Beckham Bird Club Field Trip

Last Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012 The Beckham Bird Club took its annual trip to the road behind Bernheim Forest along Wilson Creek, to look for Bald and Golden Eagles. It is an area to where the Eagles migrate in the winter. Our leader of the trip, Eddie Huber, mentioned that they did not see any Golden Eagles on the Christmas Bird count this year, so we weren’t sure if we would get to see them. Maybe all the extra warm weather across the country delayed their trip just a bit, but fortunately, they had arrived in Kentucky!

Our first view was 2 Golden Eagles sitting in a tree way up on the ridge. Thanks to Mary for her own “eagle eye” in spotting them! As soon as we stopped, one of them flew away. Luckily, the other one stayed long enough for some of the members to get their spotting scopes set up. With the scopes, we got a really nice look at him.

This one took off after a few minutes, but reappeared about ten minutes later. He perched again in a tree, a little closer, then took to the sky soaring for several minutes allowing us to enjoy his splendor!

Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle

Later, after we moved on from the area where we had been observing the Eagles, a Juvenile Golden Eagle (notice the white patches under his wings, indicating a juvenile) flew over us, allowing us one last glimpse!

Juvenile Golden Eagle

We had many other highlights from the trip!

These Common Snipes were spotted by Mary & Ben. There were quite a few of them hunkered down in the frosty grass! This was my first sighting of a Common Snipe! They are really cool looking birds. You have to look really close but there are about 4 or 5 of them here!

It was a very cold morning, so frost was covering everything. I liked the way the light was hitting this little patch of frozen water and grass!

We came upon several flocks of Robins as well as other song birds eating berries!

American Robin

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Hay bale covered with morning frost

This beautiful Red-tailed Hawk flew up pretty close to where we had just pulled off to look for song birds.

Red-tailed Hawk

This little Killdeer was in the frosty grass near the Distillery Lake!

Killdeer

It was an awesome field trip! Although, I was lucky enough to see 2 Golden Eagles on my trip out west last summer, I had never gotten to see them in Kentucky. They are usually western and northern birds, so we would only get to see them here in the winter during migration!

I didn't want to post too many pictures, so if you are interested in seeing more, you can check out the gallery I posted on smugmug by clicking here.

Also, you might want to check out the Beckham Bird club website. They have field trips almost every weekend year round, led by some of the best birders in the Louisville area! You can really learn a lot from these guys and gals!

Posted in: Beckham Bird Club,Bernheim Forest,Golden Eagle

It Snowed!!

In case you didn't hear from all your friends on Facebook over the past day... It SNOWED!! :)

Just wanted to share a couple macros I took today of the pretty snowflakes...

Posted in: Louisville Kentucky,winter

dePaul School Q & A

As some of you may know, at about this time every year I answer questions Mr. Kepler's third grade class at the dePaul School have as they start learning about birds and their adaptations.  I used to answer their questions on my old blog the Landfill Bird Blog, and will be keeping the tradition alive here at Louisville Naturally.  His classes are always very bright and full of great questions and I'm sure this year will be no different.  Let's get started!


Q: What are some of the rarest birds you've seen?  

A: The rarest bird I have ever seen would have to be the Whooping Crane.  Whooping Cranes are the tallest birds we have in North America, standing at 5 feet tall and with a wingspan of 7.5 feet!  The reason they are so rare is because they were hunted for their feathers and their habitats were destroyed in the 19th and 20th centuries.  The number of birds dwindled down to 15 birds in the 1940's and have slowly come back since winning protection in 1967.  Today there are around 400 Whooping Cranes in the wild, which makes them one of the rarest birds in North America.  Below you can see a picture I took of a Whooping Crane in Brownstown, IN in 2009.

Q: What is the most deadliest bird you’ve seen?

A: That's a tough one.  Most birds as you know are not deadly, at least in the way a poisonous spider or snake would be.  Very few could ever pose a risk to people, so it depends on what you are.  If you are a fish, the Osprey would probably be the deadliest bird to you.  If you are a rabbit, the deadliest bird would be a Red-tailed Hawk.  If you were a grasshopper, the deadliest bird to you would be an American Kestrel.  If you were a worm, the American Robin would cause you nightmares.  And if you were a sunflower seed, the Northern Cardinal would strike fear into your heart!



Q: What is the coolest bird you’ve seen?

A: I usually say every bird is my favorite bird, but I guess if I had to pick one, it would be the Ruby-throated Hummingbird.  Hummingbirds are fascinating because of their toughness, especially for their small size.  Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are only here in Kentucky in the summer.  So every spring they fly across the Gulf of Mexico, a non-stop flight of over 500 miles, and they only weigh 3 grams!  Hummingbirds favor red flowers that provide nectar that fuels their high speed flight.  Nectar is basically just sugar, so if YOU were a hummingbird, your parents would never yell at you for eating too much sugar, instead they would encourage it!  They have long beaks and tongues they use to lap up the nectar out of deep, tubular flowers.

Q: What do you do at your job at the landfill?

A: For those of you who may not know, I work at the landfill as a bird biologist.  For more on just exactly what that means you can visit my old blog to find out more. 


Q: How many different birds have come to the landfill?

A: A total of 155 different species of birds have been found at the landfill and I am always adding more.

These were some great questions guys and gals.  I'm sure you'll have more and I am looking forward to speaking to your class about birds and bird adaptations!

Look Small and See More - Land Snails

On a recent trip to search for salamanders I found only a single salamander species, and after some half-hearted picking up of snail shells I was astonished to find I had eight different kinds from the same hillside! Dan Dourson recently completed a field guide to the nearly 200 species of land snails found in Kentucky ("Kentucky's Land Snails and Their Ecological Communities"). It has the most useful taxonomic key to identification that I have ever used. For those who are unfamiliar with taxonomic keys the saying is: "they are made for people who can't use them by people who don't need them", but that is certainly not true in this case. It is filled with pictures, and even the relative novice can use it successfully.

Starting from top left large white shell going clockwise:
Toothed Globe, Mesodon zaletus
Proud Globe, Mesodon elevatus
Some kind of "Button" snail, Mesomphix sp.
Gray-foot Lancetooth, Haplotrema concavum
Flamed Disk, Anguispira alternata
Shagreen, Inflectarius inflectatus
Inland Slitmouth, Stenotrema stenotrema
Slender Walker, Pomatiopsis lapidaria (center tiny one)

Here's a closeup of that tiny one in the middle of the previous photo (slender walker). It's a minuscule amphibious species from seeps and moist hillsides.


Here's a closeup of a live upland pillsnail (Euchemotrema fraternum) (Not from Floyds Fork).


My wife found this great mixture of patterns and colors by looking small.


The winter hillside along Floyds Fork where I found at least 9 snail species and 1 salamander species.

Empty Nest

It's a not too chilly January day and I look out my window and see an empty nest. The Robins that were hatched there are long gone. This isn't the first nest I've found on my property, and certainly won't be the last. But, when I first spotted it last June, in a young tree, I was amazed at how the Robin created such a beautiful, safe, home. I peeked in every so often to see how they were growing... and before I knew it, they were gone.

A New Years Eve Spectacular Starling display

I got a spectacular send-off of 2011 On New Year’s Eve! While driving home from Indiana right at dusk, I noticed thousands of Starlings flying over the Kennedy Bridge in amazing formations. Luckily, there is an exit right before the bridge that goes down to Jeffersonville, IN! I quickly took this exit, parked under the bridge, and went down to the riverwalk so I could get a better view of the Starlings showing off their aerobatics over the bridge. This view allowed me to get some shots with downtown Louisville in the background.

John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge

I discovered that I was not the only one watching the Starlings. This Hawk took off flying into the large murmuration of Starlings. I don’t know if he got anything. If so, I didn’t see it happen. In this picture, I was fooling around with some of the special effects in my Picasa photo editing software! It’s called “focal zoom”.

I was so excited to have an opportunity to witness this. I believe scientists are still researching to determine why & how they do these amazing displays. Until then it will just be one of those natural things that may be unexplainable, but oh so cool to watch!

A view of The George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge (aka 2nd Street bridge)

Downtown Louisville, KY at dusk

I also took some video. Please keep in mind that this video was shot with an old point & shoot, so it’s certainly not the highest quality, and I tried to hold it straight, but was not always successful!

Posted in: George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge,John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge,Louisville Kentucky,Murmuration,Starlings

Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge

A few weeks ago, my husband and I went to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge, near Seymour, Indiana. I had been seeing on flickr that an Eastern Screech Owl had been hanging around for the last few weeks, and I wanted to see this Owl! I haven’t seen many Owls in the wild. I have caught the occasional glimpse and of course I hear them from time to time, but never have I been able to photograph them. We met Jack Bird from Madison and he took us to the Owls' hole. (See his photostream here.) It was pretty exciting! I got a few half way decent shots, but he was too far away to get a perfectly focused shot.

Eastern Screech Owl

While we were watching the Owl my husband saw a very large bird from a distance, so we headed over to the area where he saw it fly to and sure enough it was a Bald Eagle. Wow, within five minutes time, we saw an Owl and a Bald Eagle. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Bald Eagle

Red-tailed Hawks seemed to be the bird of the day at Muscatatuck, as we saw several.

Red-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk (Juvenile)

This little squirrel hung out long enough for me to snap a few shots, then darted off to go about his business!

Gray Squirrel

After we left Muscatatuck, we headed over to Ewing Bottoms. It’s an area near Brownstown, Indiana, just about 15 miles from Muscatatuck. This is an area full of low farmland, that sits near the White River, so there is a lot of flooding in these fields. Sandhill Cranes use these flooded fields to roost and eat. They stop here during migration in November & December, then again in February & March on their way back north. Usually you can see thousands of Sandhills, and every so often, on a lucky day, a Whooping Crane! I didn’t get to see a Whooping Crane this time, but there were tons of Sandhills!

Sandhill Cranes in the field

Sandhill Crane

Sandhill Cranes

Sandhill Trio

Posted in: Bald Eagle,Eastern Screech Owl,Gray Squirrel,Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge,Red-tailed Hawk,Sandhill Cranes