Buck Fever at The Wilds

The rolling grasslands of The Wilds, a "reclaimed" strip mine that is now an endangered animal facility and a birding hotspot.

Heading back to The Wilds for another post or two...

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we took the kids on a drive to The Wilds, near Cumberland, Ohio for a day of birding and animal watching. Deer-hunting season was set to start in two days. Because The Wilds has vast areas of fenced grassland where endangered animals are captive bred and studied, hunting is not allowed inside its boundaries.

The local white-tailed deer know this, and they spend hunting season inside the fenced areas, practically thumbing their noses at the hunters driving the perimeter roads. The hunters, for their part, can barely see out of their truck windows because their hyperventilating has caused the glass to fog. Why are they hyperventilating? Because right across that tiny little fence is a group of monster bucks practically begging to be "harvested." Aside from the bounty of meat these giant deer would provide, their heads and awesome racks would look so righteous on the den wall back home.

The bucks gather in loose groups, loafing, grazing, casting glances at the trucks driving slowly past?trucks with heavy sighs and even sobbing coming from them. Each buck we spotted was bigger than the last. Eight-pointers looked puny. Ten pointers and larger were the norm.

But there are other, even more impressive antlered creatures at The Wilds. The super-rare Pére David's deer from Asia is bred at The Wilds. Its antlers branch upward impressively, dwarfing the largest of the white-taileds. This species, extinct in the wild in its native China since the late 1800s, was saved by a French missionary named Father (or Pére) David Armand. Captive breeding in Europe throughout the last century has permitted the species to be reintroduced to small parts of its former range in China.

Pére David's deer, digiscoped at great distance.

While we were enjoying a northern harrier coursing low over the fields, a herd of sable antelope trotted over the rise. These handsome dark brown animals have long, tapered horns that arch up and backward. Native to Africa, sable antelope are prized by big game hunters for their amazing horns. The herd here at The Wilds seemed to be about a dozen animals, including at least one well-horned male which stood out in the crowd. Unfortunately I did not get a decent photo, so I borrowed this one from The Wilds' website, where you can see images of all the animals being bred and studied there.

Sable antelope. Image ©The Wilds.

With the day's end drawing near, we enjoyed the sunset and began the drive home. Just a mile down the road, we found the last monster buck of the day, crossing a field rather nonchalantly. He was outside the fence but seemed to think he was still off-limits because he scarcely made a move to run as we lowered our windows and snapped photos. The light was poor, so the pictures were less than ideal, but this regal creature seemed the picture of health.

We hope he's still that way now, several weeks later.

A trip to The Wilds may yield some great looks at birds, but there's a lot of other stuff to ogle, too. By the way, for those of you within driving distance of The Wilds, The Ohio Ornithological Society will be holding its annual winter birding day at the Wilds, on Saturday January 16, 2010. You can get more info on this free event at the OOS website.

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At The Wilds: Mystery Birds

peter+Swans.jpg">peter+Swans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412694041231361794" border="0" />The Saturday after Thanksgiving we took the kids birding to The Wilds, a 20,000-acre recovering strip mine that's an endangered animal breeding and research facility. In the temperate months you can tour The Wilds in one of their buses. But most bird watchers visiting The Wilds just like to drive the roads to see what birds are around, in the vast grassy fields, and the many ponds and lakes that dot the landscape.

On the south side of The Wilds there's a long, string-straight piece of road that passes a couple of long, narrow lakes. Well, calling these lakes might be a bit of a stretch?they are not naturally occurring. Really, they are deep scars in the earth, cut by massive machinery as it removed seams of coal. Now these giant holes have filled with water.

That matters not to the waterfowl that pass through these parts. The two white birds above were on this lake, loafing and preening. Swans, at first glance. But which swans?

More on this line of inquiry tomorrow.

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New Podcast Episode: Birding in Panama

A male fiery-throated hummingbird at Los Quetzales in Panama.

Episode #24 of the This Birding Life podcast is ready for your listening and viewing pleasure at Podcast Central on the Bird Watcher's Digest website. In this episode we travel to Panama on the Panama La Verde Birding Circuit where I interviewed the folks behind Panama La Verde, as well as four of my fellow birding travelers.

Our fam trip group in Cerro Azul.

If you'd like some back story about the trip, you can see a handful of BOTB posts on Panama here, here, here, and over here too. And here.

If you'd rather ingest a bit of poetry that came to me while birding on this isthmus between Central and South America, then hie thee to this link about the view from Cerro Azul.

Birding along a forest road in Panama. Photo © Jeffrey A. Gordon

On the other hand, if it's Giant Things that float your dugout canoe, then here you go amigo.

For more general information about birding spots in Panama, see the "Far Afield" article in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Bird Watcher's Digest (now mailing from the printer), and on the BWD website under the "Watch Our Website" links at the bottom of the homepage.

Hope you enjoy the new episode of TBL. Let me know (good, bad, indifferent, constructive criticism) if the spirit moves you.


See you out there with the birds!

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When the Going Gets Rough (leg)

On our late November birding trip to The Wilds, the birding started out very slowly. Normally as we drive the roads around the property we spook up flocks of horned larks, Savannah sparrows, American tree sparrows, and dark-eyed juncos. Not on this reasonably mild winter day. It was Deadsville, dude.

So we did what any bunch of bored birders would do, we started scanning to see if we could spot anything interesting. I've already recounted our observations of the local white-tailed deer, plus the captive endangered species at The Wilds. A few red-tailed hawks, a flashy male American kestrel, and a distant male northern harrier were nice, but I was hoping for something a bit rougher. And there it was: a rough-legged hawk.

It was a distant bird, but even before I got the scope on it, I had a hunch it was a rough-legged because of where it was perched. It was in the top of a small tree along a fence line. It would be unusual to find a redtail perching in such a small tree. But for the comparatively tiny-footed rough-legged hawk, the thin branches of the small pine were perfect. Rough-leggeds have small feet for grabbing smaller prey such as rodents.

On the Arctic tundra where these birds breed, lemmings are a main prey item. Here at The Wilds, it's probably meadow voles. The red-taileds with their larger feet are seeking rabbits in the meadows and squirrels along the woodland edges. And when they perch, they are perching on larger, sturdier branches.


Around the back side of The Wilds we pulled up to an overlook and quickly spotted another roughleg hovering over a hillside. We jumped out of the van and took up positions in a grassy ditch to take some photographs. The hawk obliged us by flying over. I'm still not great at getting good shots of flying birds, but this bird was large enough that I couldn't strike out completely.
Here are a few of the images from that fly over.

The bold black-and-white wing pattern of a rough-legged hawk in flight.

Long, wide wings with black carpal patches. A black belly band.

The white tail with a broad black band shows well in this photo.

It was very cool to see this second rough-leg. And this sighting seemed to open up the birding action a bit. Soon we were scoping rafts of buffleheads and mallards, gadwall and scaup. We never did see a single lark, though, which seemed weird. Maybe the more recent snows have brought them down from up north.


Soon enough it was time to suit up and bug out. We let the sun say its fare-thee-well and then we did likewise.

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Greed and Manners at the Bird Feeder

Tufted titmouse eating with its bill open.

Our new feeding station on the deck railing outside the kitchen table window has been a busy, busy place these past two weeks. The weather has taken a decided turn for winter. The naturally occurring food supply?fruits, berries, seeds, late insects?has been diminished, so our seed, nut, and suet-eating friends are coming to our feeders in greater volume.

Tufted titmice, I've noticed, are hit-and-run eaters. Normally they drop in, hop onto a feeder, grab a seed or peanut, then fly off to a handy perch to consume it. One titmouse seems to want more from his foraging visits. He tries to take more than a single bit of food. Does he perhaps have some blue jay or American crow in his ancestry? Those well-known gluttons will gobble up several food items, filling up their throats before adding one or two more pieces, held firmly in the bill. These corvid family members will cache food?hiding it for later consumption, but that's not as well known as a behavior in titmice. However, it turns out that they DO cache food, too.

Twisted titmouse.

This particular titmouse was intent on getting another peanut into his bill, perhaps for caching. But every time he'd pry one loose, it would fall before he could grab it. The piece he had in the back of his bill prevented him from getting a secure grip on a second nut. Notice I am assuming this was a "he" even though TUTIs are not sexually dimorphic. This just seemed like typical behavior for a male.

As he tried, other birds would land on the peanut feeder and he would try to chase them off. Most fled, but not the male red-bellied woodpecker. He parked himself on the feeder and stayed put. I watched as the peanut dust flew and the level of nuts in the feeder dropped noticeably.

Red-bellied woodpecker.

I sat there wondering if the birds ever think of each other like we humans do. Do the other titmice give each other knowing looks and mutter things like "There's Todd that greedy hog. Just look at him stuffing his face! That dude needs to learn some manners! It's like he was raised by jays or something!"

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Swans Mystery

peter+Swans.jpg">peter+Swans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413334901547831170" border="0" />Back to the mystery swans we encountered at The Wilds. As some of you web-savvy readers have already determined, these were trumpeter swans. I should pay more attention when I name my images for uploading!

Before 1900, trumpeter swans were extirpated from most of their North American breeding ranges by hunting. Only a remnant breeding population remained in Alaska and remote parts of the West.

During the 1990s there was a captive breeding and reintroduction program for trumpeter swans here in Ohio. The Wilds served as a captive rearing facility for birds hatched in captivity. The goal was to acclimate the birds to living in the wild so they could later be released along the Lake Erie marshes. More than 150 swans were released and today there is a small breeding population. At The Wilds a few birds are still around. I assume the flight feathers on their clipped wings grew back and they are now fully flighted, but don;t really know where to go.

The weird thing about these two birds is that one had black legs and one had yellow legs?at least the upper parts of the legs we could see above the water. You can see this in the photo below: the right hand bird has the yellow upper legs.

We checked the birds carefully in the spotting scope. Black bills eliminated mute swan. No pale yellow lore leaned us toward trumpeter. The notably long, straight black bill also pointed to trumpeter. The yellow-legged bird also was banded.

Yep. Captive but free-flying trumpeters.

Knowing that trumpeters had been captive-raised here, it's exciting, but not that exciting, to see them. Now if these had turned out to be tundra swans, we'd have been a bit more stoked. Tundras fly right over southeastern Ohio in the late fall/early winter on their way to the Atlantic Coast. Seeing a couple of tundra swans is always a notable event.

Odd swans are the least weird thing one can see while birding at The Wilds. More on that soon.

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Here Comes the Solstice!

It's wonderful to think that by next week the winter days will begin to lengthen and the nights begin to shorten. We can't complain, really. Our winter has been fairly mild thus far. But the killing frosts and chill morning air remind me just how much I love spring.

These two shots show the last full moon over the winter landscape near our southeastern Ohio farm. How ironic that as winter begins, so, too does the long slow tilting of the Earth toward spring.

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Phoebe's Giraffe

Here's a short video from our recent trip to The Wilds, where we re-enacted a memorable moment in the life of daughter Phoebe Linnea, from one of her very first birding trips. This commemorates her first accurate mammal ID call using a spotting scope. Now she's all growed up! Man, time surely flies...

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Winterlong

Walk with me, this snowy path
Look close to see who passed this way
deep in the night now turned to day.

Softly whispering across the snow
listen now, nature's silent song
a melody lingering all winterlong.

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Event Alert: Rockin' Waterfowl Weekend

That's me on stage in Hoover Auditorium at the 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium. Photo by Ric McArthur.

The two activities that I've pursued and enjoyed most of my life are bird watching and playing music. I started watching birds at about age 7, but I remember playing music with my parents when I was even younger. I try to take advantage of every opportunity I get to do either one of them. Occasionally I get to do both, which is truly sweet.

When I'm invited to a birding festival to give talks or lead trips, I often take my guitar along to play a song or two after my program. This is usually received at least politely and sometimes goes over fairly well. Julie and I have occasionally done a program called "Music of the Birds" that is solely bird and nature images set to music.

Playing music with Jessie Munson at New River.

For a couple of the events I/we attend annually (namely the Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival in North Dakota and The New River Birding Festival in West Virginia), we hold an informal music session that's part performance and part open mic. It's fun!

The ranch jam at Pipestem Creek in North Dakota. Photo by Ric McArthur.

You might be surprised at how many musicians and passionate music lovers there are in the birding community.

The Swinging Orangutangs at a Moroccan-themed New Year's Eve gig in 2009. Photo by Phoebe T.

Later this month our entire band, The Swinging Orangutangs, will be playing a show on the opening night (Friday, Feb 26) of The Waterfowl Symposium sponsored by The Ohio Ornithological Society and Columbus Audubon. Dates for the event are February 26?28, 2010 at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus, Ohio. Online registration is available on the Columbus Audubon site.

The Orangutangs on stage at The Marietta Brewing Company. Photo by Shila Wilson

Here is some descriptive text about the Friday night show from Ann Oliver of the OOS:
On Friday evening, The Swinging Orangutangs (a six-piece rock/funk dance band which includes OOS members Julie Zickefoose and Bill Thompson III) will perform a benefit concert. Bring your dancing shoes and leave your hiking boots in the car! We'll have appetizers, beer, wine, and a taste of the Middle East. Why the Middle East theme? Friday evening is a benefit for Nature Iraq, hence the special food theme (but we'll have regular appetizers, too, for non-adventurous noshers).

You may recall, Ohio Army National Guardsman, and birder-extraordinaire Randy Rogers, did bird surveys on his Al Asad base in Iraq, as well as fundraising on behalf of Nature Iraq. In fact, ALL of Ohio backed Randy and this cause: several thousand dollars of donations were raised to support NI's conservation efforts to restore Mesopotamian marshes drained by the prior Iraqi regime. Randy has been working overtime on behalf of NI since he's returned from Iraq, from guest lecturing around the Buckeye State, to working behind the scenes organizing the Waterfowl Symposium.

Also: Friday evening, we'll have bird-themed beer: Mendocino Brewing Company's offerings such as Blue Heron Pale Ale, Red Tail Ale, White Hawk IPA, Eye of the Hawk Ale, and Black Hawk Stout will be available for your enjoyment. Drink, and bird, responsibly! Mendocino Brewing Company is supporting the Waterfowl Symposium with a donation of these brews.

FYI: if you can't attend the entire weekend ($80 for Friday-Sunday), it's just $10 to attend on Friday night! Sign up your friends, family, and co-workers too!
Saturday at The Waterfowl Symposium will feature a number of interesting lectures on waterfowl and related themes followed by an evening banquet and keynote featuring Dr. Azzam Alwash of Nature Iraq.

On Sunday we'll all go birding at various Columbus hotspots.

So it's going to be a good time with good friends, good music, good food, good beer, and good birding. Hope to see you there!

I've imposed my musical will on the OOS for many years running. Photo by Steve Free.

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Happy Holidays!

Some images of winter birds, winter colors, and winter scenes to go along with my best holiday wishes to all of you: the readers, comment-makers, and friends who stop by Bill of the Birds. Heck I'll even send along a happy holidays to the blog spammers from the Far East?clearly my posts mean a lot to them, too.


I'll be otherwise occupied through the end of the year: enjoying some family time, working on a book manuscript, trying to reconnect with our farm in its winter mode, and of course watching birds. I hope to be back to my regular blogging schedule in 2010, but I hope you know (and can understand) that I may not be an everyday poster.


Am I burned out? Not really. This could just be a hangover from the bad experience I had last night watching the movie "Julie and Julia" which, IMHO, made blogging seem like one of the planet's more insipid pursuits. But I digress...


What I love about having Bill of the Birds is that it allows me to [attempt to] write creatively. My goal is to balance the need to post daily with my in-born editor's sense of only posting what's worth writing AND worth reading. Because we all have days when we really having nothing to say, right?

But that's a conundrum for another day, another year. Right now it's time to write the captions on the next issue of Bird Watcher's Digest, then out the door for some last minute shopping. I will endeavor to stop several times during this holiday season to count my blessings, among which you all figure prominently.


Happy and merry and peace!

Bill of the Birds

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Phoebe's First Manatee

Phoebe's lifer West Indian manatee at Blue Springs State Park.

As soon as we got off the plane at the Orlando airport and secured our rental car, Phoebe and I took off after her most-wanted Florida experience: seeing a manatee. I knew from previous experience that Blue Springs State Park was one of the best places to find these gentle aquatic mammals, so that's where we headed (after a quick nosh at Steak & Shake!).

Sure enough, as soon as we parked the car and walked down to the edge of spring-fed Blue Springs Run where it meets the St. John's River, Phoebe added West Indian manatee to her mammal life list.

The park is a designated manatee refuge and the park's name (Blue Springs) is the reason the manatees are here in the winter. Warm water from the springs heats the river and manatees need warm water to survive. The very cold weather of early January had been hard on the manatees in this part of Florida.

We walked the boardwalk for the next two hours, looking at manatees, spotting birds, marveling at live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and drinking in the warm Florida sunshine.

That morning when we left Ohio, it was snowing hard with three inches of snow on the ground, temperatures dropping. So, though Floridians on the boardwalk were bundled up and decrying the cold snap, 68ºF felt like beach weather to us.


Me: "We're not in Ohio anymore, Phoebster!"
Phoebe: "Yeah and if we were, I'd be in algebra class right now!"

The happy manatee spotter, Phoebe Linnea.

Many of our birding pals at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival made the pilgrimage to Blue Springs to see the manatees. We had a total of more than 20 manatees during our visit. It was as satisfying as it was awesome.

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