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?

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

Raptor Identification Part One

I thought about doing a raptor ID post after reading Mary's post about her local raptor rehab center. And what kind of educator would I be if I couldn't give folks a little help identifying raptors?
I thought I would start with the three birds of prey you are most likely to find; Cooper's Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, and Red-shouldered Hawk. And it was a good day to do this, because I saw quite a few. Some of these are from today, and others are from recent jaunts.

Adult Cooper's Hawk. (Accipiter cooperii)
Accipiters: Short wings, long tails. This is a woodland bird, and the combination of short wings and long tails helps them maneuver through dense trees. These guys eat birds mostly, so being fast is an asset. Remember the rules of anatomy and physiology: Form equals function.


The first thing I notice about Coops is the dark cap and flat head. Coops are about 15 inches or so in length, with the females being almost 25% larger than the males (this is true with most birds of prey). To use a common object to compare, since it's hard sometimes to gauge size out in the field: Coops are about the length of a loaf of bread.
Lookalikes: Sharp-shinned Hawks: Much smaller, about blue jay-sized. They have very similar coloring, with subtle differences in the tail shape at the end. In flight, a Coop will have a prominent head, a sharp-shinned will look like it doesn't have a neck.

Adult Coops are a beautiful blue-gray on their backs, and have orange horizontal streaking on their chests (juveniles have brown vertical streaking)
Adults have bright red eyes (juveniles have yellow eyes).



(This is a DOA Coop I picked up in downtown Cincinnati)

Here's a juvenile Coop...note the yellow eyes and vertical streaking on the chest.

Adult red-tailed hawk. (Buteo jamaicensis)

Buteos: Long wings, short tails.
***
interesting tidbit: Buteo hawks are referred to as buzzards in other parts of the world. The name was mistakenly applied to vultures in North America by the early settlers.
***

Their prey is mostly small mammals, and they are a "wait and bate" hunter. They will sit high on a perch and scan the ground below them and then pounce down on the prey.
It's hard to mistake an adult (3 years or more) red-tailed hawk. The tail is very obvious while perched or in flight (in the sun, you can see the red through the tail).
They are about 18-26 inches long (think about two pieces of paper put together lengthwise.) Dark brown backs and cream to white chests (but there are many subspecies out there, depending on what part of the country you are in).
A belly band of brown streaking is diagnostic, but there are variations. As you can see in the photo below, this female has no belly band.



Helen
She was a fairly dark red-tailed. But you can see her belly band.

Adults have a full red tail with a dark band at the end (juveniles: A red-tailed hawk gets its red tail after the molt in the year after they hatch)
Confused?
First year: brown tail with dark bars across.
Second year: brown tail with some red tail feathers.
Third year: red tail.

These are our program red-tailed hawks.
This is a good picture, to show size differences between males and females:
Scarlet (female) is on the left, Two Socks (male) is on the right.
I can always tell them apart. Scarlet just looks like a bad ass.

And sometimes, nature throws us a curve ball. This is Isis, our program leucistic red-tail. She is NOT an albino: She has a dark spot on the back of her head, and she also has the most beautiful blue eyes.
If you see one like this, call someone!

Lookalikes: Red-shouldered hawks. But if you look closely, you will see the differences right away:

Adult red-shouldered hawk. (Buteo lineatus)
Another buteo: Long wings, short tail. This is a hawk who also likes small mammals, but will also eat birds, amphibians, etc. (Wait and bate)
Adults are about 17-24 inches long (roughly the same as red-tailed).
In flight: a pale crescent at the base of the primaries (near the "wrist").
They have a chunky, black and white barred tail and red shoulders (hence the name).
An orangey chest will differentiate them from red-tailed.
They have a more scalloped look to their backs than red-taileds.
Lookalikes: Red-tailed hawks.
Juvenile red-shouldereds look very much like Cooper's Hawks, though they will have a bit of red on the shoulders.

When in doubt: Look at the tail and the chest.
So, is this a red-tailed or red-shouldered?

I hope I didn't confuse anyone. I probably did. I do a lot better vocally, in my programs.
It also helps to have a bird on my arm.