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I've been writing and producing "For the Birds" since May 12, 1986, almost entirely as a volunteer, and started writing this blog in May 2007. I'm not good at asking for money to support my projects—there are too many important causes that I really don't like to divert attention and money away from. So this is a one time request.

I'm trying to save up enough money for two major purchases--a new iMac that will work faster with sound and photo files than my current laptop (plus I want to make sure my laptop lasts as long as possible--it's the computer I bring when I'm making presentations), and a really good light-gathering camera lens.

So this week I created a Go Fund Me campaign. I will end it on April 30, and promise never again to pester you for money. Please only donate if you like my work AND have money to spare.

Blue Jays Are Here to Stay

At 7:37 Central Time on Saturday morning, March 31, the moon will be full. As the second full moon in the month of March, it qualifies as a blue moon. And once in a blue moon, I am personally committed to honoring Blue Jays with National Blue Jay Awareness Month.

Why Blue Jays? These birds have a vivaciousness, intelligence, curiosity, and beauty unmatched in the bird world. Of course, every bird species’ qualities are unmatched in the bird world, because every bird species is unique. Blue Jays happen to have been Mark Twain’s favorite bird, or at least the only species about which he wrote a short story, “Baker’s Blue Jay Yarn.” And for myself, I cannot hear a Blue Jay squawk without being pulled out of whatever mundane task I’m embroiled in, giving me a moment of emotional and mental escape into the natural world.

It’s very easy to forget the many ways our own species is enmeshed in the natural world. If you have any doors, window trimmings, or furniture made of oak, you can thank Blue Jays, who as the last glaciers retreated planted acorns. These heavy seeds would simply drop to the ground beneath oak trees if not for squirrels carrying and burying them a bit farther, and for jays, which can cache them miles from the parent oak tree. That is why oaks started growing along the glacial melt lines years before wind-blown seeds had a chance.

Many of your backyard songbirds depend on Blue Jays, the powerhouses running avian neighborhood watch programs and serving as the noisiest alarm system when a snake, cat, fox, or other predator appears on the scene.

Blue Jays impact the natural world in ways that we can’t begin to understand and appreciate—we haven’t even figured out their basic migration system yet! This everyday bird, large and vivid and noisy enough to make even non-birders take notice, is just one of over 10,000 species of birds on this planet that each have a critical role in nature’s web.

Once in a Blue Moon, I like to remind people just how beholden to Blue Jays we are. I’d love to call that kind of specific attention to Le Conte’s Sparrows, Bobolinks, Blackburnian Warblers, Upland Sandpipers, Sharp-tailed Grouse, and every other species we take for granted, whether or not we’re even aware of its existence.

At a time of such unique political divisiveness and strife, when our clean air, water, and soil are under siege and people are warring about everything from guns to immigration to science to climate change, it’s good to remember that long after we’ve either used our brains to solve our problems or our weapons to end them for good, the earth will keep on keeping on. Whatever happens to those of us who are only human, Blue Jays are here to stay.

The more I read the paper, the less I comprehend
The world and all its problems, and how it all will end.
Nothing seems to be lasting. But that needn’t be so hard.
We’ve got something permanent right here in our own backyard.   

It’s very clear—Blue Jays are here to stay.
Not for a year, but ever and a day.
Those Russian hackers, and NRA spokesmen, and social media that we know
May just be passing fancies, and in time may go.   

But oh, my dear, Blue Jays are here to stay.
Together we’re going a long, long way.
In time the Donald will tumble.
Trump Tower will crumble.
They’re only made of clay.
But Blue Jays are here to stay.   

(you can hear the California Ravens singing the song here)

Of Architects and Windows

On August 1, 1986, I produced a For the Birds program stating that one of the most dangerous hazards for backyard birds was window collisions. Ever since then, I’ve been talking and writing consistently about the danger of glass. “Make your windows safe for birds” was one of the 101 Ways to Help Birds in my 2006 book, as was “Know what to do when a bird hits your window.”

In 1986, no conservation organizations were focused on window collisions. One scientist, Daniel Klem, had started researching the issue in the 70s, but he had a horrible time getting ornithological journals to publish his work because the editors said the topic of  window collisions wasn’t “suitable.” Protecting habitat is obviously a very important issue, but some scientists decided that habitat was the only issue. Nevertheless, Dr. Klem persisted, and fortunately, the Journal of Field Ornithology and The Wilson Bulletin recognized the importance of his work. He came up with an estimate in the 1990s that on the order of a hundred million to a billion birds are killed by windows each year. A lot of ornithologists pooh-poohed that figure until they worked out their own studies, which confirmed it and even suggested that Dr. Klem’s estimate was conservative.

Klem also learned that 50 percent of all birds that collide with windows die, immediately or later, from head injuries.

Now some cities and states, including Minnesota, have adopted standards requiring bird-safe glass on all structures built with public funds. (US Bank Stadium got grandfathered in with its bird-killing glass.) But apparently architects still have no clue about how dangerous glass is, and continue to use enormous amounts of glass in privately funded buildings, like houses. When they think about aesthetics, architects don’t factor in the sound of thuds and the sight of dead birds beneath a window.

One of my close friends recently wrote to a Minnesota architect to share her own experience of having birds collide with glass in her home, because she noticed this architect's houses had similar design with lots of glass. To share awareness, she mentioned upcoming information presentations that Minneapolis Audubon and other organizations are putting together about the magnitude of the glass collision problem. This architect responded:

"... only when birds migrate in the spring [have] we … had any problems and only for a day or two. Usually they get knocked out and recover… some die but not many. 

We did an all glass facing... building. Bird prevention was the first concern. We did some very simple things to horizontally slat the top third of the windows and we had a sidewalk along the floor to ceiling windows which … reflected into the windows. 

We have had no bird kills to our knowledge in 5 years and I think those two factors stand out as reasons. I'm sure we would have heard from the [owner] if there was a problem. 

On houses we often place an owl or hawk impression on the inside of the window and this works well."

I know of no one in the building referred to who is systematically checking for bird carcasses, so in this case, ignorance seems to be bliss. And everyone’s research on this subject indicates that nothing we place on the inside of glass deters collisions—stickers and other objects need to be placed on the outside of the glass for birds to notice them. It’s also frustrating to realize how poor even double and triple paned glass insulate a room compared to other building materials. You’d think that even if architects didn’t care about birds, more of them would care about squandering energy and contributing to climate change.

Based on this architect’s response to the question, it’s clear that architects are not getting the message about the kinds of head injuries birds get at windows, and about how very many collide with glass. 

Last week, Dan Klem spoke about the issue at Springbrook Nature Center—a stunning new building built using bird-safe glass. I recorded his address, which is linked to here. There are so many serious problems Americans are facing right now. You’d think solving this one would be simple and straightforward—the solution is as clear as glass. 

Dan Klem's speech at Springbrook Nature Center

Dan Klem kindly let me put a lavalier microphone on his lapel so I could capture his talk at the Springbrook Nature Center. His talk was the first in a series of talks about window collisions in hopes that we can find a way of making the glass on the U.S. Bank Stadium bird safe. You can hear Dan's entire 74-minute presentation here. I'll post the Q & A session tomorrow or Monday.

Listeners' Favorite Birds: Erik's Gyrfalcon

In recent weeks, I’ve been asking listeners and blog readers to call or send a sound recording telling us what their favorite bird is and why. A birder named Erik sent me a voice memo from his phone:

Hi. This is Erik, and my favorite bird is the Gyrfalcon, because they are a stunning bird of prey with beautiful field marks, they are powerful, and they enjoy the cold conditions outside. 

In the winters when a Gyrfalcon appears in the Duluth-Superior Harbor area, birders flock here from all around. Word gets out, but that can occasionally be problematic, because the Gyrfalcon’s desirability extends beyond the birding community into the world of falconry. 

This largest, most powerful of all falcons—well, not counting the Millennium Falcon—is also one of the most sought-after birds by wealthy falconers throughout the world. It’s not particularly rare, on a global scale, but ranges the furthest north of all daytime raptors—the northernmost parts of Hudson Bay are as far south as Gyrfalcons breed. The Snowy Owl is the only avian predator that breeds even further north.

Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota fall within the Gyrfalcon’s regularly occurring winter range, but only a very few of them wander this far south—most of the North American population stays in Alaska and northern Canada year-round. The Gyrfalcon not only endures but also thrives in the harshest conditions the frozen north can mete out. The most likely place we see them in either Minnesota or Wisconsin is in the Duluth-Superior Harbor. I don’t know of any sightings this winter, but in several recent years one has spent the entire season in the harbor.

The Gyrfalcon’s name causes a lot of confusion. Because the species is circumpolar, it had an English name long before most American birds—the word gyrfalcon’s first known English use, according to Merriam-Webster, was in the 14th century, and according to Cade’s Falcons of the World, it was well known in northern Europe at least a century earlier. Cade wrote that this was the falcon which:

Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, in his thirteenth century treatise on falconry (De Arte Venandi cum Avibus), extolled above all others as a hunter of cranes and similar large quarry. The Emperor wrote that the Gyrfalcon "holds pride of place over even the Peregrine in strength, speed, courage, and indifference to stormy weather."

 The gyr of the name is not related to the gyr in such words as gyrate and gyroscope, which come from Latin for circular or rounded. The gyr in Gyrfalcon comes from Old Norse via Old French for geirr, referring to a spear. I’ve heard birders refer to the bird as a GIRE falcon and JYRE falcon, but unlike PIE-leated and PILL-leated, Gyrfalcon has only one correct pronunciation.

Thirty-eight years ago today, on March 23, 1980, I saw my lifer Gyrfalcon in Columbia County, Wisconsin—the only lifer I’ve ever seen that left me feeling embarrassed and unsettled rather than joyful. I was birding with my good friend Frank Freese, and we pulled over in the prairie-farm-field area near Madison Audubon's Goose Pond to look at Lapland Longspurs, Snow Buntings, and Horned Larks. 

Being in my 20s, and so at my most spry and acquisitive, I’d jumped out of the car with my scope before Frank even had his hat on, and suddenly there it was—a stunningly gorgeous, huge white falcon cruising by at close range, and at high speed. All I could say was “FrankFrankFrankFrank!” but by the time he made it out of the car, the bird had vanished into the horizon. One of the cardinal rules of birding is that we must try to get everyone on every good bird. I felt horrible that I’d seen something so amazing and rare while Frank missed it. It wouldn’t have been a lifer for him—he’d even birded on Attu as well as other far northern places—but he’d never seen one in Wisconsin, and never seen a white one.

Gyrfalcons come in three colors, white, gray, and dark gray-brown, with the white form being the rarest. That 1980 bird was the only white Gyrfalcon I’ve ever seen to this day. I never reported it to eBird—it still makes me feel uneasy, as if I’d somehow cheated to see it when the only person with me missed it. Several times since I’ve lived in Duluth, one or even two different gray Gyrfalcons have spent weeks or even months in the harbor area, so I have what feel like more legitimate sightings for both states now, but still feel troubled about that first one.

This photo of the Madison Christmas Bird Count compilation was taken just 3 months before
I saw the Gyrfalcon with Frank Freese. He and Ken Wood (looking right at me) are sitting at the head table.

Please share YOUR favorite bird with us. We want your first name, the bird, and why you like it so much. Email a 15-30 second recording to favoritebird@lauraerickson.com, or record your message on Lisa Johnson’s work voicemail after 2 pm—that number is 218-726-6755. This information is also at the top of the sidebar on my blog, at www.lauraerickson.com. My blog provides transcripts, links, photos, and sometimes more information than I can squeeze into a 5 minute program/podcast. Check it out!

Laura’s Best Bird EVER! Chapter 5 : Katie and the Boo Jays

When we moved into our house in 1981, one of the first things I did was to make friends with the neighborhood squirrels. We kept a supply of peanuts on hand, and within a few weeks, a few squirrels were already taking peanuts out of my hand.

The local Blue Jays quickly figured out what was happening, and started showing up at squirrel-feeding time. A squirrel would take a peanut and run off to hide it, one of the jays quietly following. The moment the squirrel buried it and ran off, the jay would drop down, dig up the peanut, and fly off with it.

The summer and fall before my daughter Katie’s first birthday in 1984, a pair of Blue Jays figured out how to skip the middleman. When I stepped onto the porch with peanuts, the two would fly in and alight on the nearest tree. I’d whistle, and the bolder one would fly right in, alight on my hand, grab the peanut, and fly off. The other knew better than to trust people that much. I’d put a peanut on the flat porch railing, step back as far as I could, and only then would that jay fly in to grab the peanut. If I moved my hands at all as it approached, it instantly turned tail, so I had to be very careful.

My working out this new routine with the jays coincided exactly with Katie learning to pull herself up to stand at our living room picture window—the one overlooking the front porch. She was utterly taken with those big, vivid, relatively slow-moving birds flying in at close range. I’d say, “Katie, do you want to see the Blue Jays?” She’d just mastered her first word, “mama,” and this inspired her second.  She’d crow, “boo jay!” with delight as she crawled up to the window.

I always loved Blue Jays, so my father-in-law would tease me by complaining every time they came to his feeders. He was the inspiration for my frequent mentions of the Port Wing Blue Jay Haters back in the 80s and early 90s.

Katie made his Blue Jay jokes a little harder for him, because she’d look out his window and giggle with joy when she spotted them, calling out “Boo jay!” with delight—how could he act cranky about them with his adorable tiny granddaughter being so thrilled with them?

But the jays she could count on were the ones that came to our own front porch. If it popped into her mind when she had been in the playroom, she’d look up at me and say, “Boo Jay?” and I’d head for the living room, her crawling behind, saying “Boo Jay!” By the time she was standing at the window, I’d be out on the porch whistling, and soon Katie’s Blue Jays would fly in. Her eyes glowed and she clapped her hands to see them. Katie loved those Blue Jays—her Boo Jays.

At the language acquisition stage, words start coming rapidly. Within days she’d added Dunty for our dog Bunter and then Dadda to her vocabulary. But I’ll never forget that her first two words were Mama and Boo Jay.

By 1994, I was spending more time afield doing occasional speaking engagements, and for the first time in our 22-year marriage, Russ and I decided we needed a second car. And I decided to spring for vanity plates. It cost $100, which was a big chunk of our family’s discretionary income back then, but it was a one-time fee, so there’s never been a charge added when we’ve renewed the plates. From the moment I thought it would be fun to have clearly identifiable plates, I knew exactly what they would say—the one term that combines my love for Blue Jays and my daughter. My license plates commemorate the birds that so charmed my little Katie—they say BOO JAY, for my Best Birds EVER!!

You can see all of "Laura's Best Bird EVER!" posts linked here. 

Question from Meg about the timing of geese molting

Can I ask you a question, Mommy?

When the internet started making it easier to track down information without running to the library, I started spending more and more time on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s information-rich website. I doubt if a week goes by now that I don’t consult their Birds of North America Online site at least once or twice.

I’d paid well over a thousand dollars for that amazing series when it was originally published in a paper version in the 1990s—each one of the more than 600 magazine-sized entries covers one species, and I have them all filed away in taxonomic order in my file cabinets. The Online series provides a lot more information. Except in the world of Harry Potter, we can’t consult paper copies of anything to see videos or hear recordings, and as new information is added, paper copies can’t be magically updated. As a member of the American Ornithological Society, which published the original Birds of North America series, I get to use the online BNA for free, but if I couldn’t, it’s something I’d definitely pay for—anyone who depends on accurate information about birds and uses primary sources can’t do without it. The BNA Online normally costs $42 for a year’s subscription, but you can get a single-month subscription for $5, and subscribing for two or three years at a time gives you significant savings.

If you don’t need that level of information, Cornell’s All About Birds provides a lot of info plus sound and video, and it’s absolutely free. When I worked at the Lab, I helped write some of the All About Birds species accounts, and also answered many email and phone questions, as well as fielding such media inquiries as when a New York Times reporter needed to know how likely is it that a person could get pooped on by a goose.

Another of my major assignments at Cornell was to write The Bird Watching Answer Book, which has been, by far, the best-selling of all twelve or so books I have written. That book compiled my answers to hundreds of questions I’ve fielded over the years.

After I left Cornell, I helped them by serving as a moderator for the chat room they set up for their Great Blue Heron nest cam—again, my job was primarily to answer questions.

So the truth is, I love to answer questions. One of the dear friends I made back during those heron nest cam days, Meg, asked me a question about geese last week.

Hi, Laura - silly question, but I want to be sure I'm correct before I respond to a statement: a female goose loses her flight feathers while she is on the nest so she can better protect the nest. I've never heard anything so silly but want an expert to say so.

First off, there is no such thing as a silly question. Over the years, people in all sincerity have asked me such questions as:

• Wouldn't it be healthier to use Nutrasweet or other artificial sweeteners than sugar in hummingbird nectar? (Answer: absolutely not!)
• Do hummingbirds really hitchhike on the backs of migrating geese? (Again, absolutely not!)
• Should I set out dryer lint for nesting birds? (Absolutely not!)
• Should I use food coloring in hummingbird sugar water (Again, absolutely not—and please don’t buy commercial hummingbird food that is red—it’s very unhealthy for them). 

If I don’t consider those straightforward questions silly or stupid, I certainly don’t consider a question about the timing of molt to be silly.

Most birds can afford to lose a few flight feathers at a time during molt without compromising their ability to fly.

If you can ignore the fact that this Turkey Vulture is pooping, you can see where
a missing primaryis being replaced by a new one. Most birds can fly, and even soar,
while missing a few feathers. 

Hawks, eagles, vultures, owls, songbirds, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and a great many other species simply could not get food and water, elude predators, or do much else, if they ever underwent a flightless period after they leave the nest as fledglings. These birds have a large enough wingspan to support their body weight even without several flight feathers. 

But water birds need a heavier, more robust body to be able to submerge long enough to get food under the surface. Geese feed a lot on land and virtually never dive underwater, but their heavy body weight is important because they do a lot of grazing; getting nourishment from grass requires a long, heavy digestive system.

Canada Geese never stop flapping except when coming in for a landing, and
need all theirflight feathers to support their heavy bodies.

To be able to dive underwater to chase fish, loons can’t be buoyant or they’ll pop up like corks before they get close to the fish they pursue.

Loon wings are narrow with a relatively small surface area, just big enough to support
their heavy bodies.Their wings can be too small to support their weight if they're missing
any flight feathers. 

So in both cases, though for slightly different reasons, these water birds have small wings relative to their body weight, and would both have trouble staying aloft if missing one or two flight feathers; if three were missing during a molt, they might not be able to fly at all.

Loons and geese solve the problem by molting all their flight feathers pretty much simultaneously; if they can’t fly at all during wing feather molt, they might as well minimize their flightless period by getting the molt over with as fast as possible. The trick is timing this molt for when they don’t need to fly.

Loons molt during winter, while they’re out in the great big ocean or Gulf of Mexico. They can dive to elude aerial predators, swim underwater fast to elude swimming predators. When food in one area is scarce, they can swim to new fishing areas.

Geese, on the other hand, have an urgent need to fly during spring and fall, to migrate, but also during the dead of winter, when they feed on fields as well as in water during hunting season.

Meg was right to question whether geese could go through the nesting period without flight—at that point, a predator discovering the nest would force the goose to find a whole new place to start anew, so flying would still be important. It’s after the eggs hatch that geese start molting. They don’t dare fly away from their dependent young, and at this point they won’t be re-nesting if they do face a disaster.

Geese choose a nest site that is close to feeding areas, both on land and in the water, and for a few weeks, the entire family gets about by walking or swimming. The goslings will be ready to take wing as their parents finish up their own molt. The family will stay together through fall migration and winter.

One of the things I love about birds is how each species has its own strategies for survival. Some seem simple and straightforward. But even very simple processes, like keeping plumage fresh by molting feathers, can have some surprising complexities.

Letter from Listener: Becca’s Great Gray Owl

Photo copyright 2018 by Becca Mulenburg

Spring officially begins on March 20, at least as far as astronomers are concerned—they must not stand outside very often. Paying closer attention to actual weather conditions and snow depth, some winter owls will be sticking around for at least a bit longer. Great Gray Owls do nest in northern Minnesota, though not right in Duluth. Right now, as winter slowly eases into spring, it’s “anything can happen time.” And to prove it, on March 16, I got a delightful email from Becca Mulenburg that read:  

I just wanted to share a photo of my first sighting of a great gray owl. It happened this morning at my home here in Duluth, and because I listen to your radio show often, I remember you saying that crows often harass owls. So, when a murder of crows cawwed like mad in the trees above my house around 7:10, I looked out of our west window for an owl. Nothing. But I took note of how one of the crows that was very close to this window did not fly away, when normally it would have.  As you can imagine, my curiosity was really peaked. Then, I looked out of the south window, and voilà! There it was, perched just feet away from our house, so big and majestic. 

I'm a big fan of yours, and just wanted to share. Attached is one of the photos I took of it. After it flew across the street and landed in a tree on the south side of Page St., the crows dispersed and left it alone.  

I am so happy today for this sighting, it is very thrilling for me.

Becca added in a follow-up:

And yes, the crows were going insane! My husband commented, "There must be 50 crows up there!" He hadn't gone to work yet, so he was able to see his first great gray owl, too. I'm pretty sure there weren't 50 crows, but there were a lot! And I kept watching as more and more reinforcements kept flying in, so I was pretty relieved when the crows decided to leave it alone.

I’m thrilled that my talking about how crows mob owls gave Becca the information she needed to recognize what was happening, but it was Becca who was observant enough in the first place to notice.

When crows go ballistic, it usually does involve a large owl. The owl that represents the biggest danger to crows is the Great Horned Owl. Great Gray Owls eat very small rodents called voles almost exclusively, and simply don’t eat crow, but crows don’t discriminate—any and every owl they notice gets the same treatment.

On February 23, I myself had heard owls yelling so loudly that I ran outside—they were a few blocks away, yet the blood-curdling calls not just covered that distance but seeped in through our closed windows. Like Becca, what I found was a Great Gray Owl hunkering down. If it can sit tight long enough, the crows will eventually lose interest—if they succeed in chasing it off, at least a few of them may track it, and the whole cacawphony will start all over again, so the owl tries to sit tight with hopes that the crows will get distracted sooner rather than later.

This time of year, crows are calling a lot during courtship and early nesting, but when you pay attention, you learn to distinguish those everyday calls from the angry caws they make when they see an owl. Black-capped Chickadees also call with what sounds like an angry edge to their chickadee-dee-dee calls when they spy a Boreal or Saw-whet Owl. You can’t hear chickadees nearly as far as you can hear crows, but paying attention to any angry bird in nature can be even more rewarding than the video game variety.

Birds in the News: Puffins, Penguins, and More

Bird stories have been popping up in the news quite a bit in recent weeks. Jamie Dunning, who studies phylogeny and evolutionary history at the University of Nottingham, was fooling around with bird specimens in his lab one day, putting them under a black light. When he placed an Atlantic Puffin under the light, what to his wondering eyes should appear but bright fluorescent areas on and around the beak.

Puffin under blacklight. Photo by Jamie Dunning.

Dunning already knew that another oceanic bird belonging to the same Alcid family, the Crested Auklet, fluoresces under black lights. Unlike humans, birds can detect UV wavelengths in daylight. Dunning suspects that the markings may have evolved in these very colonial species to help adults pick out the best potential mates or recognize one another in a crowd, or to help chicks see or recognize their parents. (Story in Newsweek)

On the other side of the globe, NASA satellite images of penguin poop led researchers to discover a supercolony of more than 1.5 million Adélie Penguins in the Danger Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula’s northern tip. This is especially good news because penguin populations are declining grievously along the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, due primarily to climate change. The researchers also found several populations of more than a hundred Gentoo Penguins and one small population of Chinstrap Penguins; this was reported this week in Nature. (Story in USA Today)

Also in Antarctica, Eddie Gault of the Australian Antarctic Program left a camera at the Auster Rookery near Australia’s Mawson research station, and soon two Emperor Penguins investigated. They flipped the camera over and somehow produced a 38-second selfie video which has gone viral.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Project FeederWatch posted an article this week by a researcher trying to tease out why Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers look so similar. They do belong to the same genus, but the Hairy is more closely related to the White-headed and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers while the Downy is more closely related to the Ladder-backed and Nuttall’s Woodpeckers. Using citizen science data from participants of FeederWatch, Gavin Leighton concluded that Downies are probably using their similarity to Hairies and their own dominant behaviors to trick other birds into thinking they’re the larger, tougher Hairy Woodpecker. He says this supports what is called the “Innocent Bystander Trickery Hypothesis,” but will be following up with more studies.

Finally, in Florida, a judge has lifted a restraining order that was keeping bulldozers from destroying one of the last stretches of endangered pine rockland in the nation as a lawsuit plays out. The Walmart developer is planning apartments, a Chili’s, an LA Fitness, and of course a Walmart on the endangered habitat. The Wildlands Association, Tropical Audubon, and the Miami Pine Rockland Coalition claim in the lawsuit that the US Fish and Wildlife Service incorrectly permitted Ram Realty to build on the land, using the corporation’s own environmental assessment without considering peer-reviewed research or concerns by other groups or the general public. 

As the general public grows increasingly distanced from accurate information about ecology and species diversity, and as the Trump Administration continues stripping science and conservation from the EPA, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and other governmental units charged with protecting our air, water, and land, I’m afraid we’ll be seeing more and more of these kinds of permanent losses. (Story in Miami New Times)

Laura’s Best Bird EVER! Chapter 4. Baby Joey and the Las Vegas Great-tailed Grackles

Russ took this photo the same day that Joey and I encountered the grackles. I didn't take a single photo at Sunset Park. 

When my son Joey was a baby, Russ attended a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Las Vegas. It’s not exactly a birding Mecca, but he took his vacation time around the meeting, and Joey and I tagged along. We drove to Las Vegas, and after the meeting went to Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon for Russ, and then to several birding spots in southeastern Arizona for me. Joey, being 5 ½ months old, was given absolutely no say in the planning.

I was afraid that the four days in Las Vegas would be boring, but just in case there could be any good birding around there, I posted on the BirdChat listserv, asking if anyone could suggest good birding spots in the Las Vegas area. One wonderful woman, who happens to be one of the top birders in the world, Marian Cressman, not only gave me suggestions; she also insisted on spending two days with me, taking me to the best places, even after I told her I’d be bringing along Joey—she said birding alone in Las Vegas is dangerous for women. A birder attending the chemical society meeting hired her to take him out one morning—she told him he’d be birding with me and a baby, too.

On those two days, I added 10 lifers. On my last morning in Las Vegas, while Russ was at his final meeting sessions and I was on my own, I took Joey to Sunset Park, a lovely spot near the airport that Marian had introduced me to. I’d already discovered the hard way how tricky it is to bird with a baby in a Snugli front carrier without clunking my binoculars on his head. When I say “the hard way,” I mean Joey learned it the hard way—it’s not easy being the firstborn child of a birder. We also had a backpack for him, but I couldn't manage getting that on and off without help. Joey and I had Sunset Park to ourselves, so I brought our portable baby seat out of the car and set him up on a picnic table. He could look around more easily and not get hit on the head while I birded close by.

This was taken at our house right before the trip, but this is the baby seat he was in. 

Joey was an easy-going baby, curious and happy just looking around at the world. I liked to pretend that he was a birder just like Mommy, but he was really too young to take in birds that could only be seen with binoculars. But that early April morning in Sunset Park, he very decidedly started watching and listening to birds, and gurgling with delight. He didn’t notice the Crissal Thrasher that took my breath away, or the sweet little wurp! calls of Phainopeplas, or the rosy Anna’s Hummingbirds or tiny Ladder-backed Woodpeckers. The roadrunner racing by didn’t catch his eye, either.

No—my baby was enchanted with a flock of Great-tailed Grackles who strutted and called, doing their exuberant spring courtship routines right in front of him.

Their incessant calls—shrill whistles and squeaks, pig-like grunts, clicks, rattles, and piercing squeals—filled Joey with glee. He could easily see them on the grass and in a couple of nearby trees, where their iridescent feathers glowed in the morning sun. A few times, one or two males alighted briefly on the picnic table less than a foot away from him, their sharp, pale eyes scrutinizing him as he squealed with delight.

They cocked their heads, and some of the grackles on the ground looked up at him, too—his baby laughter could have passed for some of their own bizarre calls. The shiny black males, a full 18 inches long, didn’t seem much smaller than Joey. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t try to touch him, but even though at this point in my life, I’d never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds, I kept careful watch.

The females, rich brown and weighing only half as much as the males, seemed like a different species. I could see Joey looking back and forth between males and females, but doubt if his brain focused on the ornithological technicalities—they were just plain fun to see.

Many people consider Great-tailed Grackles pests for their abundance, the quantity of grain and fruit they devour, and the decibel level of their calls. I’d never been in the Southwest before this trip, and had been hoping that morning to get a more solid take on common birds before we headed on to Arizona. The grackles weren’t a new species for me—I’d seen them in Texas. They were abundant, and being on full acquisitive mode in this new part of the country, I had taken little interest in them.

But now I was looking at and hearing them through brand new eyes and ears. We were in the park for an hour and a half, and the grackles were so loud and active that Joey never once lost interest. How could I ignore anything that so captivated my baby, keeping him enchanted for as long as Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood combined? I did check out some of the other birds that appeared, but spent only seconds on them. My attention kept returning to these spectacular birds that could so thoroughly entertain such a little baby.

Decades later, after seeing Great-tailed Grackles countless times, I still can’t see one without remembering that magical morning in Sunset Park with my little Joey. Surely those Great-tailed Grackles were my Best Birds EVER!

You can see all of "Laura's Best Bird EVER!" posts linked here. 

Daniel Klem coming to Minnesota to speak about the Vikings stadium glass

If I were to put together a list of my biggest heroes in the world—people who have selflessly made the world a better place for human beings and the other beings who share our little planet with us, one name at the very top would be Dr. Daniel Klem. As soon as I moved to Duluth 37 years ago, I started appreciating how horrible the problem of window collisions is for birds, and as soon as I started researching the issue, the author’s name that popped up in virtually every search for information was Dr. Klem’s. The Wilson Bulletin and Journal of Field Ornithology published many of Dr. Klem’s papers, which created the entire foundation of what we know about bird collisions and how to prevent them.

 I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting him a couple of times—first in 2004 when I attended a meeting at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s brand new facility, and then while I was working at the Lab and drove to Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania to interview Dr. Klem.

Next week I’ll meet him for a third time, on March 21 in Fridley, Minnesota, when he’ll be speaking at the Springbrook Nature Center on “The Effects of Glass in Buildings on Bird Mortality.”  The event is free and open to the public, with a suggested donation of $5. The presentation is sponsored by a coalition of bird conservation groups including Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds, and Friends of Roberts Bird Sanctuary.

U.S. Bank Stadium, where the Vikings play, is located along a critical pathway for migratory birds, and so close to the Mississippi River that a great many birds are likely to be nearby in the day as well as lured in to the lighted stadium glass by night. 

As soon as the plans for the proposed stadium were released in 2012, with nearly 200,000 square feet of glass—the equivalent of four football fields—ornithologists and wildlife biologists urged the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority to modify the plans to use less glass, or at the very least to use bird-friendly glass, fritted to make it more visible to birds, like the glass in the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium. The Authority would not budge. 

Minnesota now requires new construction to be “Green”—that is, it must meet LEED standards. (L.E.E.D. stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) The glass used in the stadium is extremely energy inefficient, but this new construction got away with it because despite so much opposition, the plans were grandfathered in because they’d been submitted, if not approved, before the green building law took effect. 

The glass used in the Dallas stadium is fritted, making it both visible to birds and far, far more energy efficient. It would have added very little to the cost of the US Bank Stadium to simply change the glass, but for some reason our state's sports facilities authority dug its heels in and stuck with the original energy squandering, bird killing design. 

And the glass is indeed killing birds. The Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis released a study of bird mortality at the stadium during the fall 2016 migration season that documented a significant number of bird deaths and injuries caused by collisions with the stadium glass. 

Dr. Klem will be here to offer recommendations on retrofitting the stadium to make it safer for birds. This will be first in a series of presentations by national bird experts on methods of retrofitting U.S. Bank Stadium. I’ll be there for sure. I just hope people with the power to do something about the stadium at this late date will be listening.

Listeners' Favorite Birds: Gretchen and Dahlaihuu's Towhee

When my children were little, Russ built them a sandbox in our yard. Year-round, except when snows were deep, the kids played in it—even bundled in their snowsuits, when they tired of sledding and building snow forts, they’d use their shovels and Tonka trucks to clear paths in the sandbox, pretending to be driving snowplows. In summer they pretended to be construction workers pushing those bright yellow Tonka trucks all around, or they’d build sandcastles, filling up containers of wet sand and plopping them upside down to make all kinds of interesting constructions. 

My kids weren’t the only ones who spent time in that sandbox. In winter, Evening and Pine Grosbeaks and both species of crossbills spent a lot of time there, picking up grit. Back then, before digital photography, we didn’t take many photos and didn’t even have a telephoto lens, so I never made a permanent record of the charming pictures I still have in my head of brilliant crimson Pine Grosbeaks and White-winged Crossbills perched atop bright yellow Tonka trucks, but the memory makes me smile.

We didn’t get too many birds at the sandbox after the winter finches departed, except the ubiquitous Evening Grosbeaks, but over the years, on a few April and early May mornings, I spotted a bird scratching in the sand. I’d grab my binoculars, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a Rufous-sided Towhee! The only times I ever picked them out in my yard in the 37 years we’ve lived here were in that sandbox. So I associate towhees with children, as does a listener named Gretchen.  

Every year, my now 11-year-old son looks for silliness in the edge of our woods—leaves stirred to flight by a Rufous-sided Towhee. It's his favorite. 

Towhees are birds of forest edges, overgrown fields, and scrubby areas. Dense shrubs for hiding in and leaf litter for scratching in seem to be fairly essential. I saw my lifer towhee at a nature center outside Chicago in December 1975. I saw them regularly when we lived in East Lansing Michigan and then in Madison, Wisconsin.   Range maps show Duluth on the very extreme northern edge of the Eastern Towhee’s range. The place nearest me where I can count on seeing them in spring is in northwestern Wisconsin, in the Douglas County Wildlife Area protected by Friends of the Bird Sanctuary. I find them in a few spots in Wisconsin where I look for Golden-winged Warblers and Mourning Warblers, too.

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds

Towhees are omnivores, feeing on a variety of seeds, fruits, insects, spiders, snails, and soft buds. They spend most of their lives at low heights, scratching the leaf litter to expose food, and usually nesting on the ground, the nest sunken into fallen leaves. They do occasionally nest in shrubs or tangles, up to about four feet above the ground. After raising one brood, they start over, often raising two or three broods a year. This is fortunate, because in many areas, they end up raising a lot of cowbirds in place of their own young.

Towhees have declined by close to 50 percent between 1966 and 2015 according to Breeding Bird Survey data, which give a pretty accurate picture for this species. The scrubby habitat they require is not valued by many people who don’t understand that biodiversity requires an assortment of habitats, and that some habitats that don’t necessarily appeal to urbanized human aesthetic sensibilities are still uniquely valuable. Fortunately, there are people like Gretchen’s son who appreciate towhees.

From 1957 to 1998, the name Rufous-sided Towhee was the proper name for towhees from both eastern and western North America, so it’s the name I learned when I started birding. Before 1957, the bird was called simply the Towhee, and after 1998, it was split into two species, the Spotted Towhee of the West and the Eastern Towhee in our neck of the woods. The word towhee is onomatopoeic for the bird’s call note, which is also sometimes given as chewink. The song is interpreted as Drink your tea!, but on the rare occasions that anyone has ever told me to drink my tea, they did not trill that last word. 

Towhees will be back in their breeding areas within a few weeks now. I’ll be heading out where I can see and hear them again. Hearing their vocalizations or listening to them scratching at the leaf litter is guaranteed raise my spirits, whether the bird is in its natural habitat or simply playing in a children’s sandbox. I’m glad there are others who treasure this splendid bird, too.

A Trip to the Sax-Zim Bog

On Friday, March 9, I went birding in the Sax-Zim Bog with Erik Bruhnke and my dog Pip. My main goal was to get at least one decent photo of a Black-backed Woodpecker and a recording of an Evening Grosbeak. Erik needed a break from his own work, but we both couldn’t afford a whole day away, so we planned a few stops with every intention of sticking to them. We arrived a half hour or so after sunrise.

We headed straight to the Warren Nelson trail, where we’d seen both Black-backed and American Three-toed Woodpeckers in February, but it was extremely quiet, a hallmark of this winter in a lot of places.

Backtracking along Highway 133, we came across a Great Gray Owl glowing in the sun.

We drove up to the extreme northwest corner of the bog, to the spot known far and wide as Mary Lou’s Feeders—the only place for far and wide where Evening Grosbeaks have been at all reliable in recent years. Sure enough, there was a flock of about 16, and naturally Erik heard them before I did. My wonderful hearing aids noticeably expand my ability to pick out bird sounds, but I’m learning to accept that my hearing will never be as good as what it once was. When I pointed a directional microphone toward them, I could hear them much better. Five cars of other birders came and went while we were there, so my clean recording isn’t very long, but I at least met my goal. And since it is National Blue Jay Awareness Month, it was nice to pick up a few distant Blue Jay calls, too. (You have to listen hard to notice them.)

Erik is a professional bird guide up here, and so he belongs to a network of guides that keep one another abreast of good birds. While I was working on my recording, he got on the phone with Frank Nicoletti, who gave him a lead on another spot that has been productive for Black-backed Woodpeckers.

We hiked in and sure enough, came upon two nearby Black-backed Woodpeckers—possibly a mated pair—and heard a distant third as well. I took lots and lots of photos, mostly of the male, whose yellow cap glowed in the perfect light.

The nearby birds vocalized only once, but they tapped on trees the entire time we were watching. Unfortunately, I didn’t get good sound recordings, but fortunately, I did get good photos.

This has been a banner year for Black-backed Woodpeckers. In the morning counts Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory conducted along the shore this fall, they counted 118, along with 3 of the much rarer American Three-toed Woodpecker. I even saw a flyover Black-backed from my own yard, the first time since we moved here in 1981.

No one knows exactly why irruptions take place, but like Snowy Owls, these woodpecker irruptions seem to have two causes, both a lack of prey on their range, making them search other places, and an overabundance of prey, leading to such enormous reproduction that they become overpopulated. It seems to be when Black-backs are most abundant here that we can pick out one or two Three-toed Woodpeckers, too.

Both species specialize on diseased and burned forests, pigging out on the wood-boring beetle larvae associated with dead wood. More than other woodpeckers, they usually flake the outer bark off the tree before digging in. It’s easy to pick out trees they worked on by the bark flakes at the base.

Some of my photos even show bark bits flying.

When I started birding, the Black-backed Woodpecker was called the Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker, and sure enough, it has three toes as, of course, do the American and Eurasian Three-toed Woodpeckers.

I found the old name very confusing, because the “Arctic” Three-toed Woodpecker’s range doesn't extend as far north in Canada and Alaska as does the American Three-toed Woodpecker, and does extend further south in Eastern North America. It’s much easier to call the "Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker" a Black-backed Woodpecker.

Erik and I headed home after I got my photography fix, happy with our trip to the bog, which may have been short but was definitely sweet.