Birding Competition Update

Friday update: The past weekend gave me an uptick of 2 birds to put me at 89.  I spent Saturday afternoon birding around the Long Point Winery area of Cayuga Lake.  I first went in search of longspurs but only found Snow Buntings and Horned Larks. This is when I really wish I had a scope to scan with!

Down by Cayuga Lake I found the usual suspects including Redheads, Common Mergansers, and even two Tundra Swans.

As the sun was setting and deer came out to feed I had a calling Common Raven overhead which was bird #88.  It was heading for the trees, perhaps to roost for the evening.

Next came the Northern Harrier over the vineyards and surround fields.  Year bird number #89! I stayed around in the single digits to wait to glimpse the Short-eared Owl again.  It came as the sun was setting and the light almost too dim to take a photo.  The best show I managed was the one above of the Short-eared hunting over the vineyard.  A few minutes after this it hit the ground with prey in foot.  A great way to end the day and head home to warm up.

On Sunday I tried for an Eastern Screech-owl that's roosting nearby but it was a no-go after an hour of waiting and searching.  I'll be back little owl if the weather improves!  Until then, I hope to go on a Cayuga Bird Club outing this coming weekend and pick up a few more birds.  There are some winter birds around I'd love to pick up like Redpoll, Pine Sisken, and Snowy Owl.  Wish me luck!

Field Birds & A Lifer Short-eared Owl

Next we headed to Mt. Pleasant where we spotted Horned Larks and a flock of Snow Buntings.  Next we drove by the Game Farm where I spied the Ring-necked Pheasants that are being bred.  We dipped on any interesting hawks but it was still a wonderful evening investigating some new haunts.

In the afternoon I decided to head out birding again, this time for an owl. While living in South Florida i attempted to see many a Short-eared Owl (Caribbean Race) but it never worked out despite my efforts at Aerojet Road.  In New York, things went much easier.  

I arrived at the Long Point Winery just 30 minutes north of Ithaca around 4:30pm.  By 5pm, a Short-eared Owl had already made an appearance.  I watched it gracefully fly over the fields near the winery.  Then as a celebration I did a small wine tasting and bought a bottle to toast the lifer.

Chasing lifers is not an everyday occurrence for me but when it happens and ends in success I am elated.  This was a relatively easy bird to see in New York but made sweeter by the years of missing it in Florida.

Oliver's Passing

Oliver at Migration Celebration - October 27, 2012

This week brought sad news to Green Cay Nature Center with the passing of our beloved Eastern Screech-owl Oliver.  We will miss him greatly.  He was such a good ambassador for the nature center and delighted many visitors. 

R.I.P. little Oliver.

Waxwings and Owls at Okeeheelee

My Bird a Day efforts continue and lately I have enjoyed a park a little closer to home, Okeeheelee Park. Okeeheelee has a great nature center with some nice pine flatwoods to explore. It was here that I finally saw my FOTS Cedar Waxwings. My mission was to go see the nesting Great Horned Owls.  I found the baby and the parent seen below.  I also found Cedar Waxwings galore.  The birding was so great I came back two weekends in a row.  Come back tomorrow to see my other finds!
 

Oliver the Owl

This Saturday come out to Green Cay Nature Center to learn all about owls at 1PM.  Oliver will be on display and all sorts of owl artifacts will be available for close inspection.  Program lasts for 1 hour and is $3 per person.  All ages welcome!

Oliver the Owl

Yesterday I posted a photo of our new education Kestrel but if you're visiting Green Cay you shouldn't definitely ask at the front desk if Oliver is out on our perch.  He usually sits behind the desk and delights visitors daily.  We've had Oliver for a couple of years now and he's such a cute guy.  We use him with our nightwalks, our school programs, weekend programs, and outreaches.  He's easy to handle and has quite the personality.  

Oliver was hit by a car and has an amputated wing.  He can never fly again and he was rehabbed at Busch Wildlife Center.  Now he lives at Green Cay and educates the public about birds, nocturnal animals, and human threats on wildlife.  Mostly he's a grumpy little guy but I do find him endearing.  It's a pleasure to work with such a beautiful animal.

Silly Oliver

Oliver, our Eastern Screech-owl at Green Cay, lives in my office. He jumps from perch to perch with ease but the other day he had some balance issues and fell into the cup holder. This bewildered look you see sums up his feelings (if I had to guess). After a few minutes he calmed down and hopped out but not before I snapped a few photos.




By the time I was done taking photos you could tell his expression had changed from surprise to more of irritation. I don't blame him. One little slip and here I was going all paparazzi on him. Poor fellow, it must be hard balancing when you have only one wing.

If you're interested in seeing Oliver he's usually on display behind the front desk of our nature center. He entertains people on his little perch during the day and then retreats to his cage for the night. Oliver is also used with our educational programs so if he's not home, then most likely he's earning his dinner by teaching people about car strikes and the importance of owls in the ecosystem.

Green Cay Owl

Oliver hard at work.

Owl Pellet under the Chickee Hut

We have seen Eastern Screech-owls at Green Cay but this pellet found on the mile trail was the length of a screech-owl's body so it must be from one of its larger cousins. My boss seems to think it could be from a Barn Owl from the neighboring farm. But the only other confirmed account of an owl here was a Great Horned Owl seen a few years ago. Regardless of the identity, this was a cool find at the chickee hut.

Oliver update

Oliver our education Eastern Screech-owl is doing very well at the nature center. I've been bringing him in on a weekly basis to mingle with the guests at the front desk. Above he's seen with my good friend Rupp on her recent visit to South Florida. He still puffs his chest when you pick him up but the beak clacking is almost gone entirely. I hope that he's settling in a little better now. I look forward to many fun experiences with this little owl in the future.

Screech-owls are Back

Last year the Eastern Screech-owls gave a good attempt at nesting. Unfortunately the European Honeybees had other plans and destroyed their nest. This year we haven't seen the owls near the nest boxes but they are near the boardwalk. And sometimes they are even calling back and forth with each other. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that maybe they will give it another try at Green Cay.

Great Horned Owl Baby

A month ago I ventured out the Loxahatchee Wildlife Center to see the nesting Great Horned Owls. I saw the female sitting quietly on the nest. And then I saw another owl on a different trail near another nest. Well I'm happy to report that at least one of the babies hatched and is doing well. My friend Bill Kominsky sent me these photos of the cute little babe.

Oliver the Eastern Screech-owl

Oliver our little education owl at Green Cay is doing quite well. He's eating three mice a day in addition to assisting in our bird classes and storytime sessions. On our monthly night walks he comes in to give our visitors a special treat. All in all, he's been very well behaved. Yesterday I had an animal handling training workshop with our volunteers and they had a chance to pick him up for the first time. Soon we will have a perch in the nature center so that more visitors will be able to see him. For those that don't know, Oliver was hit by a car this year and had a wing amputated. He now lives at Green Cay and serves as an animal ambassdor to school kids and the general public.

If you're into birds and educational opportunities come out to Green Cay on October 31st (Halloween) for our annual Migration Celebration. We will have crafts for the kids, speakers, a raptor show, and hopefully a rehabbed bird release into the wetlands. For more information see our website.

Oliver

We had a Cub Scouts program this weekend and I had the opportunity to take out Oliver, our Eastern Screech-Owl for the talk. He's a show stopper.

Education Owl Update

Our new Eastern Screech-Owl has a name! Grace from New York and Kaylah from Parkland, FL both submitted the winning entry. After the staff members of Green Cay whittled the list of 100 names down to 10 our volunteer staff voted on their favorite. Now we are proud to say that OLIVER has a new home at Green Cay. Oliver suffered injuries due to a car collision and lost his left wing this year. We are now the proud sponsers of this education animal. May Oliver engage many children and adults alike here at the nature center!

Name Our Owl Contest

A couple of weeks ago Green Cay got their first education bird, a male Eastern Screech-owl. We are now having a naming contest! For those of you that frequent the park don't forget to stop by and drop a name in the box on the front desk and for those on the interwebs you can post your name in the comments and I will enter them. If you win we will mail you out an adoption packet for the owl.

To give you a little history on our new fellow, we know he is full grown and probably a few years old at most. He was rescued and taken to Busch Wildlife in Jupiter, FL after sustaining a car accident. His left wing has been amputated and he seems to be quite healthy. So far he's done very well eating the two medium mice that we feed him everyday except Sunday which is his fasting day. Now he will live the rest of his life at Green Cay where he will entertain thousands of school children and visitors each year. Please help us by naming our new animal ambassador!

Bahamas Day Three

It's taken me almost all month to finish up this three day journey to Grand Bahama but with life being busy and my laptop being stolen, things haven't been that easy around here. Nonetheless here is the last installation of our trip. For those of you still stopping by, thank you for your patience and I'm buying a new laptop next week so we should have more weekly posts in the future!

On our last day in the Bahamas we decided to drive out to the Owl Hole. The drive in is a little haphazard and you should check your car for clearance before making the trek. We didn't see any new birds but it was nice to watch Cuban Emeralds flying from top to top of the pines. I've never seen so many hummingbirds as we saw on Grand Bahama.

After Owl Hole we made our way to Rand Nature Center. We made the mistake of waiting to hit this spot until our last day. By far it was one of the most productive parts of our trip. Plus we got to correctly identify Poisonwood, which we were ALWAYS looking for at each trail. If you're not famaliar with the tree then just be warned that it can really damage your skin by touching any part of the plant.

Once on the Rand trail we immediately found our lifer Cuban Pewee. It was only a few feet away and luckily for us, we all saw it because it was the only one we would see on our trip. It's always nice when you get to really soak in a bird at close distance. We made our way to the old Flamingo compound which houses a nice little pond. A loop around the pond would offer us more Cuban Emeralds, Palm Warblers, catbirds, and another lifer, two female Black-faced Grassquits.

The trails of Rand Nature Center are also supposed to be good for seeing Red-tailed Hawk though we didn't spy one. This education Red-tailed gave us an eye and amazingly enough a LOT of birds were found surrounding its cage. We quickly located a Western Spindalis nearby and found a few more warblers for our day list.

We headed back towards the nature center where a beautiful singing male Black-faced Grassquit awaited us. And after we almost gave up the trails a Bahama Mockingbird came out in full view. It was really easy to distinguish from the multitude of Northern Mockingbirds we saw on this trip due to the lack of white wing patches and the presence of streaking on the flanks.

With just a couple of hours left we rushed back to Garden of Groves to try and pick up a Greater Antillean Bullfinch. We paid our fee and entered the park at the hottest part of the day with a pretty steady wind picking up. It seemed like a hopeless search. Not only could we not find the bullfinch but we couldn't find ANY birds. We finally came across a little bit of activity. Another Red-legged Thrush gave us great looks and then finally we saw an interesting bird fly across one of the ornamental ponds. It was our bullfinch and it was at eye level. We all released our frustrations out and soaked in the little male bird. It was the perfect ending to our trip. Of course we didn't know it but we had another adventure in store for us once back to our lodging.

What you may notice from the photos above and below is that we aren't on a cruise ship and we aren't doing any real birding. We were really looking forward to celebrating our birding trip on the way back, sitting on the cruise ship, drinking a few spirits, and casually looking for birds. But our ship gave us another fate. The engine decided to die and our plans were adverted to a flight option.

So we sat in the airport from 2PM until almost 7PM. Unfortunately the airport ran out of food so after our many rounds of beer we merely laid there exhuasted and hungry. Our last meal being early that morning before heading out. It wasn't quite the ending we hoped for but all in all, the birding was great, the company was amazing, and the travel was fun.

Bees in the Box

Photo taken by Bill Kominksy, used with permission.

Some of you may remember the Eastern Screech-Owl that I reported back in February. Well the owls have been absent for the past week and a half and yesterday I noticed bees swarming around the entrance. That could only mean that the nest was abandoned and that a hive must be inside. So today we trekked out to the island with a ladder and took the front of the box off to discover this:



A nice size European Honeybee hive is found inside. We know it's not the Africanized Bees due to the lack of aggression during this removal process. Despite the bees friendly behavior we are calling in the experts to come and help us remove the hive. They should be here today or tomorrow. It's too bad the owls didn't successfully nest this year. I hope that they come back. Does anyone know the likelihood that they will return?

Owl in Our Box

After waiting almost a year we have our first Eastern Screech Owl in the donated owl box here at work. Jeff Trotta approached me a while back and asked if his mother could buy an owl box and donate it to Green Cay. After working out the details Jeff came and attached the box with chains to a tree on the Chickee Island. Unfortuanately Ruth Trotta passed away recently but her memory is living on with its first resident owl.

This is the first bird I've seen in the owl box. We had some European Starlings hanging out nearby but they never nested there, as far as I know. After reading Cornell's info page on Eastern Screech Owl I was suprised to read that often starlings evict owls from their boxes. I know starlings are notorious for this behavior but screech owls will often eat songbirds, including starlings. Does that make any sense at all? I'm glad that our intended bird found a home and the starlings didn't take over. Now if it can just find a mate and stick around to raise some babies.

All photos provided by my friend Bill Kominksy.