Continuing Owl Week here at Recycled Photons ...

Last April I had a business trip to Long Beach, California.  Since I had to spend six hours on a plane, to say nothing of the time at the airport, twice, I figured I'd make the most of it. So I spent the weekend in California, exploring the greater Johsua Tree National Park area and the Salton Sea.

And one of the things I wanted to see were these guys.

Burrowing owls.

The directions to find them were very easy. Head down Highway 111 until you come to a sign that says Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. And turn in the opposite direction, toward the prison.

We were told that the owls would be perched along the sides of the road and that's where we found them. There seemed to be an owl every hundred or so yards. We saw a dozen or so birds in under two miles. Each manning their own territory.

They were perched on sticks, mounds, fence posts, the highest point in their area. And they seemed completely unconcerned about us as we went about photographing them.

Here we have Patty lining up her shot as the owl poses obligingly.

The reason they're called burrowing owls is that they nest in holes in the ground. The owls don't actually burrow, rather they use holes dug by other creatures, including man. As we drove up we spotted one run down into a drainage hole along the side of the road. I walked up to take a look and found this.

I backed away, not wanting to stress the bird, and waited for it to pop up and peek out. I didn't need to wait long.

I have to agree with my friend Laura, they are rather cute.

In their burrows they make a sound similar to a rattlesnake when they feel threatened. I must not have been scary enough as I heard nothing.

They seemed much more concerned with the swallows zooming about overhead.

I'm not sure what this one was doing, a quail imitation?

The easiest owls I ever found.

And by far and away the most photogenic.

More Owls

Continuing a theme from the last two posts, I give you two more owls (and a nightjar).

I had to go a bit farther to get these though. Instead of day trip to Pennsylvania or an easy ten mile drive, this was an over five hour plane ride and then a van trip down a mountain road to an agricultural research site in north central Trinidad.

This was our second visit to the Aripo Agriculture Research Station, this one for night birding.

After a nice picnic dinner of chicken and rice, and the signature rum punch, we gathered under the "owl tree".

The chap with the gold watch is Dave Ramlal, our guide from the Asa Wright Nature Center, where we were staying while on Trinidad. And he is looking for an owl.

This owl:

A ferruginous pygmy owl, which sat up in the tree looking at us looking at it. After getting it's fill of human watching it closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

But the tree wasn't done yet. There was another owl in this tree. And as we were walking away we heard it call. And then it flew. We saw it and it appeared to fly into another tree. But it had fooled us by landing on a fence post. We searched the tree to no avail. Bummed we started to follow the path from the original tree, to see where it might have gone. And there it was right out in the open. So we all turned to look and of course the owl took off.

To another tree. Where we all got great looks ...

... at a tropical screech owl. Which didn't give a hoot about us standing there gawking at it.

After the owls we went looking for nightjars and we found plenty. Which made Dave happy, as he is concerned for the birds due to the loss of habitat. The birds were sitting on the road because the roads were warm and that is where the bugs were. And for us, it made them very easy to see.

Unfortunately autofocus doesn't work in the dark. And the manual focus on my lens chose that day to stop working. So I got few good images.

Representative is this one of a common pauraque.

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This was just one of the field trips we took while on Trinidad and the only night jaunt. It was a very nice way to end a day (I got four life birds). The entire trip was a good one, and I'll have more posts about it in the days to come.

Found Them

In my last post I told of how we went looking for long-eared owls and found a saw-whet owl instead. Patty had never seen a long-eared and was understandably disappointed.

Jump forward into the new year. We were at a local nature park to see a rufus hummingbird that had obviously gotten lost and which was spending the winter in New Jersey (they are a species of the American west). A birder friend we met there asked if we were interested in seeing owls. Of course we were. And off we went.

Here is an image of the owl. See it? It is dead center in the image (click to bigafy).

Had we not been led to the bird we never would have found it. Here's a close up:

The owl has its eye on us, clearly aware of our presence and thus we kept our distance, not wishing to disturb it.

The roosting site is one I had visited a number of times before, but I was unaware of the owls. Patty had visited specifically to see owls, but that day there were no owls to be seen. This suburban woodland also had roosting saw-whets and we observed several that day. We learned later that both species have been using the site for years. The owls have likely moved on by now, leaving winter roosts for breeding territories. Hopefully they will return next winter. I find it amazing that less than ten miles from my home, in a relatively small woodland in suburban New Jersey, there are not one but two wintering species of owls, and have been for years. Nice.

Tree Blob

It is verboten in the birding world to reveal the locations of roosting owls except among trusted friends, for fear of too many visitors disturbing the birds. But some spots become well known in the community and Patty and I visited one such "secret, well known place" in search of long-eared owls known to be roosting there.

And we found an owl. But it wasn't the owl we expected.

We first spotted it from the trail, looking into the sun. I thought it was an olds wasp's nest. But upon further review it was an owl. But what kind? It was hard to see, high up and tucked into the branches. This is the only usable shot I managed to take. Our first thought was northern saw-whet owl, but having recently been owl banding this bird seemed to large to be a saw-whet, thus we tentatively identified it as a barred owl. I sent this image out asking for an ID, and everyone answered saw-whet. So saw-whet it is. And while I've seen saw-whets in the wild, this it s the first one I found.

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After hunting a bit more for owls and finding no others, we retreated to the visitor's center behind which is a bird blind overlooking some feeders. The birds were much easier to view, and ID, and we snapped away.

Female house finch above, male below.

American gold finch.

Male northern-cardinal.

Tufted titmouse.

Chickadee.

These are the usual suspects found at feeders in the winter. There is a small pond next to the feeders so occasionally you'll get one of these wandering about, a female mallard.

And where there are feeder birds there are birds the feed on them ...

This cooper's hawk flew in and everyone else flew out.

Yep, show's over. Time to leave.

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So we retreated into the visitors center and warmed up by the wood burning stove. It was a nice morning, but Patty's still never seen a long-eared owl in the wild. We'll just have to keep searching.

Royalty

The text message was sort and to the point: Monarchs are roosting in Cape May.

It was migration season and we had been debating a trip to the Cape. The weather wan't great and it's a two hour trip.

But the text changed things.

And off we went.

After a brief stop at a magic tree full of warblers we found the roost.

There were thousands of butterflies.

Curious orange leaves on the pine trees.

All on their way to a place they've never been. A mountain top in Mexico. To spend the winter. And then start this incredible journey all over again.

The monarchs mate in spring and the first generation heads north to the US and Canada. But that first generation makes it just to the US border, where they mate and lay their eggs. The caterpillars, which feed exclusively on milkweed, eat and eat and eat, and then form a chrysalis. Out of which comes generation two which continues the journey north. Six generations later it is time to go back. These great great great great grand children return to that mountain in Mexico.

Absolutely incredible.

The journey is not without its dangers, which is why they are here. The butterflies need to cross the Delaware Bay, but the winds are against them. So they land. And wait. And more land. And more. And more. Until there is a quarter mile of monarchs.

Imagine what it must be like in Mexico with monarch from all across the US and Canada coming to roost.

Other dangers include severe weather, habit loss, and predators.

And tragically the roosting sites in Mexico are under increasing pressure from an growing yet very poor population, who see the trees as a resource to cut down. And not a home to a wondrous insect.

But it was easy to forget all that immersed in the spectacle around us.

I'm quite pleased we got that text.

Evening Visitor

My girlfriend lives in center city Philadelphia and has a small (~ 16' x 20'), brick walled garden for a backyard. And for a couple of weeks she had a visitor.

We called him (her?) Opie.

Actually, this was Opie II, the original having visited a couple of years prior. 

As with any good host we put out food for our guest. Cat food and fruit, with cat food the preferred repast. The apple slices went uneaten. Opie would scale the brick wall, scan the garden, and scramble down for dinner. He seemed to be little concerned with us, as we watched from inside the open patio door.

Long ago, when we were kids, my youngest sister came running into the house, "there's a rat in the garage! there's a rat in the garage!" I remember going out with my dad to see. And there it was, sitting in a box. Dad, having grown up in Manhattan (without a garden backyard apparently) did what any city dweller would do when confronted with a big rat. He called the police. Fortunately, the officer correctly identified the creature, an opossum, instantly changing it from vermin to guest. So we gave it an apple. And watched as it played possum in the box. That apple went uneaten as well.

Opie hasn't been around for the last few days, the food untouched in the morning. The city can be a dangerous place, with way to many predatory automobiles. Hopefully he's ok. We'll keep watching for him.

Snake!

While on a recent plant geek field trip I spotted this on the side of the trail.

An oldster, having live to shed its skin at least thirteen times (unlike tree rings, the number of rattles does not directly correlate with age as rattles can shed multiple times in a year, and the rattles can break off).

The field trip was a well attended one, with over thirty of us out in the pines. I near the end of the line as we hiked along when I spotted this guy a couple of feet from the trail. Siting quietly as we paraded by, single file. That's when I yelled snake.

As this was prime habitat, we had been told to keep a weather eye out. And once spotted everybody wanted a look. All of us crowding around to see and photograph the snake prompted it try to moved away. But we had it boxed in. But not once did it rattle nor assume a threatening pose. It was more interested in retreat than attack, looking for a way out. And we parted to let it slither off in peace.

A bit later my girlfriend almost stepped on this one, saved by another friend who spotted it just in time.

Much smaller, this appeared to be a yearling, with no rattles on its tail. And it too wanted nothing to do with us, making a beeline for the woods. Of course we all crowded around to get images.

Two rattlers in one day, upping my lifetime total by 200%. Very cool.