Black Capped Chickadee nest box, 2009

This past winter I spent many hours watching the birds in the yard. With these yard birds I had time to look for characteristics that might help me tell individuals apart. Rarely I can find one or two birds in a particular species with something identifiable enough to follow. Some are easy, this winter snows force three Fox Sparrows in to the yard. Each was unique enough to tell apart but they as well as the Varied Thrushes were seasonal. The resident birds like the Bushtits and Dark-eyed Juncos form flocks during the winter then split off into pairs in the spring to make secretive nest in thick cover. The Spotted Towhees and Song Sparrows can be told apart to a degree but then they are very secretive all year long.

Fox Sparrow


Male Varied Thrush

Male Bushtit


Male Dark-eyed Junco


Male Spotted Towhee

Song Sparrow


I made four Chickadee bird houses during the winter and placed them in the yard around Mid-April.

http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/guides/nestbox/housewren.asp

From observations I thought I could get two pairs of Black Capped Chickadees to nest. I was not sure of how the winter resident birds were going to divide the yard territory wise. I drew my own line through the yard trying to think like a Chickadee looking for a place to nest and put two boxes in each zone. I selected locations that offered what Chickadees prefer. Four to ten feet above ground, clear approach and exit avenues. Weather protection, near by cover to hide in and watch for predators. Water and areas to forage for food. The most important variable in the box placement was if I could get good camera angles and lighting in order to take photographs. I put the birds where I could get the best chance for the best photos.Chickadees are easy when it comes to that. I had hoped to pull in a House or Bewick’s Wren pair but that would have been too good to be true.

Two weeks after I put up the boxes I went filled them white pine shavings I bought for the chickens bedding. I found one of the boxes already had a fully formed nest and another had roughly one half of an inch of green moss in the box. Both locations were the ones I had hoped they would use. I had a security camera I bought at Harbor Freight on sale for $20 a few years ago. It works on 115 VAC and connects to a VCR with a 25' lead. It can see in the dark with it’s internal infrared LED’s and is one and a quarter inches in Diameter. The best thing about it is that is has a self adjusting focus and can focus down to within a couple inches. I grabbed a battery operated drill and a bit and watched over the selected box and waited for the birds to show me their routine. In less then twenty minute I have the pattern figured out, hole drilled, camera installed and watching the female put the finishing touches on her nest from the 27" TV in our spare bedroom. Four days later she started laying eggs. Eggs that were smaller than jelly beans in the nest were the size of duck eggs on the TV. Momma Chickadee never knew what was going on.

The behavior around the box changed when the first egg was laid. A week later the same behavior change happened at the second box. Both boxes were successful and I would like to share with you both of their stories. This is the photo story of box number two. My next installment will be the story of box number one. Make sense? I never implied it would.

Part Two
Box Number Two


Here is a tell tale sign that some one is nesting.


Oops, I got caught.


Here is the nest about one week before egg laying. The bottom layer is the saw dust from making the box. I used clear Western Ceder with no preservatives, stain or paint. I put a "face" of older weathered Cedar on the front of the box to make them look older and more inviting. The green layer is fresh moss and the top white-gray layer is a combination of plant fluff, fibers, tiny downy feathers and spider webs.

We need to talk about how I took these pictures. Taking a picture of a tiny bird around while it is rocketing around in the forest takes a bit of forethought. I used a tripod that I left in place for two weeks before I started to take pictures. It takes a day for a Chickadee to lay an egg. Four eggs, four days six eggs, six days. The hen incubates from the start and in 12-14 days the chicks start to hatch, one a day in the order they were laid. This works well for photos because the birds can become accustom to the tripod and myself while the hen sits and when the chicks need to be fed the adults are accustom to myself and the camera being there.

So how do you "hit" a moving target? Meet my little birding friend.


It is a small hand carved Basswood Chickadee. I carved it back in the late eighties. I drew a series of black lines evenly spaced following the curves of the body. This is invaluable in focusing and adjusting to natural lighting or the flash. It gives me a target to aim at when there is nothing there. It also gives me a perspective of the back ground and overall composition of the photo. It also allows me to take a digital picture and make corrections before I waste time and unnecessarily stressed the Chickadees by taking pictures that are out of focus. Once I have everything set up I make sure the camera is set to manual focus to prevent any changes. Years ago I tried this with a 35mm camera, all I got were rolls of blurry useless pictures.
Less then a minute after the picture above was taken the owner hit the hole.

Here are some of the roughly 225 digital pictures I took over a three week period. Click on the photos to enlarge them and take note of all of the different kinds of worms and insects they brought back to the nest. I did not crop this group of pictures so you can see the full field of view the camera had. I was able to identify the sex of this pair by observation, trust me. See if you start to notice the differences between them.

Male

Male

Female

Male

?

?

Female

Female

Female

Female

Male

Female


Now, the chicks have hatched. When the adults bring food to the nest the chicks beg wildly to be fed, the luck one to get it's morsel then bends over to expose it's tail to the adult. The adult stimulates the chicks but and the chick expels a "fecal sac". This is a neat membrane encased waste capsule that is either eaten by the adult or removed from the nest and dropped some distance away from the nest. This keeps the nest clean, odor free and difficult for predators to locate. A "better" look

When the adults approached the nest I could see them coming for quite a ways. Sometimes they would linger outside the box softly calling to the box while keeping an eye myself or the camera. When it came time to capture the exit photos I had to react in a split second. The instant I saw the head appear int he hole I would hit the remote camera release. In the fraction of a second the exiting bird could cover from two inches to three feet. A lot of hit and miss doing this.


Here is a great example of doing it wrong. When the camera is at the side of the nest I have a focal plane that does not change. This picture was set up at an angle and the bird got past my optimum focal point and is out of focus. Anouther point is that the camera is limited to the fastest shutter speed uner it's internal flash is 1/200th of a second. I just inches the bird could accelerate to fast the camera could not freeze the image. This is something that can be seen often in my pictures. I am the type of person that wants to prefect my tequniue before I dumps buckets of money into equipment. I need to justify in incremental steps.

Pheobe and Lister's first year

http://members.tripod.com/~animom/index.html

http://www.animalsfirstfoundation.org/home/default.asp

One year ago this week we took into our home two rescued pit bull puppies. They each started life in the usual way then as they always do, things took a turn. Each faced tragic and life threatening conditions before they were old enough to remember. Because they each were given a second chance to thrive neither knows how far they have come.

This is to thank the unseen hero's of their journey. All of the kind people who took the time and resources to intervene in the lives of these animals. As with any chain strength comes from the links, even the smallest gesture of compassion goes a long way. These two dogs are an example and a celebration of how much good can come from animal adoption. Now they bring joy to all who meet them and hopefully expand the envelope of understanding and love that saved them.


June, 2008. Jujube, Lister and Phoebe


There time together was short but the best ever.

After Jujube left

They spend a lot of time running together.

Life with Flower and Kiwi

When I was ten I asked my mother if I could have a pet bird. I did not really care what kind of bird, I just wanted a bird. My interest in bird watching was well underway and I wanted to study one up close. I promised to take care of all of it's need and pay for it with my own money I made shoveling snow. I told her I would keep it in my bed room and she would never have to deal with it.

Not just no. Hell NO.

I asked why. She said, and I quote, "human bodies emit gases that would kill caged birds". I never really believed that and realized she just had her own agenda and something personal against birds. A year or two later I asked her if I could buy a Boa Constrictor and she paid me $40.00 to drop the subject. Needless to say, my mother had issues.

Years later while I was in the Army I was stationed in the Republic of Panama. Every one had parrots and Macaws. Big ones, small ones, those that talked and those that screamed. I fell in love with every one I saw. In May of 1980 one of my fellow Sergeants was being reassigned back to the States and he wanted to sell his Amazon Yellow Headed Parrot with the cage and export papers for $50.00. I could not pass up this chance to finally have the pet bird I had always desired. His name was Thomas and he spoke Spanish, (actually he swore in Spanish), a lot. He was timid and not very friendly, I thought as time went by we could over come this. We late found out he was a she.

I brought him home and surprised my wife and son with him and I renamed him Flower under the concept that she would always have a fresh living flower from me (I was cheap).
Flower joined the family and a year later while traveling home from work I stopped at the local roadside produce stand to buy my daily ice cold green coconut with a straw in the top and found a shoe box with four tiny Amazon Yellow Headed Parrots inside. The kid selling them told me they had cut down a dead tree for fire wood and found a nest inside. I wanted to buy them all, but being on a Sergeants pay I could only get one. I brought it home and we named it Kiwi. We later found out that Kiwi was also a girl.

We fretted over how to feed this frail little bird, she was less then a week old. Flower went crazy when he saw Kiwi. When it seemed Kiwi was not eating enough of the food we were trying to feed her we introduced them to each other. Flower immediately took charge of raising Kiwi. She feed, groomed and protected Kiwi as if she were her own.

Over the years the pair traveled with us all over the continental US. We live in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma and Washington, They travel as far a Maine, Florida and all points in between. They went every where with us and became characters and constant companions. Their vocabulary has grown over the years to roughly thirty understandable words, several unique sounds and a multitude of screams, ohhhh the screams.

Twenty nine years have passed since we got Flower, Kiwi is now twenty eight years old and Flower should be about thirty two or thirty three now. Last week as I was giving them a spray bottle bath I took these pictures. They are still going strong and health. Yellow Head Amazons have been known to live to be over a hundred years old.

Be careful what you wish for.


Flower was not in a mood for a bath so she ran to her box to hide.


Flower would peek out if she thought I was done spritzing Kiwi.


Here is Flower's South end as she travels North.


Kiwi ready for her close up, she loves to bathe and show off.

"Come here, pretty bird" is how Kiwi lures you in. Never ever, ever, ever fall for her invite.


Kiwi's close up.


Flower says "Hello" but her eyes say go away.

I love these birds with all my heart, they are not pets. For all intents and purposes they are still wild. The lesson I learned from living with them all these years is that when you take on an animal from the wild you are in it for the long run. Amazons have been referred to as the "Pit Bulls" of the bird world. I also have two Pit Bulls. My Pit Bulls are harmless and loving, my birds are secured and deserve far more respect.

Red Tailed Hawk - Courtship gone bad

Last year I posted a blog entry on a Red Tailed Hawk pair that were courting high over my house.

http://birdmandea.blogspot.com/2008/04/red-tailed-hawk-courtship-flight.html

They are back again this spring, BUT things are not going as well as last year. The female was doing slow orbits yesterday when she screamed and moved off to the South. The male appeared and immediately took an aggressive posture and stooped her.

Here is what the camera captured.

The male hawk approached from above and with out any warning he folded his wings in and dropped at a high rate of speed. My camera takes about three pictures per second. Look at the tree in the following photos as a reference for a comparison of the distance and speed traveled. You can also see the size difference between the two birds. It is deceptive though due to the wing posture of the male. By closing his wings in close to his body he gains incredible speed in a very sort distance.

The female hawk starts to flip her talons upward to ward off the attack.

Flipping all the way on to her back she has lost all areal dynamic stability and speed. I could not tell if he actually struck her or if it was just a near miss.

In a complete stall she lowers he legs to regain forward air speed and stability.


Here is a close up of the "strike".


Here is a close up of the recovery maneuver.

I doubt that he really wanted to hurt her or her him. I think this is all part of the courtship "dance". With each encounter like this they will size up each others skills and health to determine if the other is a suitable candidate for mating.

This whole encounter took place in less than three seconds.


Last week they were sitting in a tree together and everything seemed to be fine. I am sure all will work out as it should.

This is a close up of the female hawk. I have not been able to get close to the male yet.

I will keep you posted.

No small wonder.

In the past weeks the weather here in the Puget Sound has been a bit rough. Forage and open water have been very important to the small birds of the area. The smaller the bird the harder it is to travel great distances to find food and water. It boils down to a stark reality, one missed meal, an injury or any unnecessary caloric expenditure and the end may not be far away.

I bitch about the chill I get if I am careless enough to take the dogs out and I forget my coat. Yet I take for granted that the little birds in the the yard will be there in the morning, even as I get under the covers of my warm bed in a heated house. The birds tough it out in the elements all night long. Cold, rain, snow, wind and not to mention predators.

In the past three weeks I have been very fortunate to have a flock of Bushtits visiting my feeders and water spot. They never follow a routine, they never stop and they never stay long.

The following are some of the better shots I was able to capture.

The only notable difference between bushtits is that the eye color is black in males and sub-adults and yellow in females.

These are tiny birds, imagine two to four raisins in weight. Suet is a high energy food that draws Bushtits to feeders during the winter months. Surprisingly Bushtits are carnivores. Small insects are hard to find in the winter but Bushtits are constantly working to keep the calorie intake up. In doing so they are constantly burning those preciously hard won reserves. The bugs they consume in the winter are dormant and barley visible to the naked (human) eye.

Very agile, amazingly fast and accomplished acrobatics.


The best defense for small birds as well as Bushtits is to flock. The confusion of movement and many sharp eyes make it hard for predators to single out an individual for an attack. Bushtits should not have much to worry about, they are not much of a prize for even the smallest of predators.


Even with the flock defense working it does not mean that predators will not try. Can you see the crow sized adult Cooper's Hawk in this picture? If not you would surely be a dead little Bushtit.
This hawk is a specialist in stalking small birds in forested haunts. Stealth, speed and a sometimes seeming reckless disregard for self injury Cooper's Hawks will pursue their prey through the thickest of brush.

When all else fails speed is an option.

Here are some more portraits of the feeder visitors.


Female


Female

Male


This Bushtit has no tail, why? I have no clue as to how it effects the birds flight or function in life. It must have some influence on flight capabilities. (But then again bushtits are not long distance fliers, they tend to flit from point to point in an erratic, unpredictable and undulating method.) Genetics, attempted predation, illness, malnutrition or just a freak, I doubt if I will ever know. This bird is so small and I do not know if I will ever see it again.


Last night a storm front passed through the South sound. High winds whipped the yard and the house shuddered. This morning I went out to survey for damage.



I was dismayed to find this Bushtit in the driveway. He was on the asphalt near the garage door. The best assumption I can make is that the wind caught this little guy as he rounded the corner coming away from the feeder and slammed him in to the garage door. After looking at the previous pictures, this picture suddenly put things in to a new perspective. How can something so small and frail exist in the world of the wild? Yet I know that for millions of years billions of individuals have.

If this bird had died in a bush it would have never been found. Here is an opportunity to learn and marvel in the size and structure of this amazing little guy.

I am not sure but I would imagine that pound for pound the bushtit's "talons" would a fair bit larger that a Bald Eagles! They look even larger in proportion that those on the velaceraptors in the movie Jurassic Park.

What better comparison can be made then this?