WildwingsBirds and Outdoor Issues as I see them

Peregrine falcons seem to hone their hunting skills according to given circumstances. There are some urban nesting birds that target pigeons almost exclusively. Others take a lot of starlings. The Fargo birds, as has been chronicled here in the past, have it in for water birds.

(American woodcock, K Corliss)

Wednesday I checked the roof of our downtown building just to see what the birds have been bringing in. Last time I looked there was only one carcass, this time there were about seven. Among the new meals prepared by the falcons were a Wilson’s snipe, two American woodcocks (apparently the peregrines took advantage of an unprecedented migration of woodcocks to this area), an American coot, a blue-winged teal, an American robin, and a western meadowlark. Just to assuage the angst of some misinformed residents, there was no shih tzu carcass.

While on a walk through a West Fargo park last week I happened upon a couple of trees with splatters of what falconers call “whitewash.” Basically it’s poop, but from a raptor. (I know a falconer who located a peregrine nest in Arizona by scanning cliffs for the telltale whitish stains left by defecating birds).

I wondered what may have left the sign in the park but my last two walks pretty much confirmed it–a great horned owl. I haven’t located a nest yet but I have little doubt there’s one nearby given the fact the bird is loathe to move even when approached. Such was the case this morning when I took this photo.

264, a new single-day record for bird species was recently set in Texas by a team of six extremely capable birders. “Team Sapsucker” included team captain, Chris Wood, who will lead a birding tour of N. Minnesota and North Dakota this June. According to a press release from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, it started the early morning hours amid the glow of lights along San Antonio’s famous river walk where the team scored yellow-crowned night heron and barred owl. It ended that evening (no word on how many miles were covered) with Virginia and black rails. Twenty-four sleep-deprived hours of Texas birding will get you a lot of birds. But this is a record mere mortals such as me can only admire from afar.

It’s an amazing one-day count. By comparison, the North Dakota one-day record is 167. Plus 264 in North Dakota would be a pretty darned good year.

The osprey represents a problem for me. Due to circumstances I don’t fully understand, I hardly ever see this cool fish eagle locally. They surely migrate through our area because reports pop up every spring and fall.

Their numbers here are never large. The Red River Valley apparently doesn’t fall along a migratory corridor of any consequence. But folks still see them regularly in onesies and twosies. Just not me.

So it was with a slight tinge of jealousy I opened an email this morning with a photo attached. It was from a fellow aviator who occassionally tells me of various birds he’s seeing in south Fargo. Sure enough, he had seen an osprey flying around his neighborhood. He’s fortunate to live on a man-made “lake” in town. But man-made or not, the birds are intimately tied to water.

Just last Saturday I heard a similar story. Another friend had spent four hours along the Missouri River near Bismarck and counted ospreys. He tallied 34 birds, a new one-day record for North Dakota. Such a list shouldn’t surprise us though, it’s on the only major river in the state.

So, as of today, I still await my first osprey sighting of the year. Somewhat impatiently.

Thanks for the photo Rich S.

The toolbox is growing. Technology continues to add relevant tools available to bird watchers. Perhaps no website is adding more and more than Ebird. This is a dynamic interactive site with a ton of data open to the public. In fact, it is largely publicly driven. A few years ago I began entering bird sightings (in the form of checklists) on this site. Today, I use it exclusively.

One visually stunning graphic the good folks at Ebird are introducing is an animated STEM (I don’t know what S-T-E-M stands for) map of migration. Thus far only some species are represented, eventually all will be shown. This link will take you to a page with a number of neotropical migrant maps.

Certain things immediately stand out. One is, most spring migrants make the night crossing of the Gulf of Mexico and hit landfall around S. Louisiana. Thus the storied tales of beyond-belief spring birding at such locations as High Island, Texas. Pay particular attention to the movie of bobolink migration. It appears most birds make the long trip from Mexico to the northern plains in one flight! These data are from 2008 so it would be interesting to compare patterns from a few years.

Sadly, there are no “western” species shown. So I guess my Oregon relatives will have to wait for those to be implemented.

We are not in uncharted territory, or so the meteorologists tell us. No, it’s been this chilly before, even colder they say. Still, after bearing the brunt of a fairly harsh winter it would be nice for the weather to at least offer us a break.

I took a short drive Saturday and encountered several inches of snow and ice on the roads not far west of Fargo. Some roads were not even passable–not from water, but from snow.  Oh, there were also many many country roads with “road closed” signs. That’s from the high water and washouts.

The birds didn’t seem to mind too much. Most early migrants are well suited to handle such conditions. They’ve been there, done that, so this is nothing but a hiccup in their spring planning.

Yet it’s somehow disheartening (for me, not the birds) to see them standing in the snow. Here’s a killdeer atop one of the only snow-free spots around: a rail.

The story was repeated in my own backyard when I found the mourning doves fluffed up, preening, and looking generally miffed at it all.

Web cameras are everywhere these days. You can hardly click around on the Internet without running into at least one peek of this-or-that on camera.

The phenomenon is not lost on the birding crowd either. Cameras peering into the lives of birds all over the world can be accessed in just a couple of clicks. Most show nesting activity of various species, with raptors seemingly topping the list of most popular. The birds don’t seem to mind this intrusion into their lives and it gives us views of behavior most of us would never see otherwise.

A link to a bald eagle nest in Iowa has been sent to me by a number of people. It’s pretty neat viewing and it’s amazingly popular.

Well, after some yeoman work on the part of Marshal J., Fargo’s peregrine falcon nest camera is finally up to speed. In the planning stages are a big upgrade to the nest box, newer cameras with sound, and of course, fund-raising. But that’s all for next year, which should produce an even better show. For now, click here for a voyeauristic view of our local birds in incubating action.

Iowa’s bald eagle camera is here.

Let me vent briefly.

There are any number of laws, statutes, and regulations in our lives which go not only unheeded, but unenforced. How about speeding? Yeah, we nearly all do it to some degree. Ever take a pen from work? I have. I think I left the Air Force with about 10 U.S. Government pens hanging around the house in various places. I never gave them back. Guilty.

But there are two ignored laws which just gnaw away at me every time I go to one of West Fargo’s parks. First, it is against the law to dump your grass clippings, concrete blocks, tree trimmings, and whatever other trash you have into the river. Now, I’ve canoed a number of rivers in a number of states and realize this isn’t an issue unique to North Dakota. It seems like anyone who lives along a watercourse sees the stream as a dump. It’s not only unsightful, illegal, and lazy, it’s wanton pollution on a scale–when taken collectively with all the other river dumpers–which boggles the mind. The picture above is one of many households along the Sheyenne River using it as a dump. In fact it’s hard to find a property not dumping.

The other law that gets my goat targets dog owners. This is kind of a two-fer in that 1) our leash law is violated regularly and never enforced and 2) few owners pick up after Fifi does her job. Drives me nuts. And what better time of year to witness the carnage than immediately after the snowmelt? Every pile of dog crap left in the parks over the last four to five months is now exposed with all its smelly, shoe-messing ugliness.

I realize neither of these cases will ever change. There will forever be lazy folk dumping junk in our rivers and dog owners failing to pickup poop. It just seemed like the right moment to vent some personal frustration.

…By the way, did you know that fireworks were illegal in Fargo, Moorhead, and West Fargo?

For this particular discussion, let me begin by offering a usable definition of species success as it pertains to the natural world: Having a robust thriving population with little to no immediate-to-longterm risk to said population.

Toss that one around in your head for a second and certain critters immediately come to mind: coyote, cockroach, rock pigeon, house sparrow. If we narrow our focus on, say, waterfowl, a few readily stand out: Canada geese, snow geese, mallards.

mallards acting like wood ducks in the Sheyenne River

Why are mallards so much more abundant than northern pintail for instance? Easy. Mallards are generalists. Most waterfowl species require somewhat specific circumstances in order to nest, feed, and winter. A mallard, seemingly, could care less where it carries out various life functions.

The small woods in one of our West Fargo parks is well suited for nesting wood ducks. There are enough mature trees with cavities eagerly occupied by these birds. In the same woods, however, it’s not uncommon to stumble upon a ground nest with a mallard hen sitting on eggs. Mallards “should” be out in the grass along some slough, you say. Well, yes, they’ll be there too. And just about anywhere else. But you won’t find wood ducks nesting in grass along a remote slough–no tree cavities.

With such a giant breadth of nesting sites (virtually anywhere) available, it’s little wonder mallards are easily the most populous duck in this country.

The species needed some assistance but once a foothold was established, its race across the continent has been nothing short of astounding.

It started in the Western Hemisphere in 1975 when a bird marketer brought some to the Bahamas. Inevitably there were escapees. Ten years later there were an estimated 10,000 and reaching adjacent islands. At some point in the 1980′s they reached the Florida coast. By the 1990′s the species was reported in the Great Lakes area. In 1999, North Dakota recorded its first near the town of Devil’s Lake. Cass County had its introduction in 2005 in Kindred. A couple years later it showed up in West Fargo, my home town.

This spring marks a personal milestone for the Eurasian Collared Dove: A pair have been calling in my neighborhood for over a week. Then two days ago I watched as one of the pair was gathering nest material. It then flew cautiously into the only blue spruce tree in my backyard and appeared to linger. This behavior was repeated again this morning.

It took 36 years from initial introduction to my own piece of suburban earth–amazingly fast. This Old World dove is now attempting to nest in my yard.