For our local Anne Arundel county birders, and anyone nearby, or in town, please consider attending the Anne Arundel Bird Club’s annual lecture this Thursday at Quiet Waters Park at 8 p.m. sharp. These lectures are always fascinating. Local environmental guru Gerald Weingrad always manages to score top-rank speakers. And this year’s presentation is on one of our favorite subjects: Owls!

            Our Bird Club president Pat Tate wrote about about the AA Bird Club in a recent issue of the Annapolis Capital.

              Here’s the scoop on the owls:

             THE SECRET, MYSTERIOUS, AND FASCINATING LIFE OF OWLS

             Clay and Pat Sutton, a husband and wife team, will take viewers on an incredible journey exploring the world of owls. They are authors of many books on birds and nature, including How to Spot an Owl (1994) which is out of print and not available, and have intensively studied owls in the wild for 30 years. In their program they will relate their fascination with owls and convey the excitement of searching for, understanding, and enjoying these illusive and mysterious creatures. The behavior, mating, and hunting skills of owls will be examined as will how to spot these hard to find creatures. The presentation will cover many owl species: Resident owls (Great Horned, Screech, & Barred Owl), migrant owls (Saw-whet, Long-eared, Short-eared, Snowy, and Barn Owl), and owls that occur during “invasions” (Hawk Owl, Great Gray Owl, Boreal Owl). Owling basics, owling on your own, various clues to follow-up, special places and habitats, helpful equipment, and backyard owling will all be covered. Owling etiquette and how to spot owls without disturbing them is emphasized. Pat and Clay will remove some of the mystery of owls and owl finding, while simultaneously conveying the excitement of searching for and studying these difficult to see nocturnal predators. Bring your binoculars so you can find some hidden owls in the program.



Clay and Pat Sutton’s work and names are synonymous with their home town of Cape May, New Jersey, a place that has been aptly called the migration capitol of North America. This migratory crossroads is famous for its hawk, owl, songbird, shorebird, and Monarch butterfly migration. Pat Sutton was for 21 years the Program Director at the New Jersey Audubon Society’s Cape May Bird Observatory. Prior to that, she was the Park Naturalist at Cape May Point State Park. Pat is a founding board member of the North American Butterfly Association. Clay is a life-long resident of Cape May, where he has worked as an Environmental Program Administrator, Vice-President of an environmental consulting firm specializing in threatened and endangered species, and for the past decade as a self- employed environmental consultant, naturalist and field biologist.

Clay and Pat today are free-lance writers, naturalists, lecturers, tour leaders, and long-time instructors for the American Birding Association’s Institute for Field Ornithology. Clay is a co-author, with Pete Dunne and David Sibley, of the classic Hawks in Flight (1988), and Clay and Pat together have co-authored How to Spot Butterflies (1999), How to Spot Hawks & Eagles (1996), and their latest book, Birds and Birding at Cape May (2006). This landmark book is a complete guide to birds and birding for the Cape May region, covering what to see, when, where, and how to go, as well as the storied ornithological history of the Cape. Articles and photography by Pat & Clay have appeared in New Jersey Audubon, Peregrine Observer, New Jersey Outdoors, Sanctuary, American Butterflies, Wild Bird, Bird Watcher’s Digest, Birder’s World, Birding, Living Bird, Defenders, and others.



The Suttons will bring copies of some of their books to be purchased and autographed.

DONATION OF MINIMUM OF $5 REQUESTED AT DOOR

Earlier this winter, we closed the flight center down for the first time in recent memory. We didn’t have any eagles or large raptors to put out there. Things have changed around some this year. So far we have taken in 17 eagles at the Bird TLC clinic in 2010.

The majority of them have been immature bald eagles. So if you go to the flight center now, of the seven bald eagles out there, all but one is an immature bald eagle. Four of them are fully flighted and will be ready for release come spring. Two of them are partially flighted and are working on getting their strength back to be fully flighted. The last one is in question right now, but after a molt we’ll see.

These guys and gals are practicing their flying skills everyday. They are feed fresh salmon and red meat. Sometimes they get a treat of chicken or turkey, depending how much we have donated.

With spring (hopefully) on the way, we’re sprucing things up a bit around here - starting with those sharp new license plates for our 2010 Ford Escape Hybrid, which we affectionately call “Pipit.”

We’ve also added a logo and link for Alpen Optics at the top of our blog sidebar, in recognition of our growing relationship with this reputable maker of high-quality bins, scopes and other optics. As Lisa blogged last week, we are reviewing and testing some Alpen equipment right now.

Finally, please check out our new Experience & Services section of the blog, by clicking here or on the button at the top of the page.

Onward and Upward!
- W and L

Two Brown-headed Nuthatches spent most of their time in the trees above the feeders, not doing their usual loud squeaky-dee calls, but calling back and forth to each other in soft one-syllable bleets.

My favorite bird of the afternoon was a Hermit Thrush that sat on a low branch of an oak, flicking its wings and quickly raising and lowering its tail each time it called a low, throaty tchurp – over and over. Because it perched one way and then another, I had a good view of the smooth olive-brown of its back, the cinnamon color of both the tail and the edges of the wings, and the big, dark, bold spots on its pale breast. Later it dropped to the ground to forage with the sparrows and juncos, though pretty much keeping its distance from the main group and staying watchful.

A couple of Mourning Doves sat in the trees nearby and in the back yard several American Crows cawed loudly for a long time – I finally saw a Red-tailed Hawk leave the top of a pine in the woods and glide away with the Crows in pursuit. Earlier in the afternoon, a Cooper’s Hawk sailed very fast across the road, through a powdery blur of falling snow, and over the treetops low and out of sight.

Although sociable, pine-loving Brown-headed Nuthatches are regular visitors to our feeders and the woods around the neighborhood, the more aloof White-breasted Nuthatches are not, probably because they prefer mature deciduous woodland and mixed forest, while our woods are younger and rougher, with few large, dignified trees, either pines or hardwoods. Every once in a while though, like today, one or two come around.

I tried for several minutes to find the White-breasted Nuthatch, but the light was gray and blurry. It gave its one-syllable ahnk call several more times, but remained invisible somewhere among the misty pine branches and foliage, a little too far away to see.

This Great Horned Owl was hit by a car. He’s in good physical condition, but he did hit his head hard. He’s receiving some good TLC r&r, thanks to the young lady that brought it into PET ER.

This mature bald eagle came to us a few weeks ago interrupting a lunch date. It was very anemic and received a blood transfusion right away. Its coming along pretty good.

Ahhh… sunny, almost balmy weather (we made it to 45 degrees!) in Maryland and on a weekend! The perfect birding weather to check out some new Alpen Optics gear for entry into the American Birding Association’s (ABA) 2010 Gear Guide issue.

We found it to be quite a good buy for a durable lightweight scope.

This baby offered nice light and good focus as we followed a Bald Eagle stirring up a raft of Greater Scaup.

Our pal, Evelina, joined us as we moved worked out the bins on some passing Bonaparte’s Gulls.

The Rainier 8×32 is a rugged pair of bins that are super lightweight with comfy eye cups and perfect grip.

Nice in low light and exceptional for upclose detail in butterfly-ing.

The Rainiers have extra large prisms made of BaK4 glass (high and bright resolution) and are both water and fog proof- and the light weight is real bonus - making these bins are favorite for A.T. hiking!

High performance bins that stack up nicely against the big guys for hundreds of dollars less.

These binoculars are just pure sweet birdwatching at a list price of about $400.

We were knocking these babies against a pair of high end Leicas and they put up quite a fight. A little hefter than the 8×32 Raniers, but still surprisely light weight (21 ounces!) for the engineering that went into them.

Great light and quick focus were the first things that stood out as we spied a group of Common Goldeneyes doing some spring displaying.

Long range detail along with all the other great Alpen usual features made these bins my new go-to-pair.

I love my Alpen Apex model, but the Alpen Wings model’s ED glass is noticeably brighter and clearer.

And, I like to think those nice guys and gals at Alpen Optics listened to my advice about lenghening the strap.

With the nice long adjustable strap, I can sport the Wings ED comfortable girly style across my body rather than hanging from my neck

sweet!

Now, bring on the warblers!

But our all time new Alpen favorite is the Wings ED 8×42.

It’s probably the same Pine Warbler that visits the feeders out front regularly, a colorful male with warm yellow breast and soft streaks. Today I happened to be watching when a little Brown-headed Nuthatch – also a regular visitor – flew at the warbler aggressively. At first the Pine Warbler held its ground, but in only a second or two gave up and flew away, at least temporarily. Minor disputes like this are pretty common around the feeders, and the small but feisty Nuthatches don’t hesitate to take on larger birds and seem to win a confrontation more often than not.

The species account for Brown-headed Nuthatch in Birds of North America* notes that they are particularly competitive with Pine Warblers for food and foraging habitat in winter flocks. Studies seem to show that sometimes one wins and sometimes the other. The Nuthatches also try to chase off  Chickadees, Titmice and even a Downy Woodpecker sometimes – but most of the time they seem relatively content to share with these species.

*James H. Withgott and Kimberly G. Smith. 1998. Brown-headed Nuthatch (Sitta pusilla), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, ed.) Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Unfortunately because of his injury, he’ll never be released back to the wild. If he wasn’t brought to Bird TLC, he would have faced a certain death. So he must start thinking about being an education bird. He’ll be able to represent his proud species and hopefully educate people about the dangers they cause to wildlife when they recklessly leave trash in the wild.