My birding gear

I have a lot of tools I use both in the field and at home that help my birding.  Sometimes I think about paring down and going back to basics, but then I look at my photos and I remember that my eBird lists help the Cornell Lab of Ornithology study all kinds of things related to birds.  So here are the things I use:

Binoculars:  About 5 years ago, I invested in a pair of Eagle Optics Ranger 10x42s.  These binoculars are waterproof and come with a lifetime warranty, and I love them.

Camera: Last year I bought a gently used Canon XSi on eBay.  Best.  Purchase.  Ever!  I use either a 75-300mm or a 500mm fixed lens for my bird photos.

Scope: Barska 20-60x60.  It was a gift a number of years ago, when I was starting to get more serious about birding.  At around $100, it was the perfect scope at the time since I didn't know then how much I'd get into birding.

Camera phone: iPhone 4S.  I've been taking pictures with this through my scope without the aid of any kind of attachment, but it's probably time to get an adapter so I can get better pictures more easily (instead of wiggling the phone around in front of the scope's eyepiece and hoping it'll line up just right in time for me to get a decent photo before the bird moves out of view).

Maps: Apple Maps on my iPhone to provide turn-by-turn directions when I'm driving somewhere unfamiliar.  And in Iowa, I use my Sportsman's Atlas to find nearby parks and other wildlife areas or to decide where I want to go.  I also use the BirdsEye app's Find Nearby Birds feature to see what other birders have reported in the area when I'm trying to decide where to go birding.

Checklist app: BirdLog North America.  This lets me immediately upload my birding lists to eBird.

Field guides:  On my iPhone I have iBird Pro.  I use it and the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America to help me ID birds when I'm on the road.  I try to avoid looking up birds while I'm actively birding and just use a notebook to make notes and sketch out the field markers of an unidentified bird I'm seeing.  Then I go back later and ID it.  At home I have my (quite heavy) Sibley Guide to Birds, which is my favorite of all North America bird guides because of all the detail it shows, but I find its size and weight too unwieldy to take it into the field with me.

When I need to identify a bird call or song, I use iBird Pro and 2 websites: WhatBird and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds.  One great feature of WhatBird is they list similar-sounding species.  So let's say you heard a bird that sounded kind of like a Chipping Sparrow, but you know it wasn't that species.  You can go to WhatBird's Chipping Sparrow page, and they have a list of other species who sound like a Chipping Sparrow.  You can even listen to each one!

It's a lot of tools, I know.  I didn't start using them all at once, but now I consider them all pretty essential.  Yes I could probably get by with just my binoculars and one field guide, but all the "extras" help me be a better birder (I'm taking to you, spotting scope and WhatBird), help me find new birding spots (Sportsman's Atlas and BirdsEye), or help my birding contribute to the bigger picture or share my passion with others (eBird and cameras).

Maffitt Reservoir Sunday

We've had quite variable weather in April so far - rain and snow, and temperatures ranging from the 70s to the 30s.  This past Sunday was mild - scattered rain showers and temps in the 50s - so Mr Pescador and I spent a little time out at Maffitt Reservoir.  There were lots of waterfowl on the lake - Northern Shovelers, Hooded Mergansers, Gadwalls, Lesser Scaup, Mallards, Ring-necked Ducks, Bufflehead, Ruddy Ducks (I love these tiny divers :) ), and of course Canada Geese.  I'm struggling with scaup right now - I suspect I've seen Greater Scaup at some point this year (because I've seen a lot of scaup) but I probably need to have someone point out the differences to me when we're looking at them in person.  I keep studying my field guides and I'm familiar with the field marks that separate the 2 species, but they're pretty subtle differences (at least on paper).  Plus my cheap Barska spotting scope, as much as I love it, gets darker the more I try to zoom in.  So when I try to get really close looks at head and bill shapes, it gets too dark for me to see very clearly.  I guess it's time to start saving up for a new scope.  My Barska is great at 20x, so if it's a species I'm familiar with I can use them to view and ID birds from afar.  But if I need to use them for gulls, shorebirds (sandpipers and plovers), or fall warblers (when they've lost their colorful breeding plumage) my scope falls short.  But enough about that, onto the birds!

The sparrows are really starting to show up - Song, Vesper, and Field Sparrows were all singing.  I also spotted a Lark Sparrow lurking in a tree.  And when I drove down to the fishing pier on the east shore, a Common Loon and some feisty American Coots were there to keep me company.

The coots were diving down and bringing aquatic plants up to the surface to eat.  They were all taking turns doing the diving and trying to steal from each other.

Dive!  And then when a coot successfully brings something to the surface, its efforts are rewarded by some good old kleptoparasitism:

Kleptoparasitism is a long, complicated word that basically describes a behavior where one animal will harass another (who has food) in an attempt to get them to drop some or all of that food.  If successful, the one doing the stealing gets the benefit of a meal without having to spend all that energy catching/collecting that food.

My year list is now to 83 species - not bad considering my back injury!

Catching up - March birding

Wow, a lot has happened in the last month.  Unfortunately it wasn't all birding, but I did get some good birding in when I could.

At the end of March, I went down to the Kellerton area.  My target species: Greater Prairie-Chicken.  Even though I've been involved in prairie-chicken conservation for the last 7 years, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit they were not yet on my life list.  I decided this was the year to fix that, so on a Friday afternoon Mr Pescador and I got in the car and made the trip to Kellerton.

What makes Kellerton so special?  It's an area the Iowa DNR is actively managing for prairie-chickens.  This means they have been hard at work restoring large patches of prairie (imagine that, prairie-chickens prefer open prairie habitat :) ).  As a result, the Kellerton area has some 10,000+ acres of prairie habitat.  And the last couple of years, they have been trapping chickens in Nebraska and releasing them in Kellerton to help add some genetic diversity to the population (and boost their numbers).  So, since it was the start of their breeding season, and there's a known population, Kellerton was my best chance to see these charismatic birds.  If you haven't seen the males' booming dance display, check out this youtube video:

During the breeding season, the birds will gather at a lek - basically an open area where the males can dance and strut their stuff, while the females watch and choose a male to be their mate.

We arrived at Kellerton about an hour before sunset (prairie-chickens do most of their dancing at dawn and dusk).  There were lots of other birds to look at and listen to while waiting for the prairie-chickens to come out.  The Eastern Meadowlarks were back in force, singing their sweet "spring of the year" and chasing each other.

Horned larks were singing from the road edges.

Just before dusk, we spotted a group of chickens fly along a ridge and land out of sight about 3/4 of a mile away to the east.  Consulting my Sportsman's Atlas, I saw there was another gravel road one mile east so we decided to head over there and hopefully find the group.  On the first pass down the road, we didn't spot anything other than some Red-winged Blackbirds.  After about 2 miles, I decided to turn around and head back for the highway.  And wouldn't you know, as we were turning around a group of 6 prairie-chickens scurried across the road in front of us, heading into the cover of corn stubble, with a Ring-necked Pheasant rooster close behind.  I quickly grabbed my binocs and managed to watch 2 of them escape into denser cover.  And then, just like that, they were gone again.

The next day, still smiling about successfully seeing Greater Prairie-Chickens, I decided to try for another "clean-up" species - the Short-eared Owl.  I live less than an hour from the Neal Smith NWR, which has a known population of SEOWs, and yet they were glaringly absent from my life list.  So I picked Mr Pescador up from work and we drove out to the refuge.  While the day before had been warm (upper 60s), a cold front was moving in.  As we neared sunset (the owls usually make their appearance right before dusk to begin hunting), fog started to creep in.

In about 15 minutes, it was thicker than peanut butter (as Yukon Cornelius would say).  There could have been Short-eared Owls flying all around me and I wouldn't know they were there - darn them and their super-stealthy silent flight. :)  That just means I'll have to spend more time out at Neal Smith, with its 5600 acres of habitat and 200+ bird species.

Weekend birding

This weekend was classic March in Iowa - 62F on Friday, then dropping to mid-30s and low 40s through Monday.  It even snowed overnight Sunday!

I was able to get out several times this weekend, with the goal of catching the different waterfowl as they moved through.  I was also hoping to pick up my first killdeer and turkey vulture of the year.  Picking out the different waterfowl species usually means breaking out the scope, so I will apologize in advance for my photos.  I haven't yet bought a digiscoping case for my iPhone, so I had to take photos the old fashioned way - holding my iPhone directly up to the eyepiece and moving it around until I could get the birds in view.  It's not perfect, but it's free :)

Friday I intended to bird my way around the east side of Saylorville Lake.  It was such a nice day that the place was very busy - people fishing, highschoolers goofing around, people with their dogs off-leash, motorcycles - not ideal birding conditions.  But I found a few quieter corners, like the overflow/spillway ponds where I found this Hooded Merganser (left) and Bufflehead (right, 2013 year bird #44), both males:

I also heard a Killdeer fly over, making it year bird #43.

Saturday I decided to head south to Maffitt Reservoir.  When I first arrived, all I could find were large flocks of Mallards - not really the duck diversity I was hoping for.  But knowing it's migration time, I was patient.  Most of the Mallards moved out and some new birds moved in:

First came the mergansers - I counted 18 Red-breasted, plus this single female Common.  The Red-breasteds were a lifer for me (and year bird #45).

Then 2 little ducks swam up and sat on the ice a little ways away from the Mallards - a pair of Green-winged Teals (female on left, male on right, 2013 #46).  Note the white stripe on the body (in front of the wing and below the head) and the yellowish patch on the rump on the male.  After a bit, the male wandered off into the flock of Mallards, making for a great comparison in body size:

The male teal is 4th from the right (5th if you click on the photo to see it full-sized).  Then I noticed the 3 birds furthest to the right weren't Mallards.  Notice the whitish patch on their bellies?  I repositioned the scope to get a better look:

While I was doing that, they repositioned themselves as well.  I could definitely tell I had both males and females.  They had yellow legs, a white wing patch, and the males had a dark patch on the end of their tails - Gadwalls (another lifer and year bird #47)!  I've been chasing Gadwalls around the Des Moines area for the last month or so, always just missing them.  They were on the clean-up list I made for myself at the beginning of the year.  Clean-up meaning species that are pretty regular Iowa visitors or inhabitants that I could reasonably expect to see this year (and that I feel I should already be on my life list but aren't).  After spending years doing mostly woodland and forest bird surveys I find my life list is weak on certain bird groups because I just didn't pay much attention to them before - namely the groups of birds that closely associate with water like ducks, gulls, and sandpipers.  So this year my goal is to "clean up" my list of those groups.  And I'm off to a great start, adding 3 duck species so far. :)

While I was at Maffitt, my fiance Mr Pescador texted me that he'd seen a Turkey Vulture at Lake Ahquabi (where he was fishing).  I have to admit, we get a little competitive with the birding and I didn't want him to be the only one to see a TUVU that day.  Even scanning every flying speck I could find produced no vultures.  And finally I had to pack it in and head home to get ready for a work meeting in the afternoon.  But luck and the birds were on my side that day, because on the way home a TUVU soared right over my car.  That's why I love birding - no matter where you are, there are always birds around.  And sometimes you'll drive all over the place looking for a bird only to have it land or fly right in front of you after you'd given up.

The many shades of junco

Dark-eyed Juncos can be found almost everywhere in the continental US (at least in winter).  When these birds show up in fall it is a sign that winter is around the corner.  And I have to admit, while I like juncos I'm always a little disappointed to find my first one in the fall.  As a person who dreads the cold temperatures and frozen landscape of winter, these little birds tell me it's time to get out the warm clothes and bundle up (I get cold when temperatures go below 60F, so from November to April each year I'm a human popsicle).

Friday at Walnut Woods I was able to get a photo of a few plumage variations in juncos.  However, when identifying juncos always look for a white belly, pinkish beak, and a white edge on both sides of their tail (best seen when they're flying).

 This brown version of the slate-colored race has almost no white on her belly.

 Both of these (above and below) show the more traditional plumage of the slate-colored race.

Even though their arrival means winter is coming, I find it hard to hold a grudge against these pint-sized little birds.  They're just so fun to watch and I love their twittering "kew" call (listen to it on Cornell's All about Birds site: scroll down to the last one, "Kew calls (slate-colored race)").

Walnut Woods SP

Yesterday I had to go in to work for a meeting, so I stopped by the bird blind at Walnut Woods on my way.  The birds were busy, taking turns at the feeders and chasing each other.  The Northern Cardinals are definitely feeling frisky.  There were many males singing and squabbling over the females.  At one point I counted 7 males sitting in a single bush (which isn't hard when there are no leaves to hide them)!  Speaking of cardinals, Cornell posted an article this week about why male cardinals are so red.

Here, a female picks among the fallen seeds with a White-throated Sparrow.

A few other birds I spotted:

A Tufted Titmouse gleans a peanut out of the feeder.

 A Red-bellied Woodpecker takes its turn.  These birds do actually have red on their belly, but you don't usually see it (unless you're banding one, in which case you take a photo because how often to you get to see their belly?).

 This photo is a great comparison of a Downy (right) and Hairy (left) Woodpecker.  Although they are very similarly marked, Hairy Woodpeckers are larger and have a larger beak to head size ratio.  I kept hoping the Hairy would actually show its beak for a photo but the feeder was just too interesting.

Swans yesterday

I was driving into Des Moines yesterday evening for the weekly Sunday dinner with Mr Pescador's family.  While casually glancing at the geese and crows foraging in the mostly snow-covered fields, I saw something that made me pull over.

Trumpeter swans!  Sorry for the horrible photo quality, all I had with me was my iPhone and I parked on the opposite side of the road so I would disturb the swans as little as possible (requiring me to use the digital zoom).  There were 13 that I counted, but they were pretty hard to pick out of the snow.  It was a mixed-age group, with some still all-gray birds (last year's babies, aka cygnets) hanging out with pure white adults.  I've gotten to hold these guys during releases, and they are an armful.  Luckily they don't usually try to peck you in the face, unlike some other birds I've held.

I haven't gotten out as much as I would like lately, but staying indoors more means I get to spend lots of quality time with my pets.  Animal lover + enrichment training = I like to make my animals' lives interesting.  Yesterday, since there wasn't a lot of activity at my feeders (which the cat loves to watch) I decided to give him some other birds to watch.

Yep, I let my cat watch David Attenborough's Life of Birds.  He laid there and watched the entire second episode, the one about flight!  My birds prefer episode #6 about songs.

USFWS gets jiggy with it?

Government agency doesn't exactly scream hip and modern (with all their regulations and red tape), but the US Fish and Wildlife Service has a fun side.  Check out their version of the Harlem Shake:

It certainly made me smile :)

Maffitt Reservoir

It was unseasonably warm yesterday (plus the Great Backyard Bird Count is going on), so I had to get out and do some birding.  Sundays mean dinner with Mr. Pescador (my fiance)'s family, but I talked him into stopping at Maffit Reservoir for an hour or so first.  Not that it was a hard sell, whether he wants to admit it or not he's something of an amateur birder himself. :)

There were hundreds of waterfowl out on the water. (Click on the photo to see it larger.)

In the foreground we have mostly Canada and Cackling Geese, with a Trumpeter Swan on the right.  There were also some Greater White-fronted Geese (aka "specklebellies") but I didn't get them in this photo.  Swimming in the background we have drake and hen mallards.  And what's that flying in the left hand corner?  Why it's a male Common Goldeneye - note the white wing patches close to the body and the white belly (if this photo were zoomed in better you could also see the white cheek patch).

This was my first time at Maffit but I'll definitely be going back.  It has a little bit of everything - water, some marshy areas, some prairie, and wooded hills and valleys.  When I was being paid to do bird surveys most of my sites were woodland or forest, so it just doesn't feel like a successful bird trip to me if I don't get some of those species.  Finding them is like running into old friends.  There was a fair amount of foot traffic, including some people with dogs, and there were some fishermen out on the ice, so the non-waterfowl were staying pretty quiet.  I did find some American Tree Sparrows lurking in the bushes, so I got a better photo of one.

Sorry for repeating species, but I know these birds will be gone soon so I'm enjoying their presence while it lasts.  And the reservoir had one last surprise we were heading out...

An American Coot!  This is Mr. Pescador's favorite bird, he calls them "little black ducks" - mainly because he's teasing me, he knows they aren't ducks.

Big Creek SP

Late this afternoon I got outside for a little while and headed to Big Creek State Park.  Is "eBird stalking" a thing?  It probably should be - I chose Big Creek because some sparrows I've been trying to see were reported there on eBird over the weekend.  Inspired by the movie The Big Year I've started keeping a year list.  It's fun to start each year with a clean slate and see how quickly I can add species - although this year I've been slowed down with a persistent injury.  That didn't stop me from taking an hour today to try and chase down some sparrows (by chase down, I actually mean observe from a respectful distance which is the reason for my poor-quality photos below; most people would probably know I don't literally mean chase down but this is the internet).

There were hundreds of Canada Geese doing their geesy thing on the frozen lake - squabbling, chasing, wandering about, and then taking off in a huge loud flock for reasons only other geese know.  I did hear a few Cackling Geese in the mix.  I wasn't able to pick out any other waterfowl, but I was driving and there wasn't a shoulder so I couldn't pull over to get a really good look.  I finally settled on a place to park that looked to me like prime sparrow real estate - restored prairie up against woodlands on one side of the parking lot and scrubby woodlands on the other.  I got out of my car, tried to stand as unobtrusively as possible, and waited to see if anything showed up.

I didn't have to wait too long before I heard the quiet sparrow "chip" - a kind of warning/alarm one bird will call out to let the others in the flock know they've spotted something potentially dangerous.  (Random aside: Researchers have discovered that many different species speak chickadee - such as nuthatches, kinglets, vireos, woodpeckers, and other birds that will sometimes hang out with chickadees in a mixed flock.  These other species can recognize a chickadee alarm call so they can hide too when a chickadee spots something.  Another random aside: Chickadees have different alarm calls for different threats - meaning what they call when they see an aerial predator is different than what they call for a ground attack.  How cool is that!)  Anyways, the sparrows must have decided I wasn't too threatening, because pretty soon they popped up into sight.

Success!  Note the red crown, red stripe through the eye, and black dot on the middle of the chest - American Tree Sparrow.  These birds will head up to northern Canada to breed, so I guess this is their idea of a "warm" place to winter.  Normally I'd disagree but today it was mid-40s and sunny with only a slight breeze, so pretty spectacular for February.

Also seen and heard were Red-bellied Woodpeckers, a Hairy Woodpecker, American Crows, American Robins, Black-capped Chickadees, a Mourning Dove, the geese, and some White-breasted Nuthatches.  Most of the birds kept their distance, but I got some more photos of a nuthatch - this time a male.  This one was very accommodating and stopped to show me his solid black cap before continuing on around the tree searching to bits of food.

These guys (and gals) will cache food for later by hiding it under bits of loose bark.  At my last job, I was lucky enough to have my office at a state park.  One of my coworkers hung some bird feeders in front of his office's window, and one day while we were having a meeting a nuthatch started tapping on the window.  Coincidentally (or not?) the feeder was empty.  So the nuthatch was either letting us know he wanted more food, or was investigating his reflection.  Or perhaps something else entirely, I can't say I know what goes through a nuthatch's mind...

Jester Park

I spent about an hour birding Jester Park today.  I split my time driving (stopping when I spotted or heard birds) and in the blind.  I was hoping for redpolls, even though they haven't been spotted around the lake in a couple weeks, but struck out.  Instead I just enjoyed the residents.

This Downy Woodpecker was digging through the safflower seeds - I don't know what he thought he would find beneath them (peanuts or sunflower seeds?) but all he found was more safflower.  That didn't stop him from flinging them everywhere though.  Note the small beak size compared to the head (meaning it's a Downy and not a Hairy Woodpecker), and the red patch on the back of the head means it's a male.

The White-breasted Nuthatches were busy chasing each other (and the Black-capped Chickadees) and caching seeds but I snapped a photo of this female when she paused.

It's not shown very well in the photo, but the dark cap on the head isn't solid black - it's dark/slate gray instead.  Male White-breasted Nuthatches would have an all-black cap and nape.

All the birds seem to be gearing up for the breeding season - chasing and singing.  That means spring is on its way!