Monthly Archives: May 2011

Reverse migration

Gearing up to move from Chicagoland to central Florida in mid-June might seem like a case of reverse migration, but that’s exactly what we’re planning on doing in just under three weeks. I’m looking forward to this new adventure but I’m also terribly sad to leave behind so many good friends and my family. Between the packing and the planning, stay tuned for more news on our big move.

Egrets
Cattle Egrets at Viera Wetlands, April 28 2011

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Posted in Florida, Migration, Viera Wetlands | Leave a comment

Robin nest redux

We have nesting American Robins in our front arborvitae again this spring. Last year the nest was constructed from scratch; two babies fledged. Here’s a picture from last year which shows the location of the nest.

Placement of American Robin nest

This year, I first noticed activity in the nest on April 20th, when the female robin was making frequent visits to the nest. She was bringing in soft grasses and mud to reline the existing nest, which was in good shape. I looked inside the nest on April 22nd; it was empty. We were away from April 23rd to May 1st, so the next time I could check the nest was on May 2nd, when I found four eggs.

American Robin nest with eggs

According to the Birds of North America Online, American Robins lay one egg per day. The incubation period from the date of the last egg being laid varies from 12 to 14 days. The fourth egg could have been laid any time between April 26th and May 1st. Therefore the window I’d expect the eggs to hatch would be from May 8th to May 14th.

Yesterday, I didn’t notice any increased activity at the nest site. The female was seen on the eggs more often than not, but in the early afternoon when I had a peek from our living room I saw the female was away. I took her break time as a quick chance to peek inside the nest. I was very surprised at what I found.

American Robin nest with eggs

I am very curious about what happened to the fourth egg. There is no trace of it underneath the nest or in the branches below the nest. American Robins are known to have the ability to recognize a Brown-headed Cowbird (a brood parasite species) egg when it is laid in their nest. The robin will puncture the intruding egg and remove it. I wonder if the nest was used by a cowbird and one of the robin eggs was accidentally lost when the cowbird egg was removed? It’s also possible an egg was predated by a crow. I guess I’ll never know. So now, like last year, we are waiting for three eggs to hatch.

Again this year I’m entering the nest data in the online citizen scientist database at Cornell’s Nestwatch. If you’ve got nesting birds on your property, consider observing the activity and entering your findings in the Nestwatch database. It’s free, fun, and educational, and it helps ornithologists (and the birds) too!

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BPW: Cackling Goose

Cackling Geese

The Cackling Goose is a newly-recognized full species. Formerly it was considered a small subspecies of the Canada Goose. The plumage of the Canada Goose and Cackling Goose are very similar. Cackling Geese have have an overall smaller body size. Common Canada Geese average a 60″ wingspan and weigh around 9.8 lbs; Cackling Geese have a wingspan averaging 43″ and weigh just around 3.5 lbs. The bill of the Cackling Goose is also proportionally smaller compared with the head, which is more round in shape.

Cackling Geese

Besides the physical differences, the breeding range of the Cackling Goose is further north and west than the Canada Goose.

In late March, during a Loon-finding trip with Lake-Cook Audubon, I had my most recent Cackling Goose sighting at the Prairie Crossing subdivision. Cackling Geese pass through the area regularly during migration, so I was surprised when my entry into eBird triggered a question from a volunteer regional reviewer. Good thing I had pictures. 🙂

Cackling Geese

The Cackling Geese were very cooperative, hanging out with larger Canada Geese for easy identification and comparison. The water at Prairie Crossing was full of cute waterfowl that afternoon, also hosting Bufflehead, Ruddy Duck and Pied-billed Grebe.

Learn more about Cackling Geese by reading David Sibley’s Distinguishing Cackling and Canada Goose and All About Birds’ Cackling Goose.

Cackling Geese

Bird Photography Weekly is a regular collection of user-submitted bird photos from all over the world. The new edition comes out every Sunday. Go have a look at this week’s submissions!

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Posted in Bird Photography Weekly, Lake-Cook Audubon | 4 Comments

Allopreening Mourning Doves

Back in February, during a light snow, I noticed a few Mourning Doves loafing on the shelter frame on our back patio. Two of them must have been in the mood for love because they started allopreening – pecking and grooming each other about the head and neck. Allopreening is one of my favorite bird behaviors to observe. The last time I got to watch birds do this was back in September 2010 when I watched a pair of Eurasian Spoonbills going to town.

According to the Mourning Dove species account at the Birds of North America Online,

Allopreening, a form of appeasement behavior, occurs between mates during pair formation and consists of gentle nibbling of feathers in head and neck regions with beak; seen during nest-site selection activities, nest-building, prior to copulation, and occasionally during nest exchanges. Displacement, or ritual preening, may be exhibited when close to a mate.

I think some displacement may be going on here as well, but I didn’t see any copulation (bummer, haha!). In the second half of the clip, the bird on the left flutters its wing, a behavior I would normally associate with food-begging in either courting females or hungry juveniles. Although the birds were not feeding, I wonder if this is another common courtship behavior? From the wing-fluttering and the grooming behavior of both I am guessing the male is on the right and the female on the left.

Looking further at the Mourning Dove account on BNA, I learned two interesting terms associated with their courtship behavior. First is the charge, in which the male approaches the female with head held horizontally forward, tail pointed horizontally back, and whole body raised. And then there’s the totally cute term bow coo (which I keep reading as “boo cow”), in which the male bows head and body until head nearly touches ground [≤ 10 times], rises to very erect position, holds head forward, and utters loud coo. Have you seen these behaviors in Mourning Doves before? How about allopreening?

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Posted in Behavior, Video, Yard Birds | 1 Comment

North Pond: Wood Ducks & a lifer

Following our rescue & recovery route one Thursday morning in late March, Arthur and I headed to a Chicago birding hotspot, North Pond in Lincoln Park.

The view from North Pond

We were hoping to see a Cinnamon Teal, a bird that had first been spotted at the pond on March 11th — almost three weeks prior to our visit. There hadn’t been any reports of the bird in recent days, so I fully expected it might already be gone.

Birding North Pond

We didn’t have a huge amount of time, so we walked the path around the pond, concentrating on the ducks and looking for the Cinnamon Teal. Most of the birds we saw were Wood Ducks and Mallards.

Wood Duck

There were Wood Ducks all over the place, making their darling squeaky call and acting much less afraid than most of the Wood Ducks we encounter outside of the city.

Wood Duck

We even got to see some Wood Ducks in their other element, perched above us on tree limbs.

Wood Duck

Wood Duck

As we were finishing our walk around the pond, I was making a sad face, for we had not see the Cinnamon Teal. Just as we were about to leave, we looked back for one more check of the water, and finally saw our prize.

Cinnamon Teal

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Posted in Life List | 1 Comment

My visitors came from *where* in April 2011?!?!?

Here are some of the more interesting search terms that brought visitors to this site during April 2011. This is part of an ongoing monthly series on blog search terms.

Falling under the oddly specific category were the following searches:gray jay with wet disheveled feathers; owl at the beleef de lente site is in her box – wait now may be leaving; and bald eagles stealing groceries in alaska.

Typos of the month were pictures of flying cardnil, magnifocent frigatebird.com, and eagles live webcam illisnio.

Filed under let’s not go there: cats as bomb guidance; birds have a penis (yes, some do!); twitching tits; and are birders weird (of course — there are weirdos all over, amiright?).

The fortune teller prize goes to the person that came to this site via this search: birding blogs florida. Stay tuned!

Finally, I hope the person who searched for falcon snatching prey early in the month had a chance to see this amazing clip from Massachusetts which was posted to YouTube on April 27th. It shows a Peregrine Falcon taking a white-faced ibis (a rare bird for the state) as prey.

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Posted in Search Terms, Video | 2 Comments