Eastern Kingbird Nests

 So I'm floating along with my camera, marveling at all I've seen in a few hours of doodling around in my lil' peapod canayak. I just can't get over the array of active nests I've found. Just goes to show you what birds can accomplish when mammalian and reptilian predation is controlled by oh, four or five feet of water.

This snag intrigued me, just because the Virginia creeper framed the cavity so beautifully. I didn't see a vine running up the tree, and because it was standing in several feet of water, any vine coming from the ground would be drowned. I figured the creeper had rooted in the cavity. I circled the tree, shooting, and it wasn't until I saw the photo on the camera screen and blew it up (trying to figure out where that vine was coming from) that I saw that the tree hid another treasure.          

There was a nice nest inside the cavity, which could have belonged to a robin, but I suspected it might have been built by an eastern kingbird, because there were gobs of them around. Would a kingbird build in a cavity like that?

Well, would you?

I might.

More discoveries: I saw some stuff sticking out of the top of a rotten stub, which resolved into nesting material, and a setting kingbird. Well!

Well, hello, Missy! I'll pass by--don't you worry or get up, OK?

Luckily for you, she did leave the nest for a moment. I say that because this gives me a chance to tell you how to sex a kingbird.  See the gray wash on her breast? That's a female. Males have a clean white breast. Nice of them to have a little dimorphism, just enough to make it fun for a birdwatcher.

But my favorite kingbird nest of the day (and this was more kingbird nests than I'd seen in my life, for goodness' sake!) was the last one. I saw a beautiful kingbird fetched up on a snag, and shot a photo of it.

We bird photographers can have tunnel vision--we're trying so hard to get the bird in focus and framed that we often overlook what's around the bird. See anything interesting in this photo?

Yeah, it took me awhile, too. Sweet! There were two little heads bobbing in the nest. 

 It was a beautiful end to an incredible day on the water. All I want to do is go back to West Virginia's North Bend State Park. You can lose yourself at a place like that.

Great Crested Flycatchers!

And that pewee-lookin' bird with yellow below that Phoebe found for me? Get this: Pewees have wingbars and crested heads. She had it almost zeroed in. But she had found a pair of great-crested flycatchers, and they were tending a nest!

And not just any nest, but a glorious weathered branch stub in a sycamore. And it was low, and the birds were tame, as you will see. What a find!

 The pair was busy feeding young which might have been fairly well along, to judge from the prey items they were getting. I could hear them in the cavity, voicing "wheep!" calls just like their parents'. This is something unique about flycatchers. Even as little chicks, their voices don't vary much from how their parents sound. Flycatcher calls and songs are innate, not learned. So you could take a phoebe, a pewee or a great-crested flycatcher, just to name a few, raise them in complete isolation, and they'd still have a perfect song and call from the get-go. That's not true of most songbirds.  You could have knocked me over with a feather the first time I held a newly-hatched phoebe in my palm, and it said, "Chip!" just like an adult phoebe.

So this pair of great-crests is hauling in dragonflies as fast as they can. Not the first time I've wished I'd spent more time on odonates. It pains the Science Chimp greatly not to be able to identify the great crested's prey items. Please chip in if you can.

 The birds were bombproof, eyeing me but slowing down not one whit as I fired away from just below the nest.

Input, output...they carried away sizable fecal sacs of processed dragonfly with each visit.

 The original disposable diaper: the fecal sac.

 Fecal sacs are neatly encased in a mucoid coating which, if handled gently, leaves no residue on bill (or fingers, she notes).

 The bird carries them away for hygienic purposes, and to keep predators from keying in on the nest location. Birds love to drop them over water.

More great-crested family photos anon.

Red-headed Woodpeckers!

I grew up with red-headed woodpeckers in Richmond, Virginia. There was a housing development where one of my friends lived that was lousy with them. Even though I could see them any time I wanted, I still thought they were special. One of my earliest rehab patients was a car-hit red-headed woodpecker. Such a spirited bird, so willing, so full of life. Too bad it ended badly. I learned the hard lesson at eight that you don't take a wild bird with a broken wing to a dog and large animal vet. It isn't fair to either of them. Still, I got to know a little something of the red-headed woodpecker's spirit. What a wonderful bird he was, even grounded and scuttling around in a cardboard box.

The high, hoarse Queerk! of the red-headed woodpecker electrifies me to this day. Bill and I thought we'd landed on Planet Paradise when it hit us that we were in the midst of a RHWO colony at North Bend State Park in western West Virginia. 

We found three nests, and had we headed to our left, we'd have probably found at least that many more. But we had our hands full discovering everything there was in one short traverse of the lake.

Bill of the Birds settled back, trying to get acceptable images of a shy pair tending their young. To combat drift, you have to hang yourself up in a snag to still the canoe. They like to faunch around when you're trying to get your shot.

Technically, a 300 mm. telephoto isn't quite enough glass for this situation. I'm thinking hard about upgrading my camera equipment, getting a lens I can put a doubler on. I just wanted to be closer to these birds, but they were skittish as could be, and I never got the photos I wanted. Still, some are evocative of the moments I experienced.

This lovely bird stopped to sunbathe, drooping his wing.

They looked so beautiful against the weathered trunks. Even as I enjoyed the afternoon, I was trying to figure out when and how I could get back before the babies (which were peeping weakly in the cavities) were out of the nest. 

It's been such a busy summer. The first part of June was given to North Dakota, and the minute we got back the kid-maintenance appointments started--teeth, eyes, hair. More teeth. More eyes. Physicals. Everyone needing maintenance. Is it any wonder Mom lets hers slide? I'm writing this from the waiting room of an oral surgeon who at this moment is taking six (yes, our kids are extraordinary in every way) wisdom teeth out of poor Phoebe's jaws. This is the second time I've seen one of my babies go under anaesthesia, and it runs counter to every fiber in my being to witness that. It's like sending them to the Underworld. She'll be fine, she's got a momma making Vicodin smoothies. Hangin' in there...dreaming of canoeing on this fine puffy white cloud summer day; just not able to do it right now. I'm sure that's a familiar feeling to many of you all. Send your good wishes to our poor lil' flame-haired Chipmunk. She needs them.

Mimi darling, it was such a tonic to see you. I needed those hugs!

On Quiet Waters

One good outing in a boat can be absolute magic for the soul. Forget chicken soup. I need the sound of trickling water under a canoe hull, the gentle rock of a boat on calm water.

A couple weeks ago, we mounted an expotition to North Bend State Park, not far over the West Virginia International Boundary with Ohio. About nine years ago, a dam went in, making a long, meandering flooded lake with lots of fascinating elbows and appendices to explore.

David and Mary Jane, Chet Baker's West Virginia parents, alerted us to this place, and all the birds they'd found nesting there made us anxious to explore it. So they brought their huge aluminum canoe, and graciously took our kids in it, while Bill and I zooped around in our one-man canoes.

Get a load of these reflections.

It was immediately clear to us as birdwatchers that we were entering a gallery of cavity-nesting birds the likes of which we'd never experienced.

For the flooded trees all died at the same time, and this made for easy excavation by flickers, red-bellied, hairy and downy woodpeckers.

Flickers, in fact, were going nuts all around us, courting and fighting. These two males engaged in some terrific stunts and dances, vying for a single female. See their black malar marks, or "moustaches?" Those small black dashes on the side of their faces (not the breast crescent; both sexes sport that) mean they're boys.

The males kept engaging each other, approaching, posturing with bills erect. There was a whole lot of woika woika woika-ing going on.

The female flicker's the top bird in this photo. 

Very noisy and amusing, they were.  What a treat to see flickers breeding--outnumbering the starlings, which compete for the cavities the woodpeckers dig. This is one of North America's most ornate birds. All the spots and dashes of jet black on warm brown plumage--they wouldn't really need the golden underwings and tail, or the white rump, or the gray toupee, or the little vee of scarlet on the nape...but flickers have it all.

Sometimes when I see a flicker on the ground I'm reminded of Africa's beautiful hoopoe, which is why I sometimes call flickers the American hoopoe. But usually only to myself or to Bill, because most people have no idea why I'm calling a flicker a hoopoe.

Good grief, they were spectacular. I love this photo--it captures the crazy antics we witnessed as the three birds chased and swirled above the mirrored water. Yes, that's gold in the spread wing of the lower bird. Oh, for a bigger lens, better light, closer approach. But you get the idea.

But flickers weren't the only woodpeckers nesting in the flooded forest of North Bend State Park. There were red-bellied, hairy and downy, pileated too. And then there was the most beautiful woodpecker of all...Bill's totem bird. 

The place is absolutely lousy with red-headed woodpeckers. I hope you're swooning, because we sure were. Red-headed woodpeckers are durn rare any more. Why the loveliest woodpecker must be our rarest...sigh.

More of these red, white and jet beauties anon.

Campsite Scenes

There are many times when I use my 300 mm. telephoto lens to photograph my family. I'm not a fan of the typical travel snapshot, in which a person stands grinning in front of a sign, a precipice, a statue. Blaa. No information content, no artistry, no interest, no life.

So when I crawled out of the tent and saw this scene unfolding below I deployed the long lens for some paparazzo-style documentation of Liam self-actualizing.

Liam loves, loves, loves to cook. He is almost always between me and the saute pan or mixing bowl. Perhaps because my mother would only let me rinse bowls, never allowing me access to the messy stuff, I try to let Liam stir and mix and pour. It's hard, I'll grant Mom that, to stand by and let somebody do something wrong, or messily, but how else is he going to learn to do it right? And how hard is it to wipe up afterward, if he gains confidence and surety in the process?

Jim and Nick asked Liam to mind the sausages. And mind them he did.


I love how he's holding the tongs here. He doesn't quite get that tongs are long so you don't get burned. Had I been hovering, I'd have shown him how to hold them. But I stayed back.


Hmm. Is that done?


We all agreed that the sausages that morning tasted extra good, and wondered aloud who had cooked them so masterfully. It was me, Mommy!

Later, I looked up from packing the tent and sleeping bags to see this fine example of anthropoid ape grooming/bonding behavior. Out came the telephoto.


Yes, candid shots are ever the best.

Threading the Needle with Bill of the Birds

Not only was the slot canyon spookily magical, but it offered some fabulous photo-ops.

There came a point where it narrowed down to a squeeze. Now the fun begins!

I often wish I were taller than I am. This was not one of those times.

The slot canyon narrowed down to a hole, blocked by a huge boulder. You had to crawl under the boulder to get through. It was tight. I was regretting the extra biscuits, but I made it.

Come on, Daddy! You can do it! I just did it!

Of course, Liam did it in seconds. Little snot. Then he climbed the wall just for fun.



Bill of the Birds examines his options. He don't much like that crawl-under thing.

Nick suggests climbing the wall a ways back and coming along the ledge instead. So Bill handed us his camera and binocs and went for it.

This was not an option I was wild about. The ledge kind of melted away in a Dali-esque drip as it neared the passage. Bill soon reaches a point where he can go neither up nor down, forward nor back. Oh, drat. You guys go on. I'll just stay and feed the burying beetles.


Back to Plan A. In order to squeeze through beneath the boulder, Bill has to wriggle on his back, like a sea otter. I went through on my hands and knees.


He's going to make it.
I think we should do this slot canyon hike every year. It will keep us honest when the Christmas cookies come around.

This post is dedicated to all the Little People out there. Sometimes we rule.

For those needing another Chet Baker fix, as well as a splendid photographic and video run-down of October 11's Big Sit from our tower, go visit Jim McCormac's excellent blog, Ohio Birds and Biodiversity. There is a picture of Chet there that will make you smooch your screen.

Slot Canyon Magic

Every now and then I think about my favorite days ever. A few stand out in memory, like the day I took Phoebe, 17 mo. old and just walking, in a bike trailer along the coastal trail in Monterey, California. I remember every detail, every sparkle on the water from that day.

The Slot Canyon Adventure on our Missouri River canoe trip in Montana certainly ranks up with the Monterey day. We'd camped under some cottonwoods, and got up the next morning to go into the most magical of canyons. As its name suggests, a slot canyon narrows down until it's a squeeze to get through, making for a whole lot of fun. That's a whole 'nother post, seeing Bill of the Birds through that canyon.

The view across the river included some sheer cliffs and a prairie falcon nest!
Bill of the Birds had brought his spotting scope along, and we watched the falcons tend their young.

A bull snake greeted us at the campsite. Liam spotted it first!


Our guide Nick caught the placid snake and relocated it a short distance away. Bull snakes climb after birds' nests, as rat snakes do back home in Ohio.

What a gorgeous creature. He looked like someone tried to make him a T. Rex for Halloween.

This canyon had it all. Gorgeous wildflowers with extraneous minutiae (Nick and Liam).


There's a rock wren in this picture. Take my word for it.


Gumbo lilies, a kind of primrose, spread their huge white flowers along the cliffsides and tops. I scrambled up to this one and confirmed my suspicion that it would have a heavenly fragrance! Barely any leaves, any plant at all--just a huge flower that looked like someone had dropped a Kleenex on the scree.

Rock pigeons nested along the canyon walls, filling the space with their eerie moans. It was as if the rock walls were breathing, weeping.


We took turns shooting pictures of each other in the great arch atop the canyon.


Here's Bill of the Birds, posing.


I don't know why we feel we have to stand, face the camera and smile, but we do, again and again, even though it makes for some pretty prosaic shots.
To me, the rock looked like a big camel, or a wonderful turkey.
Al Batt, humorist, writer, exemplary human being, was along on our trip, by the grace of Mountain Bluebird Trails and the Great Falls Chamber of Commerce. Such a gift they gave us, letting us experience Montana's Russell Country in this way. Al barely fit in the arch.

Back at camp, Al and Bill muttered about needing some yaller mustard for these here hot dogs hmmmmmm
I don't think there was a pop culture, music or movie reference that Al didn't get and fire right back, and they flew thick and fast. Not to mention his wide-ranging knowledge of natural history, and the obvious mutual affection between Al and our kids. What a wonderful traveling companion!

Oh, thank you, Russell Country. I hope my readers are inspired by this post to book their own trip on the Missouri.