimes.

Okay, birders...someone please, please tell me I can put these on my life list...


Guinea fowl!
They were out in the middle of nowhere (no house anywhere near them), and ranging free. Someone tell me that this is a well-established introduced species that is now part of our avifauna.
What do you think? Listable?



News:
My Mom, the woman who didn't get an answering machine until the late 1990's, now has a freakin' lap top.


...With a wireless connection, which I connected for her, I might add.
She's entered the 21st century. I'll be dipped.
(Look at the fingers sticking up...I think she is afraid that it might blow up if she touches it too roughly.




Can't find the ID for this moth.
You'd think those "T" shapes would be easy to find in a guide.

Mom's wrenlets are big and fluffy and strong. At least a few baby bewds came from that nest box.

Tomorrow, I get to meet a fellow blogger. Trixie is in Cincinnati and we are going to meet up and let the kids play (so we can talk, hopefully), and I'm sure it will be bloggalicious.

Hawk ID answer, miscellany Sunday

Yesterday we discovered this moth on the front door, and I think it had just laid an egg...there was a small yellow thing near it's backside.

I can't tell if it is a False Crocus Geometer or a Chickweed Geometer.
The only reason I sound like I know what I'm talking about is because I looked it up in my new:

I hear that this is THE field guide for insects, and that Kenn even inserts some humor.
And really, how cool is Kenn Kaufman? The man has his own Wikipedia entry. I wanna meet him. Hey, Kenn? Come see us in Cape May!

Sigh...even though we really need these to be rain clouds, they aren't. But pretty anyway.

Snookie is growing and eating and pooping.
(For a funny take on monarch ranching, see Jess' post here. That woman makes me shoot milk out of my nose on a regular basis.)


We have yet another wee animal in the house.
Isabelle discovered them first as they left this morning, then after I hauled my cookies out of bed later, I saw them too:

Tadpoles in the fountain. Since I never found any tree frog eggs anywhere (which is crazy, since it sounded like they were knockin' boots EVERY night) I guess these are bullfrog tads.
Isabelle almost turned herself inside out as one was brought into the house and placed in her previously disastrous Frog Habitat: disastrous because the tadpoles stayed tadpoles for 8 months and when I thought they might need some sunlight, it got so hot that it killed them.
We only brought in one, just in case we goof it up again.
Isabelle named the tadpole Tiger Lily.
*****
Now, onto yesterday's hawk ID quiz:
Donald the Birder (who I just realized is in Cincinnati) got it right...a juvenile red-shouldered hawk. Donald, if you want a freshly minted Cape May Birder Blogger Conference T-shirt, email me your address and what size at capricorn1273@cinci.rr.com.
Juvenile hawks are very tricky, and even if you know what you are talking about, you may have to pour over a field guide first before being sure. Lynne was pretty close with a guess of Broad-winged. And yes, Lynne. You still get to come to Cape May. And you get a T-shirt because you are Flock member. In fact, everyone in the Flock needs to send me their T-shirt sizes so I can distribute the shirts.
And don't forget that you and I came up with the idea of going to Cape May in the first place. Remember when I was planning on coming up to Minnesota in February and Laura wouldn't come, so we said, "If Mohamed can't come to the mountain..."?

Education Corner time:
Red-shouldered hawks are divided into 5 subspecies. Our subspecies in the north and east are the largest.
Juveniles in the east streaked brown and white on underside, brown above, tail with dark and light brown bands, and their wing crescents are tawny. They are very similar to juvenile broad-winged hawks, but can be distinguished by their longer tail, wing crescents and accipiter-like flight patterns.
Interesting tidbit: Four of the subspecies exist on the eastern side of the continent and contact with each other, but the West coast form is separated from the other four by about 1000 miles! and the Florida form is the palest, with gray heads and very faint barring on the chest.
Want to get really confused? Check out the possibly-only documentation of a red-shouldered X red-tailed hawk hybrid. I take this seriously because David Sibley weighed in on the issue.

I need to do more raptor ID posts. They're fun, aren't they?

Suey, whaddya see? The greatest duck in history!

What would a weekend be without frenzied activity? Damn lonely, that's for sure.
Geoff had another book signing today, this time at a marathon (when I told my Mom this, she said, "What? At a gas station?") and I took the girls to RAPTOR with me and when Geoff was done, he came and got the girls. We do a lot of car/kid swapping and it wears me out.
As the girls and I were about to leave the neighborhood, we saw this:

Ducks on Parade!
When I saw them, I thought of the song near the end of Charlotte's Web...

My land, isn't he grand?
Zuckerman's famous pig
Golly, you gotta agree he's a real celebrity
Fine, swine wish he was mine
What if he's not so big?
He's some terrific, radiant, humble thig-a-majig of a pig
The terrific, radiant, humble
Zuckerman
Zuckerman
Zuckerman
Zuckerman
Zuckerman's
Zuckerman's famous pig!
Sorry, went on a little long there...
But don't they look like they are in a parade? And the one in front looked like he was sporting a tuxedo.
When I got out of my car, they ran at me.
Like I was a loaf of bread and just flashed them the goods.

These ducks have been seen around the subdivision for awhile now. And no one knows who they belong to. They are way too friendly for their own good. One bit me, and one bit Isabelle. I shooed them off the street and we went on. Geoff, can we have some ducks? We can let them noodle around in the back yard, and it will give Nellie and Hooper something to do. They can practice their herding.

Research is ongoing as to what kind of bug this is. It moved like a Garthim.

I had gone out to pick some fresh milkweed, and found a monarch cat I obviously had missed for the past week or so:

He is a biggin. Probably in his 5th and last instar. So I should be able to post his transformation into a jade earring soon.

And now, a bird quiz:
We have a possible new program bird at RAPTOR. She has been jessed and Jeff (Of tree-climbing fame) worked with her some today. We are giving her one more chance to make a full recovery from a broken wing, but if she stays with us, she will go out on programs with me.
I don't think Mon@rch should be allowed to guess on this one, since he has so much experience with banding and so on. But if no one gets it right, I will let him guess.

She's in a mew with Scarlet, our red-tailed hawk.
Any guesses on what kind of bird she is?
Hint: She is a juvenile. But that's not really a hint. Juvenile birds of prey all look alike.
Come on guys...make me proud.
The prize: I will make you a "Cape May First Annual Birder Blogger Conference" T-shirt.

Click To Play

An outing...and the Odd Couple

After my praise of the Cincinnati Museum Center yesterday, I decided that I needed to take the girls there.

Its official name is the Cincinnati Museum Center, but I still call it Union Terminal.
I bet Trixie has been here!

We went to two of the museums, the Children's one and the Natural History one.

Neil Armstrong's space suit is there.
(Did you know that Geoff interviewed Mr. Armstrong for a book? His first book was about a local business man who was also a friend of Mr. Armstrong's)


The Natural History Museum is full of so many cool things...caves, simulated glaciers, fossils, reconstructed skeletons of mastodons, giant sloths.
And a passenger pigeon. What a beautiful bird. Stupid humans.


And speaking of birds...
John James Audubon worked here back in 1819 as a taxidermist, with the predecessor of our current museum.
Cool!
(We Cincinnatians find any, ANY tie-in we can)

The Rotunda ceiling.
Word has it that the huge entry way has perfect acoustics, and that you can stand at one end and whisper, and a person can hear you all the way on the other side. I have never been able to do it, because it's always so loud in there.


Maxfield Keck’s bas-relief figures symbolize Commerce and Transportation.
Big, beautiful murals made of tiny pieces of ceramic. The sister pieces to these are hanging in the Greater Cincinnati Airport.





Pigeons don't know how to tell time, but they hang out on the clock anyway.

No matter where you go outside the exhibits, you can't forget you are in a train station.

These are some of the old rail entry points, where the trains came into the platforms.
And trains still come into this station, but in the back instead of the front.
You can grab an Amtrak from here.

"I'm livin' on the air in Cincinnati....
Cincinnati, W K R P."

News from the yard:

The new batch of swallowtail eggs have hatched and we have new babies to fawn over.


From the prairie...
I cannot WAIT to see this when it opens!


We have a balding cardinal:

"I'm not just the president, I'm also a client."

You know, I have seen bald cardinals in other people's yards, but never here. I was starting to get insulted.

The usual culprit is feather mites.
Eventually the feathers grow back. but not before the poor guy gets a lot of grief from the other birds.

In honor of Mary's post yesterday:
We have our own love affair going on in the yard.
A bi-species affair.
Duh duh dum!


Her: It's not going to work, Jay.
Him: Come on, baby. Ain't I sexy enough for you?

Her: You're too pushy, and my parents don't approve of you. We have such different lives.
It' s time to move on.
Him: .....Huh? Did you say something?


Her: See?!? You're looking at the feeder! All you care about is sex and food!
Him: Hey. That human put out peanuts.