A belated but very heartfelt thank you to Mike Hermes at Okiedoke.com for the honor of being awarded a 2007 Okie Blog Award for the Best Unusual Blog! The awards have been presented by Mike and an insightful group since 2005. They were gracious and astute (winners always praise the voters) to nominate the BackyardBirdCam Blog and then select it as this year’s winner in the “unusual” category.
As many bloggers learn, it’s often a challenge to keep a blog from getting stale. And I’m too often guilty of waiting another day… and another day… thinking I’ll take just the right picture and be inspired to write the right article — the result is a huge gap between postings. Not how I want it! So let’s see if this award — and my good intentions — will help me stay motivated!
Sometimes it seems that mom simply has to do all the work in making sure that kids eat like they’re supposed to! At least that seemed to be the case with this fledgling Barn Swallow and a very dedicated parent. For the last in my “dinner is served” series, I’ve chosen an example of how dinner is sometimes (literally) “on the fly.” This young Barn Swallow sat patiently on the barbed wire fence while the adult flew over the field catching small bugs. The youngster would flap its wings and get really excited when the parent was close — which gave me a great cue for focusing the camera! There aren’t many times when a bird tells me “great shot is coming!”
While many birds will perch to feed a young bird — even small birds like hummingbirds will perch at the nest to feed the young — there are some adults that just don’t take the time to sit while feeding. The Barn Swallow is an excellent example. I’ve also observed Scissor-tailed Flycatcher feeding fledglings while staying airborne. Perhaps it’s easier for birds like swallows and flycatchers who are more adept at hovering?
I’m grateful this little family allowed me to watch their routine and get a few photos. It’s too easy to take a familiar and common bird like the Barn Swallow for granted. But the experience of watching these Barn Swallows interact gave me a wonderful lesson in the beauty, elegance and personality that is the reward of sitting still. I’m very grateful I took the time!
This little bird is one of the few birds whose name is associated with its diet. And that’s why I chose to feature the little Grasshopper Sparrow in my “What’s For Dinner” series. Although this bird has a reputation for being quite secretive, I found a dirt road in El Reno, Oklahoma that is home to some very cooperative Grasshopper Sparrows. These birds are one of the smallest sparrows which made it easy to identify the birds while they perched on the barbed wire fence. And they would sit still, allow me to drive next to them and let me take a few pictures! I have to love a bird that is that friendly. And this little one made a dive into a field while I was photographing and popped up on the fence with dinner! Looks like it could be a tasty grasshopper!
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says the Grasshopper Sparrow not only takes its name from its diet but also from it’s insect-like song. They are migrants and breed in Oklahoma as well as most states east of the Rocky Mountains. The Date Guide to the Occurrences of Birds in Oklahoma lists their early arrival date as March 27; they depart by November 2.
This species is undergoing declines in population due primarily to habitat loss. The declines are most severe in Florida, where a subspecies is listed as endangered, and along the East Coast. In Oklahoma the bird remains a summer favorite along wheat fields in rural areas — I’ve returned to visit the camera-friendly El Reno clan many times!
Continuing with the theme that has developed from recent photos, the dinner menu today moves from prey found in the water (the Great Egret) to dinner on the wing. The Eastern Kingbird is one of the most common kingbird across the United States with a range that extends from the Atlantic Coast to the eastern borders of Oregon and Washington. It usually arrives in Oklahoma during early May and is quite common along fences and open areas. My favorite spots for finding Eastern Kingbirds are along fences by golf courses and in wildflowers along the shore of a lake.
Kingbirds are very skilled flycatchers. In Oklahoma, they have the disadvantage of being overshadowed by our state bird, the spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. But these striking black and white birds hold their own when it comes to aerial maneuvers that result in a tasty bug dinner. This Eastern Kingbird had dinner delivered — it is a fledgling whose only effort was sitting on the cable and waiting for its parent to drop off this translucent-winged bug (I am assuming it was a dragonfly but am not certain). It looked like more than the bird could handle but the young one devoured its dinner in about three gulps.
Finding birds to photograph can sometimes be a challenge during the summer months. Last year, record high temperatures made it difficult to spend time outdoors in the afternoons; this year it was the record rainfall with flooded roads and lakes that posed the greatest challenge. So I decided to have fun finding different ways to photograph the familiar, easy-to-locate birds rather than focus on the elusive, rare migrants. The result is a collection of photos focus on what birds eat… or how they eat.
At the time I posted the Mississippi Kite with the bird (previous post) I didn’t know that being an “uninvited guests” at dinner was going to be my new role for this theme! For the next few weeks, I’ll be adding new photos that are all about “what’s for dinner.” This is also helping me learn more about the birds’ habits. It’s been very rewarding and entertaining!
This photo is of a Great Egret who certainly landed the big one! I watched this egret as it grabbed this large sand bass at Lake Hefner (Oklahoma City) — it seemed obvious to me that it was too big for even this experienced fish-catcher to handle! It took a lot of chugging, but the egret ate the whole thing! I don’t know the length of the Great Egret’s beak and I hope I can figure it out so I can estimate the size of the bass. For now, I’d guess that the fish was about 12″ long. It certainly made a lot of fishermen envious to see the egret land this one! (I’ll add an update if I get a better measurement.)
Upcoming dinner-time photos will include the Grasshopper Sparrow, Eastern Kingbird and Barn Swallow. What’s for dinner?!
The distinctive Mississippi Kite is a bird that many out-of-state birders looks for when they visit Oklahoma in the summer. The good news: it’s not hard to find one! This kite is a very familiar sight in the skies above Oklahoma City as it soars and catches cicadas. It is a migrant, arriving in late April and leaving in October. And it is quite infamous for protecting its nest by attacking golfers or people walking in parks! All of that is “normal” behavior — what I observed last week when I found a pair of Mississippi Kites at Lake Hefner was very abnormal. I watched one of the kites eat a bird. This may not sound unusual for a raptor but I learned that my photos of the meal were only the second documented evidence in Oklahoma of a Mississippi Kite preying on a bird. Berlin Heck, a retired wildlife manager and expert on Oklahoma birds, published a report in 2005 about possible incidents of the kites predating other birds and found only one other photo of this happening. It’s uncertain why a bird that is known to eat only insects would change its behavior. I sent my photo to Berlin and he suspects the prey was a fledgling that fell out of the nest and was an appealing target to a kite entering mating season. It makes sense… I wonder, though, if our unusually wet weather has disminished the cicada and grasshopper populations (although other insects are plentiful this year!). I would enjoy hearing from others about normal / abnormal behaviors of this fascinating species!
 Update on July 1, 2007: The photo above doesn’t show many of the Mississippi Kite’s identifying features so I can understand Ridgeline’s comments that it might be a White-tailed Kite. I can’t easily include photos in comments, so I’m adding some additional information here and another photo to clarify my ID. The photo was taken immediately after the bird finished eating. This photo shows the underside of the kite’s wings and tail. They lack the distinctive white plummage with black wrist spots of the White-tailed Kite. I’ve photographed a white-tailed only once: 2003 at Fort Sill. The top photo also shows that the bird does not have the black shoulder patches of the white-tailed.
I’ve been absent from this blog way too long. I’ve been very focused on building my business since the first of the year and devoting as much time & attention as possible to it. I’ve been able to update some photos on my BirdCam Photo Gallery but my beloved site has become woefully stale.
I’m back… and have a lot of photos to add but also some birds I’ve observed and some fun and unique behaviors that I’d like to share. I also need your help! I need help ID’ing this bird. I photographed it 24 May 2007 at Lake Hefner, Oklahoma City. At first it appeared to be a Western Kingbird, a familiar — though not as common as the Eastern — species in Central Oklahoma. But I then noticed this bird’s eye ring and started to take photos, trying to get as much detail as possible on an overcast, low-light day.
What do you think this bird is? A Western Kingbird hybrid, has been one opinion. But what is the other parent? The pale base of the bill, in addition to the eye ring and the color on the bird’s back don’t match the Western Kingbird. My mentor Jim Arterburn is sending the photo to experts around the country to get some input but one response was “juvenile Western Kingbird,” an opinion that Jim and I don’t share. For one thing, this would be the earliest breeding record in Oklahoma for this species (to have fledged by 24 May) but also juveniles have pale bellies with only a hint of yellow. This one has strong yellow on the underside.
So help?!! I’d appreciate your input!
Oklahoma has been in the news a bit lately, thanks to a three-day ice storm that moved through last weekend. Some parts of the state are still without power. I am ever so grateful that the precipitation that fell in Oklahoma City was in the form of sleet, not ice that coats trees and power lines. But it was a lot of sleet! Some places were 3″ deep with solid sleet that quickly became 3″ of solid ice. Winter weather is always a challenge for us in the southern Plains because cities don’t invest much in snow and ice removal. Until the sun came out today and the temperature finally rose above freezing (6 days after the sleet arrived), we’ve been driving on and coping with a whole lot of sheet ice. My BackyardBirdCam yard was no exception. I took a shovel to the ice as much as possible to uncover leaves and dirt for the ground-foraging birds. Thanks to an inexpensive aquarium heater in a Rubbermaid tub and the pump in my little pond, I was able to keep the birds supplied with fresh water and lots of bird seed.
My efforts were rewarded with the arrival of three Fox Sparrows. These large sparrows are common in Oklahoma during the winter but they favor habit with dense undergrowth and dense woodlands. Not exactly my backyard, although the yard does offer a lot of cover and an abundance of fallen leaves. This winter marks their first appearance in my yard. Birders across Oklahoma are reporting on the OKBirds listserv about sightings of this species at their feeders since the ice storm. Apparently the ice cover is making it hard for them to forage, even in wooded areas. Field guides describe the Fox Sparrow as “cautious” but those inhibitions were lost when they arrived at my feeders. They are active from early morning, joining the Harris’s Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos and Northern Cardinals as the first birds in the yard, and they remain active until dark. They haven’t used the tube feeders but have been spotted on a platform feeder mounted 4′ above ground.
There are four main populations of Fox Sparrows and the Red (Taiga) is the one we see in Oklahoma. Oklahoma is on the western edge of its winter range. I’m interested to see if this sparrow will leave the yard when the ice clears or if it has found the ready supply of seed a desirable attraction. Snow is forecast for the next few days and I hope these three lively sparrows hang around at least until we return to our customary mild Oklahoma weather.
 Christmas came a little early, and in a most spectacular way this year. As the long holiday weekend approached, I was contacted by a total stranger and told of a Snowy Owl near the Foss Reservoir in western Oklahoma. It was exciting news, and a bit magical since it came to me from an unknown source. But I was very busy with projects for my clients and I suspected that the owl would be an immature, similar to one I photographed last December. I spent some time juggling my client’s needs against the rarity of seeing another Snowy Owl in Oklahoma, albeit about 100 miles away. I made contact with someone who knew the bird’s location and decided to accept this holiday blessing — I headed west knowing I’d have less than an hour of daylight to find the owl.
I couldn’t find the bird, but thought I was in the right area. Another stranger stopped along the road and simply said, “Have you found it yet?” Wow! He knew what I was looking for and took me to the bird with the stipulation that I tell no one where the bird was located to spare it from being stressed by curious birders. The bird was completely white with no signs of black specs or brown feathers. Just a beautiful white owl, perched about 1/4 mile away. I stepped to cross the field and get a closer look when the bird flew into the woods and never returned. I had this remarkable bird sighting and didn’t take a single photo! But thanks to two strangers, I had seen a “Christmas Owl”… was this a Frank Capra movie?!)
I posted a message about the Snowy Owl on the OKBirds listserv and received some questions about it’s identity. What was a Snowy Owl doing perched in trees? (Their normal habitat is treeless.) Why did it spook so quickly from 1/4 mile away? (They are usually so docile they are easily harmed.) So I returned to the Foss Reservoir area the next day. I found the bird perched in the trees and took some photos, albeit from quite a distance, and sent them to my favorite bird expert, Jim Arterburn. It turns out this beautiful owl is a partial albino Barred Owl, a rarer sighting because of the albinism than the Snowy Owl would have been. This owl has dark eyes (the Snowy has yellow), the bill is light (the Snowy’s is black), and is in habitat common for Barred Owls who are quite numerous in Oklahoma. The bird would be considered a true albino if it had pink or red eyes.
I found another instance of a partial albino Barred Owl mistakenly identified as a Snowy Owl in the Duluth, Minnesota area last winter. I need to get clearer photos of the Foss owl, but through the spotting scope it shows no pigmentation in the feathers unlike the Duluth bird.
I’ll be heading to western Oklahoma tomorrow and hope to share new and better photos of this stunning bird. My Christmas Day is brighter thanks to the unexpected strangers who helped me find my Christmas present!
It’s 20 degrees outside and, with the 4″ snow cover from today’s early-winter storm, I guess I’m inspired to learn about a bird that’s very comfortable in this climate: the Red-throated Loon. I had my first-ever sighting of this loon species last week (November 21) at Oklahoma City’s Lake Hefner. When I spotted the Red-throated in a group of Common Loons, I was dumbstruck, yes, but also amazed at how small this bird is. I’ve been watching the loons on Lake Hefner for the past five years hoping to see a Red-throated (usually spotted once or twice a year) or a Pacific Loon (a possibility but a rarity). And for the past five years, I’ve sent many photos of Common Loons to Jim Arterburn, my birding guru, hoping that he’d finally tell me I’d seen one of the rarer loons. You see, I can — and do — see identifying features on a bird in the field that are strictly from my imagination. But last week I knew the bird I was watching was definitely not a Common Loon. A “eureka!” moment.
The National Geographic Complete Birds of North America describes the Red-throated Loon as the smallest and most lightly built loon. It is at least 7″ shorter than the Common. And I learned from the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology site that this bird “breeds in coastal and inland tundra in Alaska and northern Canada. Also breeds across extreme northern Europe and Russia.” What makes this bird sighting in Oklahoma interesting is that the bird is known to winter along the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts and in small numbers on the Great Lakes. Oklahoma City is in the center of the Southern Plains so the birds are a quite a bit off course when they show up on our city reservoir!
I’ve now located the Red-throated Loon on three different occasions and even found it in the company of another one! The bird that’s in this photo is described by Jim Arterburn as an adult molting from breeding to winter plummage. It’s companion was in winter plummage (if these birds stay for a while I hope to get better photos, especially of the one in winter plummage).
I’m excited to add this species to my Photo Gallery. It’s a beautiful, delicate loon that comes from the top of the earth to visit in Oklahoma!
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