Sounds of Willow Ptarmigan

When you work for the federal government, you occasionally have opportunities to apply for “details.” If you are permanently stationed at a park and another park has a temporary staffing need, you can apply for it and work there for a few months. This is meant to help out a park as it rehires a new position. It also gives the person who gets the temporary job some career development—you can use it as a chance to work for a different type of park or to try out a different type of job.

Given all of the change in my life in the last few years, I saw an opportunity to work in Denali National Park and Preserve for the summer and thought, “YES! I want that please!” Part of it is a desire for change but also two birds I’ve always wanted to see are practically guarantees if you go at the right time of year: willow ptarmigan and my long-time nemesis, the spruce grouse. So I applied and then bada bing, bada boom I found myself in central Alaska in early May, living in a cabin in the park.

The morning after I arrived in Denali, I hit the Park Road in search of ptarmigan and places to ride my bike. I only went a few miles to where I hit subarctic tundra and there in the road was a male in all his ridiculous glory.

Life bird with a view!!!

My first ever willow ptarmigan strutting like a boss in front of my Prius. And yes, I drove a Prius to Alaska from Minnesota.

I pulled over and the ptarmigan immediately began singing me the love songs of his people. I was thrilled, elated, swearing with all the lifer joy a birder can feel. There was another male further away perched in a tree—I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR PTARMIGANS IN TREES! I made myself comfortable to listen and bask in this bird’s “song.” I ended up encountering willow ptarmigan on a regular basis in May and June along the Denali Park Road. One day I biked up to Sable Pass and was surrounded by males chasing each other. I wasn’t prepared for their even sillier chase call. I made a compilation video of their sounds. It’s so strange to be in land that is crazy majestic only to be serenaded by the likes of Looney Tunes.

My first day in Denali and my true love gave to me, a ptarmigan in a spruce tree.

This is the face of a woman who has finally heard willow ptarmigan live and in person and it was as glorious as she always imagined it would be.

My Lifer Texas Blue Bunting

Taking a trip to a new state or country can yield you dozens of new birds in a day. But then there are those birds that catch your eye in a field guide or bird magazine article and you think, “My gods, I want that so much, I need to see it so badly, shut up and take all my money. Show me that damn bird.”

Generally, I prefer to get birds where they are supposed to be. And I’m content seeing birds over and over. The day I’m bored with green jays is the day I hang up my Swarovskis. I’m not one to chase a new state record on the other side of my state, especially if I have seen that bird where it normally lives. I’ll make an exception if it is within ten miles and I know I’ll see friends, but I’m not into chasing that much. 

The blue bunting in the National Geographic Field Guide.

When I was working from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas this past winter there were many rarities being reported and of particular interest to me was a blue bunting. I have been intrigued by blue buntings ever since I was a kid and given a National Geographic Field Guide. Whenever I got a new bird book as a kid, I would immediately go to the pages of my favorite birds: scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, pileated woodpecker to see the photo or illustration. When I got to the page for buntings in the National Geographic, I was struck by a bird I hadn’t heard of before called a blue bunting that was even darker blue than an indigo bunting, it looked like it had patches of lighter blue, did the bird shimmer? As a kid I thought that must be something to see.

As I started traveling, I figured it was a matter of time until I would cross paths with one, but alas, my life list was blue bunting free. Sure, there are birds that pop up across the Texas/Mexico border, but they were usually females. I know, I know, female birds are cool too and we shouldn’t just look at the pretty boys, but I really wanted to see how that blue works on that bird. I couldn’t understand from photos what that blue was all about. Was this bunting super shiny?

This winter, one was reported at Resaca de la Palma, about 45 minutes from where I was working. People were posting pictures on social media, eBird was giving me alerts, it was too tempting not to chase. And Resaca is a good park, lots to see there so it’s not like I was going just for the bunting. I headed out and brought my bike along. Masks were still required if you were grouped around the blinds to watch the feeder birds. We waited, and even ran into a few friends who were happy to tell me that they had already seen the bunting. But no bunting ever showed up. Many other great birds did like the usual green jays and Altimira orioles. I decided to hit the trails with my bike and maybe try again the next day—the bike ride was good birding, and yielded a ruddy ground dove on one of the trails.

The dulcet tones of plain chachalaca song serenaded me as I waited hours for a blue bunting to show up to Resaca de la Palma.

I’d arrived a bit late in the day for the blue bunting and word on the birding street was that the bird shows up in the morning. The next day I arrived mid-morning and was told the bunting had just been seen. But it wasn’t seen again while I was there. I had only a couple of hours because I had an online training to do and the reception wasn’t good enough at the park for me to participate from the bird feeders. At this point I was thinking, “I’ve tried twice, let’s not waste any more time and gas…” But I kept seeing pictures of this glorious male posted by people who made the drive down from Dallas or Austin. I was only 45 minutes away. This male was practically a guarantee if I was there at the right time and when would I see one again? Also, we were in a freaking pandemic…what else do I have to do but go birding or ride my bike? The last time I’d gotten a lifer was 2019? Maybe even 2018? 

I decided I would give the bird a third try, this time taking some annual leave work. I had a meeting at 12pm so I gave myself from dawn until 11am to get it. When I arrived before the visitor center was open the ranger saw me and said, “It was just here but usually will come back in 45 minutes.”

I actually got this crimson-collared grosbeak at Estero Llano Grande but it’s better than the picture I got at Resaca de la Palma. This species was all over the Valley this winter.

I had a good four hours to play with so I waited and 45 minutes came and went. I saw so many great birds that other people were trying for like the crimson-collared grosbeak, tropical parula, and golden-crowned warbler. Heck, I even saw the orange crown of the orange-crowned warblers as they bathed in the water feature in front of me. It was a weekday and pretty quiet, I mostly had the place to myself, apart from the occasional person looking for a different bird.

“You here for the crimson-collared?”

“No, but it was just here ten minutes ago, I’m here for the blue bunting.”

“Ohhhh man, I had the bunting last week, it’s amazing! Darn, I wonder if the crimson-collared will come back. I need that bird.”

Anther couple arrived and like me, they were going for the bunting. They staked themselves out at a blind to my left and we waited. 10am arrived and I began to wonder if I was going to dip on this bird again. I wanted to see it so badly. I’d already invested about 11 hours of watching and driving trying to get the bird that everyone else seemed to get. And I was seeing GREAT birds too so it wasn’t a total loss but I really wanted this bird. Time was growing short, it was already past 10:30am. I had to be in my car and driving back at 11am to make my next meeting. 

Then miraculously…it flew in for some water at 10:45am. I managed to get some video because I wanted to see how all that dark and light blue worked together. Of course the danger of when I get life birds and take video is that it comes with a lot of swearing. But here is the video.

Who doesn’t swear when they get a lifer?

And the blue was insane. The bird looked like it shimmered, even though the feathers weren’t really shiny, so much as the bird has lighter patches of sky blue on its head, cheeks, and wings. It was a combination of blue that no photo can do justice and to watch it move and fly was like watching a piece of electricity flit around trees and dirt. 

I drove home, triumphant. I felt giddy. I felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders. I felt like…I’d say I felt like I got a massage, but no, I felt like I’d just had really great sex. It’s not a feeling I get with just any lifer, this was a bird I dreamed about seeing as a kid—it’s colorful bird, it’s not like getting a flycatcher or Old World warbler. This was a highly desired bird. Also, I had gone for it multiple times. And while I waited for this magical creature to show up, I got to enjoy all my Texas favorites. I enjoy winter, but the silence gets to me. Working in south Texas this past winter really hit home how much I need bird song in my life as much as possible. 

I lived on the high of finally seeing that damn bunting the rest of the day and well into the next. I could feel the endorphin rush with every breath. I made it back to my computer in time for my meeting. Oddly enough, the meeting I had to attend after getting that bird led me to more lifers, including a nemesis bird. 

All in all, it was a great day and writing about the blue bunting still gives me a bit of an endorphin rush. 

Cicadas

Parents (or heck, adults who want a fun project on their desk while working from home) this is something fun and safe you can do with your iPhone.

Dog day cicada freshly emerged from its exoskeleton. The wings and body will get darker as it dries out.

I got a bit obsessed with insects this past summer. Not traveling and moving to a home with a backyard gave me the opportunity to really study and observe things I’ve always wondered about, like cicadas. The older I get, the more I groove on cicadas, they are a sense memory of childhood as summer was marked by their sounds. Where I grew up in Indiana and where I lived we primarily had scissor-grinder cicadas, Linnea’s cicada and some of the periodic species like 13 year cicada. But in Minnesota we mostly we have the dog day cicada—although last summer for the first time ever I did hear a scissor-grinder cicada singing in my front yard. My new neighbors already think I’m a little eccentric but thought it over the top when I leapt up with my phone to record the sound of a new Minnesota cicada. They asked, “Wait what? You can ID bug calls too?”

Cicada nymph found on a neighborhood bike rid

This summer I found a number of dog day cicadas emerging around my new place. Some were found gardening, others in the grass. Goodspeed was working in our garden, digging out some rocks and brought one over, “Look at these crazy insects I keep finding!” I knew immediately they were cicada nymphs and told him to put them back, that they were after tree roots, not any of the perennials.” I later read that dog day cicadas have a preference for pine trees. The neighbor has a large white pine and I’m sure its shallow root system makes it way to the backyard and that’s what the nymphs were after.

True to their name, when the hottest part of summer hit, the cicadas began to sing and I found their shells on hostas, the front yard maple tree, in the grass or the driveway. I’ve had an aversion to the nymphs ever since I was a kid. I think it’s because as kids we loved stepping on empty cicada shells for the satisfying crunch sound. One day I watched a girl crunch one shell with her bare foot and then squish a freshly emerged cicada with her other bare foot. I still can hear her wails of disgust and rage ringing in my ears 40 years later. Also, they look gross and like they can bite you. But at this stage of their life, they are finished eating and don’t really bite. If you pick them up and let them crawl on you, you will feel the grip of their feet—which makes sense. They are looking for something to grip while they go through the vulnerable process of emerging from their shell.

I picked up a few and used the time lapse feature on my iPhone to get this video.

You can make one of these too!

1. Find a cicada freshly emerged from the ground, this can happen at any time of day. When you find one, you have 15 to 30 minutes before the process gets going.

2. Find a good rough stick for the nymph to crawl on and get comfortable. Place the stick in a vase or glass that will keep the stick steady.

3. Find a way to aim your smartphone at it for awhile. Thanks to the pandemic and working from home all the time, I have a selfie stick that also works as a tripod and has a ring light. This is perfect for holding the phone steady and giving enough light to really see the process well. Pro tip, if you tap and hold your finger on your iPhone screen it will not only lock the focus, but the exposure as well. And then I hit start on the time lapse button and an hour later I have a green cicada and a really cool video.

4. Now, if you are worried about the cicada flying all over your house when it comes out—no need. As long as it’s light green, it’s not going to fly. It can crawl. Once the cicada is out for about five minutes, I either set the stick with the cicada on it outside the front door, or let it crawl onto the trunk of the maple tree to let it finish and then be on its way.

I love how time lapse on smart phones gives the opportunity to observe nature and share it with the world. If you choose to share this on Instagram, people will think you’re the next Attenborough!

Here’s my selfie stick/ring light set up. I got this because it makes you look awake at video meetings and is perfect for making time lapse videos of insects. I think I got this on Amazon for about $18, it even has a grip that will hold most models of smartphones.

Cicada I found on my car tire in the summer of 2019. Their wings are quite beautiful when they first emerge.

Cicadas are incredible creatures: a tremendous source of food for other insects, birds and mammals (even humans), you can ID them by song and there’s a rich variety in their song. The adults lay eggs on tree branches and the young hatch and fall to the ground, burrowing in to feed on the sap of tree roots. Different species stay underground for different periods. I’ve read the dog day cicadas take three years to develop into a winged adult—and then live about a week in that form. Some species can be underground for over a decade, think the 13 year cicada or the 17 year cicada.

It also works for me as a metaphor. The above cicada on my car tire was found the morning after I’d made a giant life altering decision. I had things to do and was irritated this was on my back tire, but at the same time I was struck by the vibrant hue of the green wings, the beauty sucked me in. I sat watching it and contemplating the life of a cicada. Here was something that was burrowed under the soil for many years, in the dark, perfectly content to suck the sap of a root of a tree, living in their self construct burrow. Over time, they get coated in anal fluid. Then one day, that’s not the life they need and they have to come up through the soil, to open air, the unknown and then go through what looks like a very uncomfortable process and live what life they have left to live. And they do it in a completely new way. There’s can be a lot to learn from a cicada.

What's The Best Bird Seed Mix To Buy?

The best bird seed mix out there for you depends on what you want to do.

Want to keep starlings away? Offer only hard-shelled seeds: black-oil sunflower, safflower, striped sunflower, millet. Avoid peanuts, sunflower chips, suet nuggets and cracked corn at all costs.

Want to avoid grackles…have one feeder that only has safflower in it and nothing else.

Want to avoid house sparrows? That’s tough, sunflower isn’t their favorite, but at the end of the day, they’ll eat anything. On the upside, their activity attracts other birds to your feeder.

Want to avoid squirrels? Move to Mars. In all seriousness, half the battle is feeder placement combined with either a squirrel baffle or weight sensitive feeder (that really is its own blog).

This is an example of a good all purpose mix. A handful of cracked corn or millet isn’t bad, but you want your main ingredient to be sunflower seeds.

I feed something a little fancier than the above.

The Falcon Heights squirrels are either too lazy or too chonky from my neighbor’s feeders to get airborne. Most squirrels can jump five feet vertically and ten feet horizontally. My squirrel baffles are about 4 feet off the ground and even on nights when I leave a patio chair near the feeder pole, they never make the jump. This means I can feed all the fancy foods at my feeders with no mammal repercussions. Don’t tell anyone…but I don’t even have starlings so I can even feed seeds out of the shell too.

Golfinches chowing down on my custom mix of seeds.

The birds in my yard have made it clear: they like sunflower seeds. They especially like them out of the shell with side of sunflower seeds out of the shell. If I could throw in some dried mealworms that would be awesome. Oh and for the love of Pete, could I cool it with the safflower, that would be great. And since I try to avoid too many empty seed shells, I try to offer some seeds out of the shell—that makes mixes more expensive but since I’m not going out to restaurants that much or paying for parking, I have some extra cash for birdseed right now.

White-throated sparrow and fox sparrow going for extra fine sunflower chips in a hollow log that I turned into a bird feeder/photography background.

If I have a good number of native sparrows hanging around, I’ll toss some white millet on the ground. I cannot resist that huge variation of tantalizing browns found in native sparrows. I’ll buy extra fine sunflower chips and toss them far and wide. Squirrels can smell it, but the scattered chips are little reward for digging through the grass and they sniff frantically around, whereas dainty sparrow beaks can snatch them up easily.

The seed I like to offer my birds is not cheap, yet I don’t want all of my discretionary income going to bird feed. So I started cruising for for prices online, my intent was to find someone to deliver seed to me, but much like my plain sunflower post, I got caught in the vortex of general bird seed pricing. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been caught dead purchasing Ace Hardware brand seed or Kaytee brand bird seed. I remember at one point some of the seeds in Kaytee mixes had dyed seeds—think of a general bird seed mix with hot pink safflower. However, clearly sometime in the last fifteen years they’ve made better mixes and use nicer seed.

For my home yard, I want a mix of sunflowers in and out of the shell as well as some peanuts out of the shell and dried mealworms. I can’t find anyone who makes this mix. The closest I can find goes by several names: Songbird Mix, Songbird Delight, Fruit and Nut…however all of these have safflower which most of my birds leave behind with the discarded sunflower shells (Please don’t email me about how much your birds love safflower, there’s geographic food tastes and I find in my neck of the woods, safflower on it’s own in a separate feeder works great to deter grackles. Rose-breasted grosbeaks and tufted titmice especially like it but I have neither this time of year where I live in Minnesota).

So here are the wackadoodle prices that I’ve found.

Coming in at .99¢ per pound this bird store had what I could call a reasonable price.

For once, Amazon was the most insane in their pricing coming in at $2.87 per pound. Also…note that you can purchase the seed from other sellers either new or used…ew.

Another bird feeding store and this one was a ZOWIE at $2.33 per pound if I bought 30 pounds. Not only must this seed be this year’s crop but also every kernel was hand polished.

Look at this insanity from Chewy.com! It comes out to $2.23 per pound if you purchase a 20 pound bag.

I found this at Fleet Farm online which was $1.34. When I went into pick it up, it was on sale for $17.99 which came to .89¢ per pound.

Since Fleet Farm had Kaytee on sale, I bought three bags. I also saw they had a bag of Nut and Berry on sale for $15.99 (the one Chewy has for more than double so I added one of those too. I mixed them all in my metal can and have this:

It’s sunflower in and out of the shell, it’s got a variety of nuts, it has fruit…and annoyingly it has fruit flavoring mixed in and smells like cough syrup. It’s not like birds are attracted to the smell but boy howdy does it get the squirrels and raccoons’ attention.

So, like sunflower seed by itself (which is often a cheaper way to feed birds and will still get you a great variety) seed mix prices can vary wildly. Take a look around and if you were like me and thought for the last 10 - 15 years that you’ll never purchase seed from a hardware store, take another look. Also keep in mind that the bigger the bag you purchase, generally the price per pound should go down.

As always, a wild bird specialty store will certainly answer all of your questions and give a lot of good, personal customer service, but if you’re strapped for cash and want to attract birds to your yard for your family, you can find good/affordable bird seed at a hardware store these days.

What's the Best Wild Bird Food to Buy?

The short answer: As much black oil sunflower as you can afford. It will get you the most variety of birds.

If you want to know about bird feed mixes…that is a separate post.

Longer/nuanced answer below.

Blue jay on a mesh sunflower feeder. At the cabin, I have a winter flock of 15 blue jays that can clear out five pounds of sunflower seeds within six hours. My urban jays practice more restraint.

Way back when I started this blog in 2004, I worked for a wild bird seed company in the Twin Cities. I managed more than one location in my eight years there. And sure, the owners could argue that my inventory budget was higher than they liked, yet I consistently met and exceeding my store’s sale’s goals. I know bird feeding, I know how to attract birds and do it well.

Recently, with the pandemic and people getting into bird feeding and bird watching, I’m getting questions like, “Do I have to buy from a specialty store, it’s so expensive.”

Fifteen years ago, these were valid reasons why I’d tell you to purchase from a wild bird specialty store:

1. The seed is always from the most recent crop at a wild bird store and therefore the freshest where as big box stores get old seed. Nut meats shrivel over the years and if you don’t believe me, here’s a blog post where a former USDA researcher tested to see if my claims were true. If you have seed that’s two years old in your feeder and your neighbor has fresher seed, the birds will head to your neighbor’s first.

2. You can’t see the seed inside the bags and there’s no regulation on mix labels. A bag of seed can list sunflower as the first ingredient, that does not mean it’s the main seed in the mix. There could also be excessive amounts of chaff or meal moth webbing.

3. Those big companies do not understand the bird feeding market. European birds on the bag for US bird seed (you’re never getting great tits at your feeder in the US), the bags were often chock full of sorghum which is great if you have quail in the yard, but lousy if you want cardinals

Red-breasted nuthatches will take black oil sunflower, but if I have peanuts out of the shell, they will ignore the sunflower.

When I moved to a home with a yard as the pandemic kicked in, I stopped at a wild bird specialty store to get back in the game. I didn’t want to be indoors long (it was before our first lock down), I knew the seeds I wanted and I wanted out of there. When I was told what my total was, I thought, “Ouch…” Bird seed prices had increased quite a bit since the last time I purchased it. I knew the seeds I wanted to feed were on the higher end, but I don’t want to be the person spending $80 a week to feed the birds. At first, I thought there had been a rough crop year…and then someone took me on a date at a Menard’s. Yes. That’s right, a Mendard’s. Man, have I mentioned how dating in your 40s is weird?

Here’s what happened:

Him: How does this Menard's compare to others you've been too?

Me: I think the better questions is, "What do you think of Menard's now that you've been in one?"

Him: YOU'VE NEVER BEEN IN A MENARD'S???

Me: I live in an apartment, why would I go to a Men...OMFG look at that green finch poster above their bird seed, that's not a Minnesota bird. That's not even a North American bird. Oh chaffinch, hawfinch, ch, come on, European goldfinch. See that nuthatch, you're not going to get that at your feeder, because that's a European nuthatch. And that, you think that's some weird titmouse, but it's a crested tit, I almost always see them in Austria when I go. And that blue tit, never going to be at your feeder...well, I take that back, sometimes those do show up here, but that's because some bird dealer in and around Chicago keeps releasing them.

Him: I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of why you don't get many invitations to Menard's.

However, I noticed the prices and I noticed that most of the bags were clear plastic. You could see the quality of the seed. Clearly hardware stores and bird feeding companies has noticed what people want in quality bird seed and have mended their ways over the years.

I even noticed that some of the sunflower seeds looked like they were lower in chaff content. Have you ever noticed how some bags of seed are super dusty and that some bags have more plant stems? Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. When stores or seed companies are purchasing seeds like black oil sunflower, they can get different pricing for what they will tolerate. A bag of sunflower that has more chaff in will be cheaper. If you pay a little more, the seed can go through a centrifuge process to get rid of excess chaff. If a store pays even a little bit more, a tiny bit of oil (safe for birds) is added to minimize dust and make the seed look fresh and shiny…see how things add up?

That’s not to say that you should buy any old black oilers, older seed is not going to be as attractive, but fresh seed that has a little extra oil on it it going to cost more. And that’s for our benefit, not the birds.

This comes to about $2.59 a pound. That’s nuts but this is going to be the most recent crop and probably hand shined and delivered by limo as well.

As Covid numbers are spiking again and I’m trying to do all I can to avoid being indoors, I started looking at seed delivery. When I want to get a sense for pricing from a store, I look at how much black oil sunflower prices are. It informs me of what type of price margins they’re going to charge and how much more expensive the mixes are going to be and it also gives me an idea if they’re seed is from the most recent crop or the previous year’s crop (and more prone to dust weevil and Indian meal moth infestation).

These are prices that I checked are from around December 8 - 10, 2020.

I checked Duncraft and they only sell seed in five pound bags. I spit out my coffee when I saw how much just black oil sunflower seeds were. Holy hell, how much would their mixes be??

I saw that crazy price for five pounds of sunflower and realized OK, they’re not really in the game of selling seed. They sell feeders, these are bags of seed to go along to get you started, especially if the feeder is a gift.

So I started looking elsewhere…I tried Amazon:

Well this is a hot mess. Typically, the larger quantities of seed you purchase, the cheaper the price per pound. A 10# bag comes to $1.76 per pound, a 20# bag comes to $1.50 per pound, a 25# bag is .79¢ per pound and the 50# back comes out to $1.36 per pound. I don’t have high hopes about the age of this seed.

Chewy had their’s at $1.33 per pound.

Menard’s online had it at .38¢ per pound. I’m suspecting this seed is from the previous year’s crop.

Fleet Farm got interesting. I found this bag that came out at .45¢ per pound. But then I found….

This Kaytee 20# sunflower came out at .62¢ per pound. This could be this year’s crop and one I’d risk the moth issue. Birds don’t mind moth larvae (yeah, bonus protein) but they are a mess if they get into your home.

All Seasons is offering it at .99¢ per pound for a 30 pound bag (no one in this town offers a consistent bag).

Wild Birds Unlimited is going for a 20# bag and offering it $1.24!

And then I checked wild bird specialty stores. In Minnesota we have the Wild Birds Unlimited franchises and then we have a some that are local stores like All Seasons Wild Bird Store and Cardinal Corner (they don’t even list black oil on their site for online and go straight to offering mixes). But I know with all of them, I know I’m getting this year’s crop.

What do I make of this? You can get some good sunflower and you can get some fancy sunflower. You want a big economical bag to get you through the next few months? It may not be this year’s crop, but you’ll still get cardinals.

You have no idea how to get certain species in your yard, have a squirrel problem or just getting started feeding? A wild bird specialty store will walk you through the store, answer your questions accurately with the latest information, probably remember the name of your kids and pets and ask about them the next time they see you. They will also honor warranties, repair feeders and generally give back to the community.

April 2020 Transforming A Yard For Birding

Let me tell you, moving during a pandemic…don’t really recommend it. But in April I moved right in between the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to a town called Falcon Heights. Some would call it a suburb, I call it convenient. And before any wiseacre asks are there any falcons in Falcon Heights, it is robust with merlins. So much so that in April not only did I show merlins to friends who visited the yard, one night a male and female came screaming in, locked talons and crash landed on my next door neighbor’s roof. After that they copulated loudly with abandon.

So yeah, there are falcons in Falcon Heights.

There were bird feeders in the yard but they were tucked back in a corner, surrounded by bushy native plants and not as easily viewable as I’d like unless you were standing in one particular spot in the kitchen. That was something that always baffled me when I ran a bird store. Why bother with the expense of a bird feeder and seed if you don’t have it placed somewhere that you can easily view it? The birds really don’t need your seed. You’re essentially providing fast food for the birds, they can’t survive on it alone, it can help but they have their eyes on lots of food out there.

So poles were moved, feeders were added, squirrel baffles adjusted and appropriate seed purchased. Before long the birds took note. After adjust the feeders it took about a week for the birds to be on board. It took even longer for the woodpeckers to get the idea. But I knew from experience that chickadees will check out a new feeder first. Once they start, the others followed. And so it began.

Fly thru feeder is fifteen feet away from a tree trunk or branches. Coupled with a baffle, the squirrels stay out of it. Small suet cage was attractive to small woodpeckers.

Northern flicker tries braving the suet cage. After this comedy show, I decided it was time for a bigger suet feeder.

I love an old woodpile—so much bird potential (and native bees). Some of these were turned into feeders.

The yard came with a good base layer of native plants for Minnesota: chokecherry, pin cherry, wild American plum just to name a few. When spring really began to pop there was also brown-eyed Susan, rose hips, Joe Pye weed, butterfly weed and a host of others. I even tried my hand at planting a few natives and discover that I can actually grow cardinal flower without killing it and that it’s true, hummingbirds really like it.

But I really fell in love with the woodpile. So much bird feeding potential and it makes a great backdrop for taking pictures of birds. Quite a few species lurk around woodpiles looking for insects living in them. But native sparrows love them too. And since I wasn’t traveling or meeting friends for drinks after working in the home office all day, I began timing the end of my work day to coincide with golden hour—that great evening light and set up my digiscoping equipment and an adult beverage and just enjoyed my backyard birds. I even purchased a bag of extra fine sunflower chips and would scatter them far and wide for the native sparrows to pick out in the woodpile.

When I ran a bird store, I sold logs with holes for suet anywhere from $15.99 to $69.99. Not kidding, I sold a $70 holey log. This was a branch from the wood pile with holes drilled by an obliging young man…for free.

White-throated sparrow foraging around the woodpile.

This hollow log gets everything from catbirds to cardinals to shrews to rabbits.

I love a chonky fox sparrow. They are my favorite MInnesota sparrow.

Dark-eyed juncos love some fine chips.

It was gratifying to know that I still “have it” when it comes to bird feeding. There was a planter tray that had been used as a birdbath. I took some pieces of limestone from the crumbling limestone patio and added to that to bird bath, the birds were in like a shot. I don’t know why, but birds seem to find baths faster with rocks. They love shallow water and I’m not sure if wet rocks are easier for them to see, but it makes a difference.

It’s not all drinking and birds. I do wander the neighborhoods quite a bit. I can’t stay idle and generally try to hit my 10,000 steps a day. If I ever get to lead bird walks again, I want to be ready. One day taking one of my many pandemic walks in the neighborhood a van swerved next to me and the driver asked, “Do you want to see a baby owl?”

I didn’t have binoculars on and the woman didn’t look like anyone I’d met in the neighborhood yet. “How did you know I was a birder,” I asked.

She looked confused and said, “I didn’t. I just assumed everyone wants to see a baby owl.”

Well, she’s not wrong in my case.

Turns out her friend lived in the neighborhood and had been posting the owls on her Facebook page. She was so excited that she wanted to share it with the world.

A brancher great horned owl.

I saw the owls and marveled at how I’d missed the poop on the street. I cut myself some slack since I was relatively new to the hood. I went home to get my scope and came back for photos. I enjoyed watching the rest of their development over the months. This has turned out to be an owly neighborhood. They are hooting like crazy this November which I can only assume is early flirting and they are setting up territory nearby again.

There are worse places to land during a pandemic when a travel writer can’t fly. And it’s been a pleasure getting to know my yard birds again. I have always loved me some brown birds and the sparrow action in April did not disappoint. I did eventually get some colorful birds…but that’s a May story.

Lincoln’s sparrow pass through in April and October.

Song sparrow.

Naked Thanksgiving

I am probably one of the most prepared people for Thanksgiving during Covid.

I moved to Minnesota in the mid 90s with a very quiet man named Bill (or Non Birding Bill as many long time readers remember). Our first few holidays were torture for me. I was used to Thanksgiving and Christmas being large, noisy affairs with family members working hard to stake a claim over hosting and loud squabbles over political candidates or personal grievances. Holidays were loud, generally involved laughter, and occasional fights over politics and food. 

We weathered our first Thanksgiving after being taken in by a local actor and his roommate who served us copious amounts of scotch. By the time Christmas arrived it was just the two of us and too quiet. I was crying, the company of a taciturn man was not what the holidays were supposed to be for me. We were too poor and at the time both worked retail so traveling out of state to see our respective families was not an option.

Bill decided that  we should look into creating our own traditions. We dubbed it, “Naked Thanksgiving.” Being in our twenties, being naked and under a blanket made sense. But as the years went by, nudity became optional—especially while basting and we mostly wore pajamas all day. 

We would wake up to no alarm or if we felt really salty, we’d set the alarm for the sheer pleasure of turning off and going back to sleep. When we finally woke up, we ate pumpkin cream pie for breakfast and savored a glass of scotch. By the time pie comes around at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, you are too stuffed to truly enjoy it. Pie for breakfast isn’t too different from eating a pastry for breakfast and pumpkin is a fruit, right? 

From there I would get to work on making our meal for later in the day. In my family Thanksgiving involves many carbs around a turkey: stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, dinner rolls, homemade cranberry relish, gravy, and a relish tray full of olives, pickles, carrots, and celery. Since it was the two of us, I only made our personal favorites. Turkey, stuffing, sliced cranberry jelly from a can, and gravy. And for the relish tray, I opted for a gin martini with extra olives. It goes perfectly with a turkey dinner. 

We would rent or download our favorite movies for the day that varied from watching odd things remembered from childhood like The Goodies or marathons of Bond Movies. We’d usually engage in other adult activities while the meal was cooking because…no one wants to that after eating a massive turkey dinner. It was the perfect day and is to this day my favorite holidays. I spent the day relaxed and full of gratitude while I watched friends and family fret and stress over their holiday visits.

Over the years friends and coworkers would lament about a stressful trip to visit family and complained about having to dress up or deal with uncomfortable conversations. I would reply, “I’m having Naked Thanksgiving where we eat pie for breakfast, watch tv all day and only eat the food we want, clothing optional. We might be really hedonistic and eat the cranberry sauce directly from the can.”

“I’m coming over,” they’d say.

My standard answer was, “Your first time, you have to be naked.”

No one ever came over. 

That relationship ended, but Naked Thanksgiving still sticks with me. I work for the National Park Service and one of our mottos is that we honor our history and traditions, but we are not bound by them. Holiday traditions are amazing family chains, but reinventing a holiday, even if it’s only temporary, still has value. 

If you are feeling pressure from family to have a large gathering and your gut is telling you to stay home, consider a Naked Thanksgiving. In fact, tell relatives who are pressuring you to “not live in fear” that you agree and you’re only going to participate in the gathering if nudity on board. I guarantee that they will request you to stay home. 

And then have your own personal Naked Thanksgiving. You don’t have to do it my way, maybe at your Naked Thanksgiving you’ll wear a tutu, or that extravagant feather robe you impulse purchased from a Facebook ad. Or maybe you’ll wear that ridiculous dress you bought and haven’t used all year because Covid. You don’t even have to have turkey, you could eat a mushroom lasagna if that is your favorite thing to eat. You could get take out pho. You can watch an Amen marathon or find a way to watch the only acceptable Anne of Green Gables with Megan Follows. You can also choose to drink bourbon and watch a bird feeder out the kitchen window, or drink tea and play mindless solitaire all day. You can spend it alone or with a friend from your pandemic pod. You can tell your kids to watch all the Disney while you spend four hours in a hot soaking tub. The point is, create your own scaled down Thanksgiving, be entrepreneurial. It’s what the American Spirit is all about.

Be grateful and if you need to, FaceTime over coffee or a beer with your family. 

It’s been a rough 2020 and creating your new Holiday can and will be rewarding. It can also be a one time lark that will make for an insane and hilarious story when we finally get vaccinated and share a meal in person again. 

We will be the insane grandparents/aunts and uncles reminiscing about our archaic past to future generations, “Remember that year during the pandemic when we all went a little mad over the holidays and ate Instant Pot turkey and cranberry jelly from a can while using ‘the social medias’ to communicate to family in our boxer shorts? Your generation doesn’t know hardship like mine does.”

I Guess I Am A Diamond Painting Artist Now?

Seriously. It’s official. I’m an artist. I’m part of an exhibit with MIA (aka Minneapolis Institute of Arts). I entered a Diamond Painting of one of my turkey vulture photos into their Foot In The Door Exhibit and made it in. The Foot in the Door Exhibit is basically a once every ten years event where anyone can enter art in it and MIA will put it on their walls. Normally it would be on their actual museum walls, but because of a the pandemic…it’s online.

I took a few screenshots of the exhibition with my pieces and pieces made by friends.

Yet, It’s one of the few goals I actually got to keep this year and it was good for me to have something long term to work on. It makes it extra special to be in mixed media along with my friend Gayle Deutsch and artist Rob McBroom—the surrealist who always enters the Duck Stamp contest and never wins because…judges are too attached to art ducko: art that looks the same, almost like a photo (I’m not saying it isn’t a difficult or challenging technique, I’m just saying that it’s too wrapped up in only one style of art).

What is Diamond Painting? Well, if you follow me on the various social medias, you would have seen a few time lapses I made. It’s kind of a mix of cross stitch and paint by number with a little bit of a cryptogram thrown in. You get a canvas covered in sticky material. There are tiny little boxes with symbols in them. You have to match the corresponding color to its symbol by using a pen to set down little plastic diamonds. After many hours and tens of thousands of diamonds, you have your image. This image is a favorite of a turkey vulture photo that I took at Everglades National Park in Florida in 2016. It makes me chuckle that this pieces incorporates birds, digiscoping and a weird pop art. I am a little sad that people can’t see it in person, there’s so much texture to it and it’s shiny and sparkly as you move around it. However, I’ll take any win I can get this year and this is definitely a win for me.

Here’s a brief compilation of the time lapses I made this summer while working on the piece:

What the hell did I order? The title was “Jeff Goldblum Sunset.”

How does one get in to Diamond Painting…completely by folly and drunk ordering. When I got the package I had no idea what it was and I was so confused on what it could be. I put it on Facebook, “What the hell did I drunk order?”

My friend Gayle was quick to come out of the woodwork, “Um I linked to this two months ago. Did you click and buy it?

Clearly the answer was yes.

I tucked it away and thought maybe I’d find someone who wanted it since I had knitting and a supply of paint by numbers to work on. And then my mom got ill. Full disclosure: she is well today and just as sassy as ever. But at the time she was not and many things were very uncertain. And it’s very hard when your parents make decisions about their health that you do not agree with. My mom lives in Indiana and I live in Minnesota. I went down for visits, but most of my time was back up north. There was absolutely nothing I could do about the situation.

This is the chart that guides you on who to put down your various colored beads also called “drills.” The beads have a number on their bag. So the light green would be 3047 and it should be placed where you see an “X” on the sticky canvas.

In a fit of cleaning and organizing I came across the mysterious Amazon package and took out the contents. None of it made sense to me so I did what any practical thinking adult would do—watch YouTube how to videos. I thought it looked insane and would take forever. Who has the time to do this? To get a fully informed opinion, I decided to try it. This was slow and painstaking, but oh…it sent me into a mediative state.

When Non Birding Bill came home that night and saw what I was doing, he said, “I’m not sure this is a good sign. This looks really insane.”

I agreed, yet persisted. Over several weeks.

An up close look at the stick canvas with the codes for the colors.

Any free time I had, I worked on this over the next six weeks. I had ten minutes over coffee in the morning before going to work? I did it. NBB watching some weird move, I placed plastic beads on sticky canvas. Phone calls with relatives to catch up on Mom’s health? I put on more beads.

It soon became a challenge to keep the beads/drills corralled, spillage is inevitable. The bags weren’t really resealable. The beads are tiny and managed to find their way everywhere. One night, I took my bra off before bed and my chest was covered in them. I started using an old ice cube tray to keep colors separated. But even that had risks, like the day the tray accidentally flipped from the table on to the carpeting. I spent two hours painstakingly using a flashlight and tweezers to get as many as I could out of the carpet. When that spot was eventually vacuumed you could hear hundreds more get sucked up.

Fail.

Fortunately, these companies give you far more beads than you will ever need. And with many you can reorder them if you have an absolute disaster. I have also seen things online where there are much better bead organizers and even specialized vacuums to help you with just such a tragedy. I haven’t ordered the special vacuum but I have ordered the bead organizer. It comes with its own suitcase…that matches my luggage.

I’m fine, really.

Jeff Goldblum gradually comes to life.

It took six weeks and 19,040 little plastic diamonds to put together Jeff Goldblum Sunset—that doesn’t include the many beads that were lost on my person, the carpet or eaten by my pet rabbit Dougal. But I stuck with it and the sense of accomplishment was well worth it. If I’ve learned anything with this craft it’s that yes, control is an illusion and I certainly can’t control many aspects of my life, but damn it, I can control over 19,000 beads to create an image. I can make them go where they are supposed to and even rearrange a few if the colors don’t look quite right.

The completed Diamond Painting of Jeff Goldblum Sunset

I had no idea the amount of legend this first diamond painting had. When I moved this spring, I framed it and it was the first thing to go up in my home office along with a spotted owl painting that my mother did. Sometimes Jeff even shows up in the background of my live streams. When friends come over for a patio hangout they ask, “Can I see “Jeff?” It truly is a weird and wonderful thing and the texture and shininess always surprises people.

When MIA advertised their Foot in the Door exhibition I knew I wanted to do another one…because a pandemic will certainly fuck with your sense of control. But this time I wanted to do a custom piece of one of my own photos…enter in my favorite vulture photo. I love vultures, I also love the color of this piece and working these colors really help with my meditation. I sent my photo and desired dimensions to a company called Heartful Diamonds and their customer service was great. It takes a few weeks to get the actual kit but they do follow up in case your image doesn’t work in the dimensions you chose and they readily send out extra beads. If you want to attempt this, I’d highly recommend one of their pre made kits or attempting a custom one of your own.

Now…if you’re looking for weird, then check out the diamond painting kits on Etsy…be prepared, not all of them are safe for work and highly erotic.

And as I look down the barrel of a “Covid Winter” in Minnesota where patio hang outs aren’t going to be as readily of an option and the sun will be out for 7 hours a day, I have more on the way.

Skunks and Skulls March 2020

“I’d really love some quality time with a skunk,” I said to a person I’d been dating casually. (And they didn’t flee in horror.)

“Let’s go to my cabin,” he said.

I’m not sure if it was because Julie Zickefoose had shared a skunk on social media about the same time or if it simply dawned on me I hadn’t really watched a skunk the same way I watch other mammals, but I was really in the mood to see and maybe photograph a skunk.

I had just cancelled a flight to see friends who are more like family in Chicago, which was an uncharacteristically rash decision for me. I was worried I was being alarmist, but after reading tweets from an Italian doctor detailing how overwhelmed the hospitals were in Italy and that they were making decisions on who seemed the most likely to survive as opposed to treating everyone, it seemed irresponsible to travel on a plane. It looked like lockdown was a possibility for Minnesota as other cities were suddenly getting Covid cases in the United States.

“Let’s go to my cabin,” he said. “It’s remote, we can avoid people. There should be good birds at the feeders.”

This is what we found when we arrived at the cabin:

Arriving at the cabin, the deer didn’t even leave as we unloaded luggage.

Hey, y’all got any more of that millet?

When you see this it is time to move your bird feeders. A recipe for CWD.

Yep. Those are some amazing “birds” at the feeder. But the cabin isn’t far from Sax Zim Bog and the surrounding county has lots of bog habitat to explore, something I’ve never really had time to visit because I was always traveling. The surrounding fields were chock full of rough-legged hawks and purple finches were well in abundance. I did take a road trip up to the far northern reaches to look for my nemesis bird: the spruce grouse. I was assured by more than one bird guide that this was the spot they took clients to for practically guaranteed grouse.

Alas, my nemesis curse still stands as a northern goshawk was perched at the grouse spot. Don’t get me wrong, I love goshawks, but I’ve seen them, banded them, had one perched on my arm, had a female try to kneecap me…I just want to look at a spruce grouse. Just once.

That was not to be. So I threw out to the universe that I’d like to see a skunk, in daylight and maybe get some photos or videos of one. When we arrived at the cabin, a deer that had been hit by a car was in a ditch on the property. Some canids had already gorged on the carcass. I’m not sure if it had been coyotes or wolves, both are in the area in abundance. As we headed out for some birding one morning, I looked to my left at the carcass and saw a small, black ball on it. “Skunk,” I said, a little surprised that I had sort of willed one out of this air. It trundled away to some melted snow and lapped up water and then headed back to the feast to be found among deer skin and bones.

The skunk has a bit of a rosy glow to the patches on the fur, no doubt from working on the deer carcass.

When I think of a picture that I’ve taken to represent 2020, this one immediately pops up in my mind.

I stayed with the skunk for a long time as the snow gently fell around us. Snow mobiles cruised in the distance, but it was just us. I made sure to give the skunk all the space it needed so it could chow down in peace. And I thought about what was happening. I was supposed to toasting friends in fancy restaurants and instead I was on the side of a county road watching a skunk devour roadkill. And I was enjoying the moment.

I wondered how a lockdown would impair my life going forward. I was actively looking for a new place to live and all the things I’d loved about apartments in the Twin Cities: gyms, saunas, pools, community outdoor space was all being closed off. I was still dealing with divorce forms. Birding events that booked me for my storytelling and workshops were cancelling and that’s a chunk of my income…which I’m now a sole income earner. I was reassessing what I really wanted for my future. When would I be able to travel again? And dating? How the hell do you do that in a pandemic? How do you tell someone nicely, “You’re really a lot of fun, but I can’t see you anymore. It’s not you, it’s the pandemic.”

As I watched the skunk deal with the unanticipated feast of roadkill, I thought about how a pandemic could be a way to do have a sort of “do over.” In some ways, a divorce is a do over, but if a pandemic is going to make life stop, what could I do with that? I love all the travel that I do, but there’s so much in Minnesota that I don’t get to see. Maybe stopping and taking the time to enjoy the skunk and roadkill was what I needed to reassess?

One person I had dated always made plans last minute. 99% of the texts asking, “Want to grab a drink tonight” were answered with, “I’d love to, but I have plans.” They said that I needed to work on my spontaneity. I countered with, “I make plans so I can be spontaneous.” Maybe not knowing what’s going to happen more than two weeks out was a change I need?

Anyway, if you love of a skunk chewing on roadkill being a metaphor for 2020, here’s a video to meditate on.

Frontera Audubon Turkey Vulture Roost

While I was visiting the Rio Grande Valley with a friend with an eye on potential retirement spots I made sure to hit my favorite places. And one of those is Frontera Audubon. This is a tiny little park and every time I go, I get a gem. You can, of course get the Valley specialties, but every time I go there, I get a good bird, whether it’s a bird I don’t see all the time like a pyrrholuxia or gray hawk or even a Mexican species flitting across the border like a golden-crowned warbler.

I love all the nooks and crannies of the park and especially the sabal palm forest. The thicket is so dense it gives me a sense of peace. However, what I truly love about this place is the winter turkey vulture roost. You can smell it before you hit it. The smell doesn’t bother me, I put it in the category of “good bird smell” but when you’ve been vomited on by thousands of pelicans and herons in your career…your definition of “good” changes.

You know that you are some place special when you see this much vulture poop.

Vultures cruising in to their roost.

I do find it hilarious that when I do a google search for either Frontera or for vulture roosts, I’ll get directed to Trip Advisor reviews and people who…maybe don’t get birding. Here’s a sample:

Bad reviews of Frontera Audubon make me cackle.

Come on, people, it’s an amazing place to get vulture photos. And there’s plenty there to see, even outside of the feeders. Sure…you may have to have some patience, but that’s true of all birding spots. There are dozens of hot birding spots in the Valley and some I visit more than others, but Frontera is on the shortlist and I make it a priority every time I go. It’s tiny and chock full of birds.

Plain Chachalaca at Frontera.

White-tipped dove.

But I’m really here for the vultures. All the vultures. All the time.

I told my friend that this many vultures soaring above his head means that it’s time for retirement.