Management Interupts the Seemingly Never-ending Vacation Raving for an Late Breaking Something-or-the-Other...

This afternoon, broad daylight mind you, I looked out my office window. A bird, which I assumed a White-throated Swift zipped by. It was... peculiar, so I had a second look. Yikes! That was no bird, it was a bat! A nice fat little fluttering bat.

That was a sad thing to see on a hot Sacramento afternoon. Poor little flutterbys - they get overheated and sometimes leave of their roosts. Don't know if they're after water or just a breath of fresh air really but I do know when it gets hot the poor bats sometimes fall, dehydrated, from their little daytime hidey holes.

Last year during a city heat spell I, and others with eyes open, found dead and dying bats on sidewalks. One of my coworkers, Allison, found a bat and turned it over to a wildlife rescue organization. We all hoped the little critter lived to be released back into wilds of downtown Sacramento; toughest of habitats I tell you!

We need our bats, each and every last one of them. I have a soft heart for native bats and snakes which are rather the underdogs out there. Takes one to know one.

ELY - ATTACK OF THE WOODCOCKS

Friday, May 10 ’07: calories: 1856 (eff counting the annoying calories); tasty, healthful water: only 3 cups (v. bad, kidneys have morphed into desert rat mode); ticks: 6 (#$&%#); units amusement/entertainment: 100 (off the chart)

When we left Dutluth I really enjoyed our drive north. We visited Gooseberry Falls, a Minnesota State Park.


Gooseberry Falls

Visitor Center
We spend one night at Silver Bay. Bright and early the next morning we drove north to Ely, making several birdy stops on the way.

We found an American Black Duck. I only ever saw one before, when I was a kid in New York State.


The duck was photographed from quite a distance, but its chocolate feathering and greenish bill were visable in the spotting scope
We stopped at Spruce Road - a spot we would revisit - where we looked for birds. Don saw Boreal Chickadees there. I did NOT as the snotty little chickadees were avoiding me. Bugger! I did see this lovely little Snowshoe Hare which posed prettily for me as you see below.


Poor bun-bun - it had blood-swollen ticks at the base of its ears - horrifying!
But we also saw loads of other wonderful birds as well, along Spruce Road and by the Kawishiwa River Bridge were we found dozens of highly vocal eensie little Least Flycatchers, which croak "Che-bek! Che-bek!". They sounded like tiny frogs.


Least Flycatcher
As we drove into the town of Ely, it was live at first sight; Impeach Bush & Kerry/Gore campaign stickers everywhere. There were loads of cutesy shops and outdoor sports outfitters lined the streets. We had a few shopping sprees in Ely.

We showed up at the Northern Lights Lodge with groceries in hand, to take over a very pretty ‘suite’ all done up in Early American Woodsy Décor.


We did some wonderful birding in the Ely area, some of it enjoyed from the balcony of our second story suite.


The balcony from which we did some close up birding of the feathered beauties below

Blackburnian Warbler that is well aware just how adorable it is

Chestnut-sided Warbler - he looks a tad grumpy, doesn't he?

Magnolia Warbler

Magnolia singing away

Click Here for a better view of a Cape May Warbler
Also, one day as we drove along the driveway into Northern Lights Resort, we found a very slow Ruffed Grouse crossing the road. The bird was only slowly and deliberately lifting up one foot after the other, setting its food down like it was crossing a mine field. I got out the car and took picture after picture and the bird continued to walk slowly, making me feel like time was standing still.


Crest Down...

Crest up! Raising that foot, quite literally in slow motion...

Ruffed Grouse have two color options; grey or like this one, or red
One night we drove out to Spruce Road, stopping at a few meadows there. We noticed a weird sound.

"MEEP!"

"What the heck is that?" I asked. “Frog,” said Don, and believe me, a highly reasonable answer.

"MEEP! MEEEP!”

What else, except a frog, could such a melancholy croak be?

That night I listened to my iPod. I must add here that It’s been more than a year ago that I treated myself to a spiffy, top of the line iPod and I loaded it with the calls/songs of every bird in North America. I have since, used my iPod for all sorts of things - music, movies, podcasts, but NOT for birding. Well, the iPod's day - or rather night - was finally at hand. I knew the identity of the mystery croaker.

The following night we returned to Spruce Road. I played a particular call on my iPod.

iPod: “MEEP!”

Bog: ‘MEEEEEP!” “MEEP!” “MEEP!” "MEEP!" "MEEEEEP!"

It was an American Woodcock calling back to the iPod. Woodcocks are baseball sized little butterballs, with very long bills with which they hunt for worms by sniffing them under their noses, deep in the ground. Woodcocks are peculiar looking, having cryptic camouflage coloration and beady black eyes placed on opposite sides of their strange little noggin.

"MEEP! MEEP!"

All around the meadow little woodcocks called out to challenge the new guy on the block, which of course was the electronic iPod. It was a Festival of Meeps calling!

From just in front of us a pissed little Woodcock called to its electronic rival. A lantern in hand, Don leapt down into the rushes to get a look at the bird but no dice. He returned and we rather resigned ourselves to hearing the birds - getting them on our life list - but in not getting to actually see any of the blasted little birds. Just then my iPod played a second call - a peculiar bat-like twittering. Apparently Woodcocks have two calls – the MEEP! call, and an agitated twitter. Then it happened! Like a feathered ball, on short rounded wings, a woodcock shot by, circling around us in a wide arch.

HURRAH!

Must admit, I rather hoped the Woodcocks would – as rails are apt to do - walk out of the bog for a look at us. But nope, Woodcocks were into aerial reconnaissance! The bird flew by several more times past us in wide, circles and with each pass the circles grew closer to us.

It was marvelous seeing that rotund little body silhouetted against the ever darkening sky. Between flights, the bird would land in the bog on either side of the roadway.

Hurrah! We had both achieved a new lifer, based on a sighting as well as the calls. I squealed as the bird - I was unsure if it was the same bird or a different one - whizzed past my head, so close I could have caught it in a catchers mitt - if I weren't so clutzy anyway. As the bird zipped past it was twittering a message to us, either "Who the eff are you and why are you in my territory?" or possibly "Hey! You’re kind of cute - wanna nest?"

Don and I exchanged high-fives. I was elated but beginning to feel a tad guilty for messing with the bird’s heads. We called out our good wishes to the birds with our own vocalizations of "MEEEP! MEEP!" and headed back for the lodge.


No, I did not take this pretty photo of an American Woodcock -
I would have, but damn it, it was dark out there!

Zip Zam Boom, Sax-Zim Bog

Wednesday, May 9, ’07: calories: 1627.2-ish by 8 pm (a bit much); healthful water: 3 cups (bad); ticks: 2 (v. good!); units amusement/entertainment: 75 (got a Lifer, Excellent!)

Sax-Zim, is not a jazz musician from the 1930s, it is a marvelous a wildlife area best known for its winter birding. When the snow comes so do the winter speciality birds such as Bohemian Waxwings which are also not jazz musicians, as well as Great Grey and Boreal Owls.

The Sax-Zim Bog region gave me a second lifer for the trip, when Don spotted some tiny forms, hanging at all angles onto pine cones at the very tippy-top of some conifers – Red Crossbills. The crossbills did not stay put for very long, but I still managed a few shots, getting mostly shadowy photos of the little birds, except for this photo here below.


Ok, it's not much to look at, but see how the very end of its bill crosses itself, to form 'x' at the end. Cool, eh? It uses that crooked bill to pop open pine cones. There was another surprise at Sax-Zim when we stopped by a creek for a look around -I had a close encounter of the furry kind.


Here you can see the entire length of the weasely
critter; head to the left, tail to the right

Here are its beady eyes peeking at me from
under a fallen log; center, somewhat blurry

Here the beastie pauses to again stare at the strange human through the brambles; you can see its fur is wet

These photos of a largely brown animal against a largely brown background demonstrates for me one reason why people go ‘birding’, but not ‘mammaling’. The creature was too big to be a weasel or a mink. I decided it had to be either a Pine Martin or a Fisher, both of which mustellids (big-arse weasels). I concluded the elongated beast was a Fisher. I stumbled excitedly along the shoreline, managing several shots of the creature as it slunk along. Hurrah! It isn’t often I get a new animal for my mammal life list.

[Management regrets that Ms Miller will have to wait a bit longer to add a Fisher to her mammal life list. The creature was a Mink. Due to stubbornness and a distinct dislike of admitting Mr. Pendleton was right, Ms. Miller will continue to pretend the creature is in fact a Fisher. But take note - the wet, white-chinned creature IS a Mink.]
Following the mammal encounter we drove along a road by some Sod Farms, I spied two small, fat, short necked stumpy ‘doves’.


See how short-necked the bird looked when I saw it? Rather dove-like, don't you think?
“Doves …’ I said in an uninterested voice, not giving the birds a second look.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Don cheerily, as he knew he had a new lifer #13.


But AHA! When it stretches out that long neck and even longer legs, it's a Bambi-eyed, Pencil-necked Geek Bird, the Upland Sandpiper!
I looked back at my ‘doves’. They had strolled out of the long grass revealing their very long legs. They raised their heads revealing long necks and for a final ‘tah-dah’ they turned their large eyed heads on profile so I could have a nice long look at their enlongated bills.

‘Bambi-eyed, pencil-necked Geek birdss!’ I shouted. That strange description was how I had as a kid, taught myself to ID Upland Sandpiper. My method normal works too, unless the darned birds are crouched like the tallest girl at the junior prom.

A few more stops gave us good views and me some nice photos of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers and Bobolinks. Sax-Zim was as great as we'd thought it would be. And although we saw no spring owls we did hear 2 different Eastern Screech Owls which gave us their ‘string of Os’ call. We also got the Eastern Kingbird and there wasa life Palm Warbler for Don. I really enjoyed Sax-Zim Bah... make that Sax-Zim Bog.

Singing Bobolink


Dive bombing Bobolink - check out those T-rex toenails!

Don's Lifer Palm Warbler