Nuthatch Love

Chickadees are cute and fun to watch, but you know what bird I really enjoy visiting my feeders? Yup, it's the nuthatch! They're not too common in my backyard, not enough trees I guess, but I have 1 nuthatch who visits fairly regularly and sometimes a second nuthatch comes along to check out the feeders. On the weekends when I'm home, I turn on my outside speaker to hear the birds chirping and that's how I know the nuthatch has arrived -- I can hear its squeaky little chirps and "yanks" as it searches for peanuts in the birdfeeders. Let's watch......

Hey, this feeder looks like it's full of peanuts!

Wow, from this perspective all's I can see is peanuts! Is that for me?

Dang! That's a tight squeeze! Must. Get. Peanut!!
Finally got it! Making sure I don't drop this peanut.....

Let's go & find a quieter spot to enjoy this peanut -- the paparazzi's making me nervous!

In addition to feeding shelled peanuts, I put out a birdseed blend that contains peanuts and sunflower hearts in a couple different feeders. This little seed ball that my dear friend Lynne gave me works great for this seed blend and accomodates only the clinging birdies -- nuthatches included!

The Yankee Tipper is where nuthatch usually heads first at feeding time -- four ports in which to search for peanuts!

Years ago when I worked at Wild Birds Unlimited, we once had a customer come in and asked us to help him identify a bird that was coming to his feeder -- obviously new to birding, the best way he could describe it was that it looked like a "miniature bluejay." After several minutes of questions about the bird's habits and more description, we finally showed him picture of a nuthatch and he said, "yeah, that's it!"

Miniature Bluejay? Really??
(I guess that's an honest, novice birding mistake.....)

Weekly Recap

Well, even with my good intentions of trying to stay caught up with this blog and post more frequently, I just never found the time to get around to it this past week, so I'll give you the recap here in one big post.

Got my first 2012 life bird checked off the list: the Spotted Towhee that's been hanging around Austin, MN since October. I got in touch with the nice family whose backyard this bird visits regularly and they allowed Mr. Johnson and me to come and hang out in their sunroom on Saturday (when the bird was MIA) and again on Sunday (when the bird finally showed up again). I took a ton of pictures, but this was one of the best ones. Isn't this a handsome birdy? And I think it's amazing how well his colors camouflage him in this backyard setting. He spent a lot of time scratching around under these shrubs and would only come out momentarily, but thank goodness for the continuous shooting feature on my camera that enabled me to capture this photo
After seeing the towhee in Austin on Sunday morning, we turned around and raced back to Rochester to watch my niece Kathryn perform live on the 58th Annual Eagles Cancer Telethon. She did a splendid job singing "I Hope You Dance" in honor of her Grampy. The biggest disappointment was that she only sang one song. Kathy has a beautiful voice and we don't get a chance to hear her sing very often. Way to go Kathy!

Monday night was Holly's final test to pass the Intermediate Obedience class at PetSmart. Mr. Johnson's been working pretty hard with her on her sits and stays and all that practice paid off when she passed the class! She still gets pretty excited when she goes in to PetSmart, so the loose leash walking was what had me worried, but she did well on that portion of the test too and got her "diploma" and official graduation photo. Way to go Holly!
Winter has (finally!) officially arrived in Minnesota.We got several inches of snow this past week and the less welcome sub-zero temps to go along with it. But that did bring lots more activity at the birdfeeders and and fairly large flock of deer into the backyard on Friday nite for feasting on corn. Because the ground has been bare for so long, the deer were able to find food elsewhere and haven't been visiting us, so it was neat to see all of them once again.

I spent quite a few hours last week doing some therapeutic knitting. The stupid hard drive on my laptop at work died and I had to get a replacement installed. Unfortunately, not all the programs I used were recoverable and several significant queries that I need to run every day that are fairly vital to my job are still not working correctly, so my frustration level has been at about an 11 on a scale of 1-10. Grrrr! Hence the need for therapeutic knitting.

First project finished was this fluffly scarf. The yarn is a weird kind of mesh, and you actually just loop the meshes over each other on the knitting needles. I like how it turned out but I'm not sure how much I'll actually ever wear it because I really don't need any extra "fluffiness" on my front, plus it has a really annoying tendency to get snagged on my earrings and that's just not working for me. So this scarf will probably become a nice donation item for some worthy cause I support.
I ended up getting pretty heavily into "mitten mode" this week too with the purchase of the beautiful Cloisonee Mitten pattern on Ravelry. So I dug through my closet for some pretty colors and this was my first mitten attempt. Love it!
Of course, this pattern inspired me to "think outside the box" and so my second attempt was a glove -- a combination of two different patterns. I really liked this one too!
In my ongoing resolution to finish some old projects in January, I got one step closer to being able to wear these houndstooth mittens by (almost) finishing this one. I really need to get these done because they're super warm -- the stranding between the checks makes these mittens doubly thick (plus they're wool).
And finally, after languishing on the kitchen counter waiting to be washed and blocked, my Annis Shawl (a Knitty pattern) is also done! The yarn is a beautiful mohair/silk/nylon blend with a little tiny silver thread also woven in. These photos don't do it justice, but the fuzzy, sparkly yarn combined with the beads make this one of the most stunning shawls I have ever knitted.
I'm looking forward to an opportunity to wear this shawl somewhere and I'm sure it will be lovely and warm too.

Those "sticks" you see holding the edges of the shawl are called blocking wires. You put them through the stitches when the shawl is wet and then pin the shawl out to the shape you want it to be when it's dry.

So that's all for last week, I wonder what this next week will bring.......

2012 Wish List

Here's my wish list for Life Birds I'd like to see in 2012. I chose these birds specifically because I think they're attainable without having to travel great distances -- possibly without even leaving Minnesota!


I found a Golden-Winged Warbler last spring when I was volunteering for the BirdSafe monitoring project, but it was already dead, so I couldn't count that one. It would be much more satisfying to see one alive anyway. I also saw in our local paper this week that a Spotted Towhee has been hanging out in a backyard in Austin, MN (only 26 miles away) so a trip to Austin is on my agenda for this coming weekend. I'm hoping to be able to check off the Bohemian Waxwing and Long-Tailed Duck during the upcoming Sax-Zim Winter Birding festival.

I'll be posting periodic updates to this list as progress is made. This is a pretty ambitious list, but I do have an entire year to achieve my goal. Wish me luck!

Sax-Zim Winter Birding Festival

Have you checked your February birding schedule yet? How about a visit to northern Minnesota for the Sax-Zim Winter Birding Festival! February 17-19 are the dates and they'll be ready to welcome birders again.......
Need to check a Great Gray Owl off your life list? There's a pretty good chance you'll see one -- I took this photo in The Bog last winter.

How about a Snow Bunting or two? Pretty sure they'll be there for the festival also!

Ever seen one of these? Sometimes we see them in southern Minnesota, but you're guaranteed to see several Common Redpolls at this festival -- maybe even flocks of them at a feeding station with a Hoary Redpoll or two mixed in that flock.

There's still time to register for one of the "coolest" birding festivals in the U.S. I'll be there and I hope you can make it too!

Dissecting an Owl Pellet

Happy New Year Everyone! I would like to say that one of my New Year's resolutions is to pay more attention to my blog again, but I'm not sure whether I can stick to that one. I'll make an attempt though now that a new year has begun. I still have bunches of photos from last summer saved in my camera that have never made it to the blog, so maybe I'll start with those. Even though this winter's been pretty mild so far, pictures of summer are always nice in the middle of January.

Today's post is about something else from last summer -- this owl pellet I found one day when we were out birding. It's been wrapped up in a paper napkin in the trunk of the car since last May. I was happy to still be able to find it in the trunk on New Year's Day, so I could take some photos of what this owl pellet consisted of. It looks pretty interesting just like this, doesn't it? You can't really tell from this picture, but it's actually a little bit smaller than a ping-pong ball.

Turning the pellet around, you can definitely see that there are some nice little rodent teeth. (I put on a glove because I remember hearing a horrible story a few years ago about some high school students that got sick after opening owl pellets, so I didn't want to tempt fate.)

I pulled the teeth out first because that was the biggest piece. What you do you think? I'm guessing maybe red squirrel or chipmunk based on the size of these teeth.

Lookit that! You can even see the little molars when I turn the jawbone over.

There were some other bigger pieces of bone in there, but no pieces that could be positively identifed as skull. The tail was pretty easy to identify though.

Here's another piece that looks kind of like a tiny little femur, doesn't it? And then there's the tail. I guess I should have had the tape measure out so I could have given you a better idea of exact size (fail!)

And here's the final showing of all the bony fragments and pieces that were inside the furry pellet.

I don't know that much about owl pellets, so I wondered whether all that fur was actually from the same animal that these bones belonged to? If it was a red squirrel or chipmunk, would the remaining fur all be this gray in color? Or does being inside an owl's stomach before being expelled change the color to gray? A mystery of nature that I can't unravel, but I was still excited about finding and opening this owl pellet.

Merry Christmas

I wish a very Merry Christmas to all of you my dear blogging friends and followers. Cherish and enjoy your time with family and friends.

Holly Goes to School

Since the middle of October, we've taken Holly to the local PetSmart for her first Basic Obedience class. This was new for us too as we never took any of our three previous dogs to class -- Rick just had them trained for hunting purposes. Holly did pretty good with most of her lessons and the teacher told us that she was pleased with how much Holly had progressed since her first week at class. I was happy with her progress too -- especially since we started classes less than 2 weeks after Holly came to live with us.

Holly was the "big girl" in class -- all of her classmates were much smaller than she is. Here Holly's checking to make sure Buster didn't miss any treats. Buster was a rescue dog too. He was a really cute little dog.
Here Holly's checking to see if she can barge in on the game with Pickwick and Eddie. Pickwick was a very quiet little guy and somewhat trained when he came to class. His mom had already attended training classes previously with Pickwick's big brother. Eddie was a holy terror on his first night of class. He barked all the time and totally ignored his mom and dad. He really benefited from obedience classes and was quite a friendly and well-trained little dog by the end of class.

Here's Holly with all 3 of her classmates. See what I meant about her being a "big girl?" You should have seen how these little dogs all freaked out the first time Holly barked in class! (She has a really loud bark!)

Our final test was last Monday. I was a little worried about Holly passing, but she did just fine. She excels at "sit" and "down," so I knew we'd do fine with that. She even did well with "leave it," although Eddie snuck in and stole the treat from the floor that Holly wasn't supposed to have. Holly did fine with her "sit and stay" as I opened and stepped out the door. Then it was time for the part of the test I was really worried about: loose leash walking around the store. Holly gets really excited when we go to PetSmart and pulls so hard on her leash, but I had her outside in the afternoon chasing a ball for about an hour, so when the time for her walkabout finally arrived, she was pretty worn out and she did fine. Congratulations Graduate!

As long as we were in the school mode, I stopped at PetSmart on my way home from work the next day and signed Holly up for Intermediate Obedience class. We'll start back to school on December 12th. This class is going to be a lot tougher, but hopefully Holly (and, more importantly, I) will be up to the challenge.

A Winter Treat for the Birds

My neighbor cut up a deer for one of his buddies today. I went over and asked him for the rib cage and he delivered it to me a couple hours ago. There's quite a bit of nice fat and meat still left on the bones, so this will provide lots of high energy food for the birds. I did this a few winters ago and the birds loved it! It looks kinda nasty, but the birds don't mind. Plus, none of my neighbors can see into my backyard, so no one else will be offended by this bloody carcass hanging in a tree.
And lookit where it is -- right outside the dining room window! As I'm sitting here at my computer typing this blog post, I have a fabulous view and can hardly wait until tomorrow when the birds discover this rare treat in my tree!

Holly got part of a tasty leg bone out of the deal too!

After I got my bloody carcass secured to the tree, I got a little bit more fall yard clean-up accomplished. The weather's been so mild lately -- quite unseasonable for the end of November in Minnesota. This little honeysuckle with a sheltered southern exposure has been fooled into thinking spring's on the way. Unfortunately, our forecast of rain and snow for tomorrow will certainly guarantee that these tiny buds won't be getting a chance to bloom this year!

A Visit to the Dog Park

Holly's completed 3 of the 6 sessions of her first obedience training class. She's quite "exuberant" in class and tends to overwhelm her 4 other much smaller classmates. Since class is currently the only socialization event in her life, Holly's teacher suggested we try getting her out with other dogs more, so we drove over to the dog park on Tuesday afternoon. Holly had a good time investigating all the smells of other dogs that had been there previously.
On account of this being my first visit to the dog park, I had no idea we should have brought a toy and some water for Holly. Fortunately, Mojo and his dad were there with a couple tennis balls and Mojo was more than willing to have Holly chase along with him to fetch the tennis ball.

Mojo's only about 1 year old, but he was much better behaved than Holly. Mojo's dad had spent a lot of time training him and offered us a few tips for working with Holly also.

Holly and Mojo played well together and they were evenly matched in speed when chasing after the ball and coming back with it.

I thought they made a very handsome pair!

After we had been there for about 15 minutes, another couple showed up with their little black lab puppy. This was a very friendly little dog and wasn't shy at all about meeting Holly. She tolerated the little puppy very well too.

And a few minutes after the puppy's arrival, a couple of women arrived with their huge black lab. I heard one of them say the dog currently weighed about 100 pounds! This dog was even more out of control than Holly -- those ladies couldn't do anything with the dog. Holly didn't back down from this challenger and after a few growls and snaps, we decided that it was time to get Holly back in the car and head for home.

It was fun to see Holly playing with the other dogs in a larger space than her weekly classroom. I will definitely take her to the dog park again, but might try the one at the other end of town. I was not thrilled that this park had so much dirt right in the middle of it and Holly had to have a bath after I got her home to get her all cleaned up and shiny again. I've been past the north side dog park and that entire park is all grass -- no dirt. It's also a little busier than the south side park, but I'll try it once to see how we do there.

Weekend at Crex Meadows

On the last weekend of October, we took a trip to Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg, Wisconsin to catch the Sandhill Crane migration. We left early Saturday morning so we could be there in time to see sunset arrival cranes at their nighttime roosting areas in the refuge. We got there early enough to take a drive through the park and observe some other birds. At one area where we stopped, we got to see some Trumpeter Swans.

Trumpeter Swans can be seen at Crex most of the year (except winter), so we felt fortunate to be able to see them this close before their migration to warmer climes.

Holly isn't much of a bird dog, but she kept my seat warm in the car while I was out taking pictures!

About an hour before sunset, the cranes started arriving. We were at the wrong part of the refuge for the first part of this, but after driving around a bit more and seeing where all the other cars were parked, we did manage to catch quite a few of the cranes still arriving before it was too dark.

There were cranes everywhere! Here with "landing gear" down......

A group of cranes takes a walk across the marsh.

Here's a nice shot of a large flock in silhouette against the twilight sky. It's magical so see and hear so many Sandhill Cranes at one time!

Sunday morning brought another chilly and cloudy day, but we did head back out to Crex before the rain moved in. We saw a few more cranes and some waterfowl, but the biggest thrill for me was this flyover of a first year Rough-Legged Hawk.

I felt privileged to be able to capture these shots of this beautiful raptor who had made its migration journey all the way south to Wisconsin after being hatched earlier this year somewhere near the Arctic Circle.

Be sure to add Crex Meadows Wildlife Area and to your birding "must see" list on your next visit to Wisconsin!