A Warming Trend

I had the great experience this past week of being able to take some of my students on a winter overnight at a local park. The facilities included 8 small log cabins and a lodge. The cabins have no electricity and are heated by a wood stove. Meals are cooked outside over a wood fire. This is our yearly trip to introduce kids to some basic winter ecology and expose them to an experience they might not have chosen to do on their own. To make it really interesting, we always pick the last week of January for the trip. As always it was a fun time and everyone survived.



While the kids were out working with the park naturalists on a hike, I got to hang around the bird feeder station and play with the new camera. It was a very active day with the temperature right around 15 degrees. The little fellow above was one of only two Common Redpolls that were at the feeder that day.



Black-capped Chickadees however, were all over the place. If they weren't on the feeders they were perched on the surrounding vegetation waiting for their turn like this one on some burdock.



Over the course of the afternoon I was able to show some of the kids great looks at a variety of common feeder birds. We saw 4 species of woodpeckers including a Pileated that came into the suet feeder and stayed for quite a while. The other woodpecker species seen were Downy, Hairy and Red-bellied. I had hoped to see some of the White-winged Crossbills that have moved down to the upper midwest in such large numbers that they seem to be everywhere. They didn't show up. On the other hand, the next morning as we were preparing to head back to school I spotted a Barred Owl sitting in a tree just up the hill from the lodge. It's nice to have the opportunity to have as much fun as the kids on these trips.

With the warmer temperatures today I think the birds wills be more active than the last few days around my house. Hopefully I'll see some activity while I try to clear my sidewalk of the ice and snow.

A Quick Note to New Visitors

Hey Everybody!

To see the gynandromorphic Cardinal and some followup posts you'll need to click on "older posts" at the bottom of the page.
The date of the original post was Jan. 8th.

Thanks!

Odds and Ends

I thought I'd take a bit of time to address some things that have come to me through the comments to the blog recently.


First, I'm excited to tell everyone that there was an article in the Montreal Gazette on Wed. 1/21 that mentions this blog and the now famous gynandromporph cardinal. Dr. David Bird (and that is his real name) gave us a mention in a column he writes for the general public. You can link to it here:

Montreal Gazette Article

Sometimes readers will have questions and if they leave an address I try to reply but this reply will have to be public because I don't have an email address for this questioner. "A Girl" asked for help in IDing a hawk she saw. From the description there are several possibilities but a large hawk with white on the belly and in the tail, being found at this time of year suggests Rough-legged Hawk. They are being seen pretty regularly in much of the midwest. Be careful, juvenile Rough-leggeds look different from adults at this time of year.

Finally, Alisa left a comment about the cardinal and seemed to not believe this was anything more than a photoshop job. I can assure you it's not. The condition of gynandromorphy is well documented (even though rare) and the genetics of how this happens is also well understood. Don't you love a world where reality can be so strange that it seems like science fiction?

Arthur C. Clarke has nothing on Mother Nature!

More from Saturday Banding

Mid-winter banding is often not the time when we catch the most unusual or exciting birds but we sometimes find interesting things even when we catch the most common birds. Yesterday we caught 30 birds with 19 of them being Black-capped Chickadees. At this time of year we can only say that these chickadees are after hatch year and sex unknown which makes processing them pretty straightforward. Even so, it is important to look at each bird as if it is unique. By checking both wings of the chickadee pictured above we noticed that one wing had the secondary and tertiary flight feathers on its left wing molting in. This is not the time we would expect to see this so we think it may be replacing feathers it lost in an attack by a predator or it may have lost feathers when they became frozen to something.



One of the species that we are seeing more and more often is the Red-bellied Woodpecker. This is a species that is expanding its range northward and is now common in at least the southern half of Minnesota.



The other woodpecker species we observed yesterday included this Downy Woodpecker female at one of the suet feeders. Mark Newstrom, the master bander at this station, has done lots of research on the molt patterns of Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers. Any time we catch one of these he gets to have final say as to age of the bird. Their molt patterns are fairly complex.



This fellow got his picture on the blog just because he looks so angry. Of course, if I had just gone through what this guy went through, I'd be upset too.

First Banding Session of the New Year

White-breasted Nuthatch

The cold weather broke just in time for us to do our monthly banding session at the Lowry Nature Center near Victoria, MN. The morning temperature was just on the border of allowing us to use nets but the wind was significant and there were no sheltered spots to place a net. Instead we stuck to Potter traps and had a good morning. We didn't have any really unusual species but the activity around the feeders was at times chaotic. I think the birds were really trying to replace all that energy they had used up the last few days.


Purple Finches and American Goldfinches at the feeder platform.

Feeder platforms by the library held large numbers of American Goldfinches and Purple Finches. It was good to see all the PUFIs around though we only caught 2 for banding. Another nice visitor to the suet feeder was a Brown Creeper. We watched 3 species of woodpecker (Downy, Hairy and Red-bellied) chow down on the suet too.



The program visitors were excited to see a Barred Owl perched just outside the nature center and over the feeder station. We didn't see it catch anything but it did fly over to the mew in the yard and we think it may have been vocalizing with the nature center's captive Barred Owl that they use for educational programs.



I went out to get a couple of photos and when the owl flew it appeared to be missing at least one primary feather on it's left wing.


The owl looked around one more time and then took off over my head and flew back into the woods.


The totals for today are as follows:

Black-capped Chickadees - 15 new/4 retrap
American Goldfinch- 1 new/0 retrap
American Tree Sparrow - 5 new/0 retrap
Dark eyed Junco - 1 new/0 retrap
White-breasted Nuthatch - 1 new/0 retrap
Purple Finch - 2 new/0 retrap
Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1 new/0 retrap

Total species = 7
Total Individuals = 30

A Break in the Cold

We have finally seen the outside temperature rise above 0 degrees F for the first time in 86 hours.In a couple of days when it's getting toward 30+ degrees we'll all be talking trash about how it wasn't that bad and how winters when we were kids were a lot colder, etc.. But this was a pretty nippy 3 1/2 days we've been through.

The good news is that the timing of this warm up is just in time for our monthly banding session at Carver Park near Victoria, MN. We'll open the station from 9 - noon and will use traps instead of nets. With this break in temperatures I expect the feeders to be busy as birds try to refuel after hunkering down for the last few days.

Crazy as it sounds, the talk is a warm up to the point of getting some freezing RAIN on Monday possibly.

I'll post tomorrow with anything interesting from the banding day. Enjoy the heat wave!

A Front Moves Through

Yesterday was a beautiful, cold, crisp, clear winter day. Tonight my back hurts, my nose is cold and the temperature in on it's way to -10. At least my driveway is clear of the snow that fell all day (including the pile the plow put back in my driveway after I had moved it the first time). To cheer myself up I thought I'd post some other photos from yesterday.

The tall grasses along the boardwalk in the river valley looked like bright lights on very thin poles.



This fellow was just one of many American Robins that I saw on my walk. They were all over the area with open water.



As long as little streams like this stay open, the local birds will have a much better chance of making it through the next few days. This is also the spot to keep visiting to see if anything unusual shows up for a drink.



I really do love the patterns water makes as it flows along. The quiet surroundings let me hear the gurgling of this little ripple.

I think my birding for the next couple of days is going to be out the windows at school. I can usually count on being able to watch the wild turkeys as they scramble over the compost pile looking for "treats".

Birding on a Winter Day

After the last few days of talking about genetics and odd birds, I thought I'd take advantage of the break in the clouds this afternoon and go down to the Minnesota River Valley to see what I could turn up. In spite of it being about 20 degrees with an increasing wind, I was able to see some nice birds. The Northern Shrike above was sitting in a tree along the edge of the parking lot looking for a meal. I was surprised at the number of American Robins that were around and how vocal they were. Most of the ones I saw were near open water or in the Buckthorn trees, eating berries.



The Trumpeter Swans were in their usual place and didn't seem to mind several birders watching them from the shoreline. This family group was at the west end of Blackdog Lake. The Belted Kingfisher that was there last week wasn't around today.



The river valley always has a number of wintering Bald Eagles that are easy to find. This adult was in a tree on the north bank of the Minnesota River and there was another individual sitting on top of one of the power line supports that crosses the lake. The best bird of the day, a Rough-legged Hawk, got away before I could get a good photo of it.

The forecast is for some snow tonight and then very cold temperatures for the next several days. Keep those feeders full!

Gynandromorph vs. Hermaphrodite

Thanks to all who have looked at the bilateral gynandromorph Northern Cardinal in the post below and left comments. It certainly has been an interesting find. It even made the Quad Cities Times!

Birdchick asked the question "Why is this a gynandromorph and not a hermaphrodite?" The answer is that hermaphrodism is a condition where an organism has both male and female reproductive organs but other external characteristics may be normal. In some organisms, hermaphrodism is the normal condition. Gynandromorphism is different. This condition occurs when, in the first mitotic division of an ovum (the division of a fertilized egg from one cell into two cells), the sex chromosomes experience nondisjunction. In other words they do not separate normally and the result is that one of the new cells has chromosomes ZW (the female genotype in birds) and the other cell is ZZ (the male genotype). The result is that the half of the body that develops from one of the cells is female and the one that develops from the other is male. It's even reported that in birds that show sexual dimorphism, the two sides will show differences in size. Is that cool or what?

The other question that people asked was "Could it reproduce?" Well, male birds have paired testes so this bird probably has a testis in it's left side. However, most female birds (there are groups that are exceptions) have only one functioning ovary on the left side of their body. Because this bird is female on the right half I don't know if that would cause it to not have an ovary. Probably the only way to be sure would be by being able to have a peek at the internal organs.

While this phenomenon is rare it has been reported in a variety of bird species including Orchard Oriole, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Evening Grosbeak, American Kestrel and House Sparrow. Apparently nothing is known of the breeding habits of birds with this condition.

I'm hoping to head out tomorrow and do a bit of birding if the weather cooperates. Who knows what new and bizarre things are out there to find?

I just received the coolest bird photo I've seen in a long time. A retired colleague of mine (Tom Goodwin) got this from a friend of his who teaches in Rock Island, Illinois. This is a gynandromorph cardinal, half male and half female that is frequenting the feeders by his house. This is a genetic abnormality that happens when the sex chromosomes (Z and W in birds) do not separate normally during early embryonic development. Credit for this find goes to Bob Motz and the photos were taken by Jim Frink.



The above photo is the best one. The photos below are small but do allow you to view the bird from different angles.



It just goes to show that even the "common" birds can show you amazing things. A pretty exciting find for mid-winter.

Books for Banders

In the latest Ornithological Newsletter there is an announcement of several new books available that may be of interest to banders and birders out there. Most exciting to me is the publication of

Bird Banding in North America: The First Hundred Years by Jerome A. Jackson, William E. Davis, Jr. and John Tautin.
(ISBN 1-877973-45-9)

This is available from the:
Nuttall Ornithological Club
c/o Bird Department
Museum of Comparative Zoology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
($40/cloth)

A second more technical publication is

The Ornithologist's Dictionary by Johannes Erritzoe, Kaj Kampp, Kevin Winker and Clifford Firth.

This dictionary contains over 5000 ornithological terms that are precisely defined. It is available in the U.S. from Buteo Books.
($25)

Finally, there is a new book that is a memoir of Walter Post Smith and tells the story of the Kiptopeke Banding Station. This history is available through major online bookstores or:

Center for Conservation Biology
The College of William and Mary
PO Box 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23187
(no price given)



So Many Books, So Little Time!

A Literary Journal for Birders

A new literary journal has come to my attention recently and I am very excited about it. The LBJ: Avian Life, Literary Arts is a small but dense collection of poems, short essays, art and book reviews, all aimed at people who love birds and especially birders. Any collection that includes stories about birding along the coast of Alaska and has poems that include the scientific names and call notes of the birds in the poem has immediately caught my attention. Not only is the subject exciting, the writing is excellent! Add to that the artwork of Barry Kent MacKay whose name many of you will recognize and this new publication is a real jewel.



I knew this was something special when I read the Editor's Introduction by Nick Neely. This is a writer who knows birding and the intro is almost worth the cost of the whole journal.

Admittedly, I am not a literary critic. My experience with poetry doesn't go beyond the understanding that the words at the end of the lines must rhyme and that any poem that starts "There once was a man from Nantucket" should not be handed in for a grade in English class. That said, I really liked most of the writing in this journal. Some of the poetry is beyond my taste but even the way the poems are presented on the page gives them impact (I especially refer to the poem The Hawk by William S. Gainer).

The book reviews at the back of the journal are insightful and are aimed at the birding audience. While this is not writing about finding birds or identifying birds, reading these pieces will teach you about birds.

If I had to find fault with anything I would have 2 minor issues. One is the cost of the journal. The $9 newsstand price does sound like a lot for a small magazine but in my opinion quality wins out. It is a bit cheaper by subscription which is $15 a year for 2 issues.

The other complaint I have is the inclusion of a poem by Judith Carson called Graymalkin abut a bird killing cat. Her comparison of the cat to an owl put me off. Just a bit of prejudice I suppose.



I'll end by noting that I have no financial stake in this enterprise but I do hope that it succeeds because it brought me great pleasure while reading it. If you are interested in tracking this journal down the contact information is below:

www.literarybirdjournal.org

or

The LBJ: Literary Life, Avian Arts
Department of English/098
University of Nevada, Reno
Reno, NV 89557