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.

Watery Retreat

 
Me, out of Custodial Mode. A very rare photo by Bill of the Birds.

I don't know what's happening to this summer. I feel like I'm running constantly just to stay abreast of all there is to do. It might have something to do with having the kids home and needing meals all the time, something to do with processing two large loads of laundry each and every day; something to do with a huge fast-growing lawn and gardens needing weeding that go on and on; with the fishpond filter that clogs with algae every day, with the Bird Spa needing to be scrubbed and refreshed; with countless planters and hanging baskets and bonsai trees suddenly drying up and needing to be watered each day; with all the creatures from fish and turtles to macaw, dog, flocks of brilliant goldfinches and hummingbirds that need to be fed and cleaned up after every day. Add doctor, dentist, orthodontist and optometrists' appointments, music lessons and frequent travel onto that, and I guess I've figured out what's happening to this summer. Please ignore my antic punctuation in this paragraph. I got lost somewhere between the semicolons and the commas. I'm just lost in general, wandering around in Custodian Land, trying to figure out how it all got to be so too much.


I think I do a whiny I-can't-do-it-all post like this every July. I love summer with all my heart, but the chores seem to magnify then multiply, magically. Sometimes I hum "Lazy Crazy Hazy Days of Summer" and just laugh. I would love to be lazy. Even for ten minutes.

I would like to have just one thing to do at a time, like a woodpecker feeding its young. I'm sure she'd trade with me...

When it all gets to be too much I go back in my mind to North Bend, to the quiet waters.

To the miniature islets, planted just so. 

To the sunbathing heron, standing with her wings akimbo, baking her body lice. Lazy girl.

 I drift closer and closer until she breaks the pose and sets about catching some fish.

She waded in and caught an early dinner soon after these images were taken. I was glad not to have put her off her task. 

That's what I love most about canoeing. It's easier to slip in and out of birds' lives in a little watercraft. 

And no, you can't sex a great blue heron. I was just guessing. Something about the way she was holding her wings.

I  loved watching the kids discover nature with the help of David and Mary Jane and their big canoe. Liam was cautious about bass. He kept asking me if bass have teeth.

I kept flashing on the wings of red-headed woodpeckers. It was a magical day, a fecund day, full of all the things I love best. 

Best of all, the birds we came to see were busy making more red-headed woodpeckers.

and more noisy flickers.

and more great blue herons

What a treasure North Bend State Park is. What a glorious place. You really don't have to look too far in West Virginia and southern Ohio to find some really special places to hike and canoe. I'd wager that's true for a lot of places. One of my readers commented:  You're seriously making me want to get a canoe or kayak, although I don't think I have anywhere that beautiful and bountiful to use it! 

Well, I didn't think I did, either. You have to check out the parks. Maybe you've driven by the sign for a local park a hundred times without ever exploring it. They're waiting out there, and I've had tons of fun exploring the ones in our area one by one. I'm always surprised at the beauty and serenity that's waiting there in the shallow waters where the speedboats can't go. Canoes: That's what they're for. 

They're for sneakin' up on things.

 photo by Bill of the Birds

Blue skies and puffy clouds and dragonflies on the shore.

My totem turkey vultures circled and tilted, telling me this was a good place for my spirit to rest.

If one could have a totem butterfly, the Z is for Zebra swallowtail would be mine.

Phoebe would soon discover the next wonderful thing I needed to photograph. "There's a bird here that looks like a pewee, but it has yellow underneath. It's got a nest here."

Give 'em binoculars and what do you get?  Little poults who find wonderful things, and return the favor by pointing them out to you!

Those mystery birds to follow.

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.