Red-breasted Sapsucker

Lately, I've spent quite a bit of time in the woods keying out wildflowers (or trying to). Yesterday, while off-trail staring down at some plant or other, I heard a peck peck nearby. Looking up, I saw this Red-breasted Sapsucker very close to me on a big old maple. He was working on his sap wells and paid me no attention as I snapped photos. What a handsome bird!

Nine Barn Owl Eggs!

Nine eggs is definitely a new record for the Fink Family Farm Barn Owls. Here is the update I sent to my Barn Owl fledging notification email list tonight:

"This is definitely a new record for the Fink Family Farm barn owls. The most they've had in the past was 7 eggs. Most clutches over the years have been 6 or 7 eggs. But the voles are plentiful this year and that must have something to do with their faith that they can raise more babies... or else the more food they eat, the more eggs they lay. Or something.

I know there are lots of voles still out there because today, while I was taking a break from planting more trees in the arboretum, a vole worked at cleaning out its hole not far from me. Cheeky little brat.

This is the first time I've seen the owl fly out of the nest box since my last update. I confess I shone my spotlight up on the ledge tonight (not into the box) for a second and she fled. I was concerned that she had deserted the nest since Johnny has been working diligently with a chainsaw and lots of noise right outside her window for weeks (still tearing down the old barn). So I shone the light for a second in case that would get her off the nest, if she were there, long enough for me to scurry up the ladder and fire off one quick and blurry photo. And it worked. But I'll bet she's annoyed with me. She did not scream over my head as I left the barn, though, which always happens when I sneak up to peak at owlets after the mama no longer stays with them at night. So I suspect she was back on the nest before I was out of the barn.

I was also concerned because last night, after many nights of none or few barn owl calls at night, there were many screeches and hisses from several different directions and I wondered if a predator was in the vicinity. None can get into the loft (unless they can fly) but the owls would not know that. Our livestock guardian dog did tear after something by the creek last night so there well could have been a raccoon or two or three prowling which might concern the owls since coons can certainly climb trees and enter nest cavities. But even a raccoon would be hard pressed to reach and open our barn doors... or get past our livestock guardian dog.

I will not check again until I suspect, by a parent flying in at night with food and then back out again, that some eggs have hatched. Or, more likely, when I hear the little begging calls the owlets make... or their dragon hisses when I go up into the loft to throw hay down for the goats."

Eight Barn Owl Eggs!

Tonight I took my camera and a flashlight with me when I climbed up into the loft. I saw an owl fly out of the nest box so I scurried up the viewing ladder, turned on my flashlight and took a quick photo of the eight eggs. How they stay that white in that mess is a mystery to me.

There were several dead voles in the box... hard to tell how many since some may be mixed in with the mess. After reading about the Snowy Owl irruption on the east coast this year being triggered by a population explosion of lemmings last year and seeing a photo of a 2013 nest with seventeen lemmings ringing it, I realized that our owls are simply catching whatever they find and right now, our fields are riddled with vole holes. I walked through a field today while putting up more swallow nest gourds and it looks like the voles are going through one of their periodic population explosions. You can't walk without stepping on a runway or hole. So that is likely why we are seeing so many more stashed dead things in the nest box than usual.

Snowy Owls apparently laid more eggs last year than usual and fledged more owlets because of the abundant food supply. I did not realize that owls lay more eggs in years of plentiful food. Our Barn Owls usually lay six or seven eggs, but fewer some years. I'll check my records tomorrow but I think eight is a new record. And who knows if she's done laying!

Confessions of a Closet Lister

The only bird list I have kept for years is of the birds I see on our farm. Until Paul Sullivan of the Oregon Bird Association started hounding birders for their lists to publish, I didn't publicize my one meager list. It was just for me. Now Paul has created so many categories that my one list of 146 birds I've seen on this farm since we moved here in 1977 fits into four of his categories: life list for Yamhill county, for a favorite birding spot, for a 15 mile diameter circle and for a nonmotorized list. I told him it is going to look suspicious that the number of species beside my name will be exactly the same on all four lists.

I used to keep a life list but got tired of the constant combining and separating of species with the consequent reduction and increase in life list numbers. Besides, I believe in improving habitat, citizen science, and observing and learning about birds, rather than just running around the countryside for the sole purpose of lengthening a list. But I have a confession to make: I have started a list solely for the purpose of running around the countryside to lengthen that list... and it's all my friend Dawn's fault.

Dawn is a relatively new birder... and a lister... which means she doesn't have a huge long life list yet. It's fun to bird with Dawn and after the first time we saw a bird together that she had never seen before and I saw how excited she got, I was hooked. So my new list is: Dawn's life birds that I've helped her find.

Last night we added Short-eared Owl to her life list. She said that was the sixth life bird I'd led her to. How fun! But, since I don't bother to write anything down, I didn't remember the others. So she sent me a list, complete with dates and places where we saw them. Dawn is organized. I've added photos of the ones I took photos of more or less successfully.

Ferruginous Hawk - 4 Nov 2012 (field in Yamhill Cnty)

 

Prairie Falcon - 23 Jan 2014 (Baskett Slough, Polk Cnty)

Yellow-throated Warbler - 29 Jan 2014 (Charlotte's house, Marion Cnty)

Lewis's Woodpecker - 29 Jan 2014 (near Ankeny NWR, Marion Cnty)

   

Horned Lark - 28 Feb 2014 (Livermore Rd, Polk Cnty)

Short-eared Owl - 8 Mar 2014 (McLagan Rd, Linn Cnty)

Besides the above, Dawn says I helped her id, over the phone, her very first Rough-legged Hawk  26 Oct 2012 (Salmon River, Lincoln Cnty)

 

We still have some relatively easy birds to find for Dawn, but soon it's going to get tougher to find life birds for her, especially since she's fully capable of finding them without my help. But it gives us a good excuse to go birding together. Which is, I now realize, why many of those listers I've disparaged in the past keep lists. It's a good excuse to do what we love to do: watch birds. And do it with a friend who gets excited about seeing a new one.

Update, Sept. 2014: Dawn has been finding life birds on her own since I wrote the above. But we just went to Bandon together for the Oregon Birding Association annual meeting and she picked up two more, Pacific Golden Plover and Blackpoll Warbler. Since I drove, she says I get credit for helping her get them, although I never even saw her Blackpoll Warbler.

That trip made me decide to keep yet another list: all the birds I have photographed and identified on my own. I'm afraid that one will be a very short list.

Update, Oct. 2015: I drove Dawn to Yachats where we found a bird neither of us had ever seen before: Common Ground Dove. To tell the truth, I'd never even heard of it. It is the size of a sparrow.

Tree Swallows!

The vanguard of Tree Swallows has arrived. There will be many more later, plus Violet-green Swallows, vying for the nest gourds. Sometimes I wait until the big group arrives before putting out the gourds, but these early birds swooped and chattered for days around the bamboo poles where their gourds were last year until I finally gave in and put up four today. I'll hang about twenty eventually.

I love watching the swallows vie for nests. When the first gourd went up, all eight newcomers circled and eyed it and soon were trying to land on it and push others off. (Thanks to Johnny for the photos!)

 The swallows never come to blows, but they certainly work at intimidating... along with constant excited chatter.

The best way to claim ownership is to squeeze inside and then look out.

When the females arrive, the house searching will reach new levels of frenzy. It seems as though every gourd has to be tested for suitability by every pair of swallows. Later will come nest building and then my favorite part of nest building: lining the nest. I have a huge bag of white feathers that my friend Velta saved from her geese specifically for my swallows. I throw them up in the air and the swallows catch them mid-flight. The feather-carrying swallow tries to stuff the prize into his nest gourd before another swallow steals it.

I love when the summer birds start coming back. I know, then, that spring is on its way.

Barn Owl Stash

The following photos are not for those who squirm at the sight of dead things. They are of the inside of our Barn Owl nest box. We built a new goat barn over the last several years and tore down the old one this fall. We had put a box in the new barn when we first had the roof on and hoped the owls would move from their old nest box in the old barn to the new one in the new barn. One did lay 7 eggs in the new barn while construction was still going on. But apparently the noise and/or odors from fiberglassing the milk room was too much and the eggs were deserted. However, they raised a clutch in the old barn. Now they don't have that choice.

For the last month or more, an owl has been flying out of the nest box occasionally when we go up to feed from the loft morning or night. When it does, I climb the ladder and look in the box. Until last week, all I saw was an empty box. Last week, it appeared that there was something in the back corner plus some torn paper in the middle. (The box is made of cardboard. We replace it every two years or when it gets too dilapidated from the young owls playing trampoline on the top.)

Today an owl flew out when I started throwing hay down out of the loft for the goats. So I climbed up the viewing ladder. Then climbed back down to get a lantern as there was obviously something in the box. That something turned out to be lots of furry, dead rodents. If anyone can identify dead rodents, upside down and piled in a heap, please let me know. I suspected young rats as we do have some around that Johnny works on shooting nightly. (We don't use poison because of the owls.) But in past years, we've found mostly dead voles in and under the nest site. (If anyone wants to dissect the owl pellets, we have lots and they're free.)  I cannot reach inside the box from the top of the viewing ladder to bring the dead things out to identify (without great difficulty and fear of falling).
   (Laura McMasters has convinced me that they are voles. Our fields look like vole villages, especially after a snow melt. Voles girdle my baby trees, so I hope the owls keep up the good work!)

Above is the box and the mess inside with the barely discernible dead things in the back and on the left. The photos below show them closer, plus you can see the shredded cardboard. Who says Barn Owls don't make nests?

Below the spot in front of the nest box where an owl obviously sits are pellets. The tarp in front is what we use to cover the hay to keep whitewash and pellets off it.

The above photos are not nearly so cute as baby owls, so I'll add one I took several years ago. You can see the mess they are standing on.

I'll write an update if eggs appear.

Okay, finally an update. I forgot to write when we first saw eggs... four of them... on March 8. I'll try to remember to take my camera with me in case an owl flies out at night and I can scurry up the ladder and snap a photo. She doesn't stay out long so I haven't had a chance yet.

Eagles and a Rainbow

It's been a week for eagles here on the farm. For three mornings an adult Bald Eagle sat atop our big snag for several hours. On one of those mornings, between rain showers, he was sunlit... and accompanied by a rainbow. I grabbed my camera and tried to get them in the same photo but they were too far apart. Even when I only got a part of the rainbow with the eagle, the bird was too far away to be visible. Here is the eagle atop our snag.

A closer look...

And here is the rainbow.

The snag is behind the machine shop in this photo of eagle (invisible) and part of the rainbow.

The eagle was not impressed by the rainbow. Something on the ground caught its attention.

The majestic bird eventually flew off without finding any prey here. It has not returned for the last two days.

This morning, another eagle fly in... a juvenile, just one year old I would guess. Now look at the thin top of the snag that is next to the thick top where the adult eagle is sitting.

The young eagle tried to land on that skinny stick. Not once, but half a dozen times. Each time, a pair of mallards that had been frightened off our pond by my husband's sudden arrival at the barn, where I was milking goats, circled the eagle, flying as low, apparently, as they dared. The eagle failing to land on the skinny tip, flew out and circled back to try again. The mallards again flew over the eagle. I could only guess they were trying to scare it off. (Or maybe they were, like Johnny and me, laughing at the silly bird.) The eagle paid them no attention as it was apparently determined to land on that skinny stick. Each time the eagle tried to set down on the stick, the mallards circled around over its head. Finally the young bird gave up and flew to a nearby fir tree, where it landed on the very top, bending the tip of the tree. The mallards flew upstream and disappeared.  The young eagle soon left that unsteady perch and flew I know not where.

I have seen just-fledged Barn Owls have issues landing, but I have never seen an eagle, that surely must be nearly a year old, with so little awareness of how big a perch it needs. I wish I'd had my camera with me this morning.