It must be spring!

The Wildlife Drive at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge opened for the season on Saturday April 23rd. On May 3rd I made my first circuit of the year as a Roving Wildlife Interpreter. The bright sun, blue sky and small clumps of white clouds cast a strange light on the brown remnants of last years vegetation. The long cold winter and our cold spring weather seem to have retarded that welcome first flush of green. Birds were not plentiful. The only advantage in having no green grass in most areas was that the little ground-dwelling birds that normally hide there were fully exposed to view. Good for birders perhaps, but not good for the birds.

Eventually I came across this woodcock, a bird that spends spring evenings in charming ritual mating flights. It is one of the icons of spring in our part of the birding world. This funny little bird, rocking forward and back as though hearing some mysterious dance beat, kicked my spirits up several notches. Maybe real spring weather is just around the corner.

An Eagle Encounter

Zimmerman, Minnesota

This is a second hand report of a first class event. The reporting and the photography were both the work of my friend Mary Carlson, a Roving Wildlife Interpreter on Sherburne National Wildlife  Refuge. With her camera in hand Mary spends a lot of time on the refuge's seven mile Wildlife Drive.

On the afternoon of October 12 Mary was stopped on the Wildlife Drive watching one of the resident bald eagles. The eagle would leave its perch in a tree, circle around, and settle back on its perch. She was able to get some arresting pictures of the soaring eagle.

                                                              Mary Carlson Picture

The Soaring Eagle

On one pass the eagle stopped flying forward and hovered in midair the way a northern harrier hovers over some prey in the marsh. It must have been astounding to see. To me it is amazing that Mary was able to capture this moment in a photograph.

 

                                                               Mary Carlson Picture 
Putting on the brakes.

                                                                   Mary Carlson Picture 
Hovering.

The hover quickly led to a dive. The eagle plunged down toward an unsuspecting American coot swimming in the water below. At the bottom of its dive it snatched the coot off the water. The eagle's long sharp talons killed the unsuspecting coot almost instantly.

                                                                Mary Carlson Picture
Eagle with coot in its talons.


 
                                                             Mary Carlson picture.
 Eagle flying away with dead coot.

The eagle took the now dead coot up to a high perch and began plucking out the feathers in anticipation of a good (to an eagle) meal.
 

                                                                                                 Mary Carlson picture

The eagle picking feathers off the coot.

 
Thanks Mary for a great story and these wonderful pictures. I suspect the eagle was checking out the water fowl buffet with all that initial circling around. Maybe it postponed its dinner because you were in view, but eventually propelled by hunger and the realization that you were not a threat it decided to go ahead.

This whole episode illustrates the surprising scenes one may find at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. But in a more general way it illustrates that often the best method to see interesting things happening in the natural world is to patiently stay in one spot so you are not perceived as a threat. Let nature come to you and unfold its dramas. It's much more likely to surprise and delight you that way.

Florida's Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia)

January 2011. I love Florida for the diversity of its plants and animals. Southwest Florida is one of Florida's marvelous places to enjoy subtropical nature venues. City, county, state, federal, and private non-profit parks are plentiful. But one doesn't have to go to a wildlife preserve to see eye-catching happenings of the natural world. Chances are that if you sit tight in your own backyard nature will bring a show to you in Florida. But if you do want to make an expedition at whatever level of challenge you prefer, opportunities abound here.

Today I'm reminiscing about a recent burrowing owl workshop I took with Bob Salyers of Bob Salyers Photography in Bradenton Florida. If you've never heard of Bob Salyers, I'm not surprised. He has a nice website to display his nature photos at http://bobsalyers.net/index.php,  but this is one of hundreds  of great sites vying for your attention.

 

 Bob Salyers, Photographer and Trip Leader

If you've never heard of burrowing owls I'm not surprised either. I never knew that owls could live underground until I saw burrowing owls in the Galapagos Islands some years ago. And even then I didn't know they lived in Florida.

 Portrait of a Burrowing Owl
 

These owls are small, with a body length of about ten inches. But they have relatively long legs. With these legs they are capable of digging their own burrow, or taking over a burrow abandoned by some other animal and expanding it. Burrowing owls are fairly widespread in the western United States and in Florida. They tend to live in flat, open, grassy areas where they walk rather than fly most of the time. They can be seen walking around stalking prey by day or night.

 

Burrowing Owl, Profile View 

Bob's workshop took us to the Cape Coral area where owl burrows, marked off with PVC pipe, are located in vacant lots scattered among development houses. People have erected small wooden crosses near burrow entrances. The owls sometimes use them as perches.

The two pictures below illustrates how well camouflaged  a burrowing owl can be in it's grassy habitat.

Owl, Burrow Marker, and Wooden Perch.

Burrowing Owl Relaxing in the Sun

On this particular day only a few owls chose to come above ground to model for us, but that was enough. As we closed in to get pictures of the owls Bob directed our movements so we wouldn't spook them.

An owl burrow can be up to 40 feet long and might be home to snakes as well as owls. It's said that when highly disturbed a burrowing owl makes a noise that sounds very much like a rattlesnake. Here's a picture of a pair of burrowing owls with the male standing guard at the burrow entrance while the female sticks just her head above ground.

Pair of Burrowing Owls at the Burrow Entrance

The male and female burrowing owl are about the same size. The literature reports that the male is typically lighter in color than the female because he spends more time outside the burrow where the sun bleaches some of the color from his feathers.

When these owls feel threatened they stand erect. At times they will bob up and down to indicate their nervousness. At one point in our venture this male went into the erect posture to indicate he felt we were getting too close. At that point we backed up and let him get on with his day of relaxing in the sun.

Burrowing Owl in Posture Indicating He Is Uneasy

Like many ground dwelling animals, burrowing owls pay attention to the sky lest they become a meal for some flying predator. Below is a picture of a turkey vulture flying overhead while we were visiting the Cape Coral owls.
 

 Turkey Vulture Soaring Overhead

The next picture shows the owl checking out the vulture. Here too the owl is in a posture that indicates he is feeling uneasy. This posture displays a white chin patch not visible in the pictures above.

Burrowing Owl Spots a Raptor Flying Overhead

What do burrowing owls eat? The literature says they eat small reptiles and amphibians, insects, an occasional bird, and sometimes a baby owl filtched from

a neighbors burrow. 

During the nesting season the female may lay 4 to 12 eggs, but typically only four or five survive. Burrowing owls are considered either endangered or threatened by the governments of several of their native countries. Loss of habitat is the major reason for their shrinking range and declining numbers.

Snow Buntings! (Plectrophenax nivalis)

October 31, 2010 Zimmerman, MN In an earlier entry for today entitled "Serenity" I  mentioned that this was a very quiet day on the Wildlife Drive. In the chill of this frosty morning even the usual small winter birds were hiding somewhere. I thought the water fowl and a few raptors would fill out the mornings birding. But, as has often been said about the natural world, "You never know what's around the next bend." Today it was a wonderful surprise: snow buntings. I felt the thrill of discovery. These birds are not included in the "Uncommon" column of the Sherburne Refuge bird list even though my  National Geographic field guide says they are common in this area. A group of these small sparrow-like birds was pecking in the gravel road just beyond the Big Bluestem Pool. In my four years in the Zimmerman area I have seen only one lone snow bunting. That in itself was unusual because, like dark-eyed juncos, they usually travel as a flock. Now at last I was seeing a small flock. A Small Flock of Snow Buntings on the Wildlife Drive I tried to slowly drive closer to them for a better view and perhaps a picture. But as I moved closer they would burst into flight, then settle back into business as usual further down the road. Finally I took me foot completely off the accelerator and idled very slowly toward them at a snails pace. This time they ignored my approach until I was reasonably close. What handsome birds they are with their buffy cheeks, white breasts and contrasting brown and black wings.  This first up-close impression would probably fade into familiarity if flocks of snow buntings were common here. But they would still be handsome birds. Snow Bunting Frontal View Snow Bunting Side View Snow bunting, Oblique View I pulled off to the side then sat and watched these buntings doing nothing more than hopping around and pecking at the gravel. It was a very relaxing ten or fifteen minutes until a car came by at the full 20 mph speed limit and scattered them into the distance. The people in that car were probably not aware of what they were missing as they hurried on. But once more I had found  joy and tranquility in the small stuff.