Birds and Beers coming up! And Random Crow

Just an FYI for Twin Cities peeps, there's a Birds and Beers this week on Thursday, December 13, 2012 at 6pm – 9pm at the Lion’s Tap in Eden Prairie, MN. crazy blue sky

One of the things I love after a good snow is how crazy blue the sky can get in Minnesota.  This was the day after the snow dump, accented by one of the lovely crows that frequents our neighborhood. We live within five miles of the Minneapolis winter crow roost so quite a few pass over every morning and night.

crow

This bird hunkered down for a little bit, dozing and periodically eating snow until a smaller flock of crows came by and it joined them. I wonder if the roost is so noisy that some crows just need a break for a nap during the day? Kind of like getting stuck at the party dorm in college.

iPhone Digiscoping Adapters

All sorts of adapters for digiscoping using an iPhone and a spotting scope are cropping up. I can barely keep up with testing them. This post covers two different adapters that are very similar and work well with my Swarovski ATM scope.

From left to right we have the iTelligent iPhone adapter, Kowa iPhone adapter and my Mophie iPhone charging case. My only complaint with these adapters is that they do not work with the Mophie case. The iPhone 4s has a crap battery life and if you are going to use your phone to take photos and videos, that battery life is going to get eaten up quickly. If someone could find a way to make an adapter that would work with a Mophie case or if someone could create a digiscoping adapter that is also an iPhone battery charging case, I'd be one happy little clam.  And I don't want to hear about how that would be cost prohibitive when Mophie cases run $79 - $99 and digiscoping adapters run $65 - $199.  I don't think my dream is unreasonable.

But enough of my battery charging rant.

The iTelligent adapter is a case that goes around your iPhone and works with the Swarovski DCA adapter using the M37 ring. I know Swarovski is changing their digiscoping adapters but quite a few of us have DCAs already so this can be a good solution to holding an iPhone steady up against a scope eye piece. I've used the DCA adapter for years to slide a point and shoot or SLR camera over my scope eye piece. It's fast and easy to use. It may seem awkward to have the DCA on an iPhone, but if you are used to having the DCA on a camera in the field, it's easy to adjust to toting it with your phone. The DCA easily screws on and off the case, so you don't have to have it on all them time.

I usually have one of those Women of the Cloud Forest totes with me and this fits easily in there.

The Kowa adapter works without the DCA adapter and is a little skinnier. The Kowa adapter is the one on the right with my finger on it. It wedges on to the scope's eye piece and doesn't have the locking mechanism that the DCA has, but stays firmly in place. I wouldn't leave it unattended, a good bump to the scope could cause it to fall (but that's just common sense with any sort of camera when digiscoping). You do have to do a little futzing to get the full image, but it does the trick and fits in a pants pocket. You can take the ring off of the case too.

I played around with both the Swarovski  20-60 zoom eye piece and 25-50 zoom eye piece. The 25-50 works best with an iPhone 4s. Above is a shot I took with the 20-60 and you can see that there is some serious vignetting which you can get rid of by zooming in the image on the iPhone (not zooming in with the scope eye piece).

But if you start with the 25-50 zoom eye piece you have very little vignetting.

When you use the video feature with your iPhone 4s, you do not have the option of zooming in.  If you use the 20-60 eye piece you will have vignetting which you can edit out using a program like iMovie. Or you can use the 25-50 eye piece and have not vignetting in video mode.

I took a couple of short videos with each adapter and the 25-50 eye piece so you can see how they work.

Here is the iTelligent adapter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-KIjEAn-oc

Here is the Kowa adapter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6JTKhc5C1U

Both work well and are fun way to digiscope. And with both of these adapters, you can still actually use your iPhone to text and you know...phone calls.

 

Random Peregrine

Ah, Migration, I love you so. Driving around on my bird survey route, I see a ton of red-tailed hawks perched on power poles. The other day as I approached a pole I thought, "Oh hey, that's not the chunky red-tailed hawk shape I know..."

Sure enough, it was a hatch year peregrine falcon (and banded at that).

Alas the bird was not thrilled to have a scope on it and it flew after a few photos so I was unable to get the band numbers.

But a random and unexpected peregrine falcon among corn fields is always fun to find.

Brown Birds

Even though autumn is winding down in my part of the country, the color still tried to pop as in one last hurrah before our white and gray pallet of winter arrives. Bird migration still has a big push going and and though it may not be about warblers any more, it's sparrow city in most of my field work or even around the office. These are a sample from the last week, most of these were taken on the same cloudy day with my spotting scope and either my SLR or my iPhone.

And this last ditch effort at color seems to make all the sparrows even prettier. Now, for all you non-birding/casual birding, the sparrows I'm about to post are all different birds--I swear. Above is  swamps sparrow, a native sparrow and not one usually found under bird feeders. I love that pose, the bird had popped up when I pished to see what sparrows were around.

Brace yourself, this is a completely different brown bird that the one above.  This is a Lincoln's sparrow that was in the same loose flock with the swamp sparrow. Note how this one is streaky on the sides and the swamp is not? I love the way this bird is highlighted by the yellow grasses.

Here's a junco that popped up to remind me that it's still representin' as a sparrow.

Beefy fox sparrows flush up on wooded arrows when I approach my field survey spot.

Robust Harris's sparrows are all over the place in the Twin Cities.  I even had one show up at the bird feeder outside my office window, but they're all over on my field surveys too...though my non birding coworkers are dubious that this is different from the house sparrows.

This wasn't seen on my surveys, it's a cool sparrow that with its pumpkin coloring is so appropriate for Halloween.  This is a Nelson's sparrow. And as much as I love getting a photo of one, I'd rather have it on its breeding grounds and not foraging on mud during migration. But a sparrow's got eat what a sparrow's got to eat. Wish these guys would learn to love millet. I'd wet myself if a Nelson's ever showed up under my bird feeder.

 

 

 

 

Horned Lark

Horned larks a constant in my field work but it seems their numbers have bumped up recently. These birds are fairly common in farm field were I live, I hear them constantly. But I've been on bird trips where people have never seen one and they have been casually birding for a long time. Usually when you see them, they are flying away off the side of a gravel road as you speed past in your car. But since I am stationed on the side of the road for an hour at a time, I have occasion to see them up close.

All the farmers are combining right now and migrating sparrows and larks are grabbing the seeds on the side of the road. As I watched this horned lark nibbling a crush corn kernel, I wondered why we don't see these birds scrounging around under bird feeders. Even if you use the argument that the habitat isn't right, what about all the newly developed houses in former farm fields...surely some adaptable horned larks were be scrounging under those at some point?

I love the moments my job affords me. Even when things are seeming slow, if I pay attention to what's going on around me, I can find something exciting. This morning, some horned larks were getting into a bit of a fight.

These horned larks kept flighting up against each other. I wondered how well this plays out in migration. Wouldn't it be more energy efficient not to fight and focus on where the birds need to travel to? Although a peck order must be established, I suppose.

And once 2 are involved, everyone else needs to get a piece of the horned lark fight club action. Who needs to go on an African safari when wildlife fights can happen in a recently combined soybean field?

 

Random White-throated Sparrow

As sparrow migration is blitzing around the US, I thought I put up these images of a white-throated sparrow chowing down on a snowy mountain ash. Even if you can't have bird feeders, sometimes having the right kind of trees can be very beneficial to migratory birds.

I got these images during a digiscoping workshop I gave at Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN.

If you are curious, hawk migration is still going on at Hawk Ridge and there's plenty of time to catch some hot accipiter action.

Lawrence's Warbler

I took a quick trip down to Indianapolis to visit my family. On the way, I made a stop at Mr. Neil's and got a big surprise. I went to the spot where blue-winged warblers have nested in the past and sure enough heard the familiar 2 note, buzzy call of a blue-wing. I was excited to see one, but when I got it in my binoculars I was surprised to see something golden-winged warbler-ish...it was a hybrid!

This is a Lawrence's warbler which is some sort of mix of blue-winged warbler and golden-winged warbler. These two species are known to hybridize, the more familiar hybrid is the Brewster's warbler. This bird really threw me for a loop because it sounded so much like a blue-winged warbler. Here's a video so you can hear what it sounded like (there's also a common yellowthroat singing in the background):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XffAG983LY&feature=youtu.be

I was kicking myself that I didn't wander the trail for bird watching until so late in the evening, I wished I had better light. I took both the photo and video with my iPhone through my scope...incidentally, I used the Meopix iScoping Adaptor to secure my iPhone to my spotting scope...more on that later.

I found an interesting article by by David Bonter and Irby Lovette on these two hybrids. It reads, "The most common hybrid form is known as a "Brewster's" warbler; the rarer form is known as a "Lawrence's" warbler. We currently believe that a "Lawrence's" warbler results when two "Brewster's" warblers mate, or when a "Brewster's" warbler backcrosses with one of its parent species, but research into the genetics of hybridization between these species is underway and many questions remain unanswered."

I haven't paid attention to this spot in the last few years because of my work and travel schedule. Did a golden-winged warbler mix it up with a blue-winged warbler? I can't imagine this bird coming to the exact territory where a blue-winged has nested in the past unless it hatched here. One thing is for sure, I'll be checking it more closely this year.

Here's a an article from the American Birding Association's Birding about the hybrids with lots of great photos.

 

 

Woodcocks At Biggest Week

Part of the fun of birding at the Biggest Week is I get to see my friend Dale Forbes.  I met him a few years ago in Kazakhstan and since then he's moved on to working full time for Swarovski Optik as a products manager.  This is Dale's first time in North America...so you can imagine he's about to explode getting tons of colorful life birds. Jeff and Liz Gordon are also here pimping the American Birding Association and they tipped us off to some hot all woodcock action over at Maumee Bay State Park.  We hightailed it over there after one of my programs so Dale could get the full on woodcock lekking experience.

Before we started, we could hear an eastern screech-owl trilling outside their cabin. I of course had to experiment getting a shot of said owl with my iPhone.  Considering the only light was a flashlight, this wasn't too bad.

Dale got the full woodcock treatment.  The bird skydanced and timberdoodled several times.  He even landed so close at one point that there was no way for me to digiscope him--but what a thrill, we even heard the little crazy inhale sound before they explode out their peent.  Most of the time though he was in a position to not only get shots like the above with my iPhone and scope but also video:

http://youtu.be/vup4FGTGoAM

Jeff also got a video of the woodcock and the sound quality is much better, though he was using an actual camera with video and not an iPhone...it now kind of makes me want to investigate mics that are available for the iPhone.

Woodcocks are all over, one has been found foraging near the boardwalk and appears to have a nest hidden in the leaves.  Some of us have tried to scope her but she's so well hidden, almost all you see is that eye.

So it's not just all about the warblers here at Biggest Week.