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Weekend with little time for wildlife!

I had a fun and interesting weekend but the only wildlife I encountered was a Deer Mouse left by my cats in the middle of the living room floor. I will expect Lazy (the hunter cat) to continue her fun while these little fuzzy moving toys of hers try to make their home in this house (due to the weather getting colder). Phoebe (my overweight cat) might miss 90% of the visits of these mice due to sleeping upstairs in “her” chair. You can be sure that Lazy will try to change the mice’s minds that outside might be a better place to live! Meanwhile, I will try to continue to live trap them in the basement and take them a distance away to avoid my cats. I found this to be a better way to observe these mice up close.

I had expected last Friday to be an excellent owl night but we had unexpected mixed snow (which made it impossible for me to open nets). Last night I didn’t open the nets due to attended my cousins wedding (which was wonderful seeing family and some old friends). I can now focus my evenings on owls till mid November but that’s only if the weather could be equally cooperative! Of course tonight has scattered showers that has appeared to only been scattered only over the park with every cloud that passes. I guess that is what I get living in the snow belt. Going to bed early tonight with hope that a rainless nights might happen in the very near future!

Posted by mon@rch | 22 October 2006 | Categories: Mammals | Tags: et al.. | 4 Comments

Lake Erie Gulls

Herring Gulls riding the wind, originally uploaded by Mon@rch.

For lunch last Wednesday I decided to take a little walk to try and photograph some birds. Lake Erie State Park is known as a wonderful migration area for many ducks and songbirds. Could it be possible that I will get skunked and not see any songbirds? Luckily…. I did locate a small flock of Cedar Waxwings and several White Throated Sparrows among the shrubs. But this time I didn’t mind being teased by them keeping their distance with no opportunities for capturing that perfect shot.

I decided to work my way over to the beach in search of a loon or even a raft of ducks along the shores edge. Those Greater Black Backed Gulls on the bluffs are what I seemed to keep my eyes on. Since there were no songbirds around, I decided to wait for these black-backs to take flight. While waiting, I happen to notice this young Herring Gulls found some food and kept dropping it into the water (then picking it back up). It almost appeared as if it was washing its food and trying to get it to a point to quickly swallow. Without delay it flew away and I realized this adult Herring Gulls had approached as if to steal this younger birds lunch.

I continued to watch all these gulls moving up and down this small section of the shore. On occasion one of these birds would quickly drop into the water to picked something up and fly out to a deeper section of the water. This explains why these birds were ignoring me and focusing on their food. Soon my lunch was over and I need to return back to work to finish my day. I did enjoy my limited time watching these birds and of course it didn’t take long to fill up my memory cards.

Posted by mon@rch | 21 October 2006 | Categories: Birds | 3 Comments

the grapes

Tuesday and Wednesday I spend some time at Lake Erie State Park which is in the heart of the Wine Country. I wooed and awed over the many photographic opportunities of these vineyards reaching as far as the eye can see. The windy weather didn’t allow me to get any shots on Tuesday but on Wednesday I became obsessed with how these vineyards operated and so I took as many photos as my time would allowed. The grape smell in the air was just wonderful!!

I have never had an opportunity to do any birding in these vineyards. I would have to assume that this area would be an excellent place to locate unique nesting and migrant birds. These sturdy vines can provide wonderful shelter (with leaves and snow cover) and some of the fallen fruit would then be eaten by numerous birds. I would also be curious on what other critters would live in these vineyards.

While driving around, I happen to notice it was harvest time for these grapes and they had numerous (strange) machines parked near their barns. After long discussions, we concluded that these machines must shake the vines and the grapes fall into something (or on the ground, that part we were not sure about). The grapes would then get packaged into these huge wooden cartons and loaded onto flatbeds. From there they get shipped to wineries to be turned into award winning wine!

It wasn’t until we headed home that I noticed the sign for the Chautauqua and Lake Erie Wine Trail. After quickly googling the trail; I found this website www.chautauquawinetrail.org . It appears that this trail is almost 40 miles long and follows the Lake Erie shoreline. Many activities are scheduled throughout the season including a large festival. Check out the website if you’re interested in learning more about the area.

Posted by mon@rch | 20 October 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: et al.. | 4 Comments

Down time lets me work on new blog!

Bridal Falls

Weather hasn’t been too good recently and the owl banding station hasn’t had its nets open in the past few days. I don’t anticipate seeing the station starting to band again until Friday evening which will be producing northern winds (perfect for these owls which are bottled up north). Expect me up into the wee hours of the night.

With all this down time, I started to explore new areas to host my blog which is compatible with flickr, ect… Word Press is exactly what I what I have been looking for. I have been moving months worth of files from the old site (soon to be gone) to this wonderful new site. It has been fun exploring my new features and trying to imply them to this blog site. Enjoy and please feel free to spread the word to others about this site!

Posted by mon@rch | 19 October 2006 | Categories: Allegany State Park | 5 Comments

Frost Expected – No Owls

There is a good chance for a frost here in Allegany State Park this evening! The skies were clear with W to SW winds and temps are starting to get cold. I opened owl banding nets from 7pm EDT to midnight without any owls around. I ended up going to bed with the temps around 30.9F. Spent the day relaxing after the Camp Flickr weekend (www.campflickr.com). Nexrad radar has been down since the 13th due to power problems up in Buffalo! I noticed that it got back online around 8pm EDT. Here you can see some movement of birds through western New York!

Posted by mon@rch | 15 October 2006 | Categories: Bird Banding, Owls | Tags: Radar | 5 Comments

Camp Flickr Meeting

I have been quite busy this weekend from the camp flickr get-together which was scheduled here in Allegany State Park http://www.campflickr.com . What a wonderful time everyone had with photographers from Michigan and New York State. Of course the weather always made everything interesting with it being sunny once second, raining the next, sleet and then we would have huge snowflakes in the air. Be sure to check out all of the photos added to the camp flickr group at http://flickr.com/groups/campflickr . I would like to thank the Camp Flickr Team that put this event together and making this a wonderful time! There was no Owl Banding done today and only wish the weather was a little better.

The Group Photo

Posted by mon@rch | 14 October 2006 | Categories: Flickr, flickr meet-up | Leave a comment

Northern Saw-whet Owl Banding

During the Camp Flickr Meet – we caught a Northern Saw-whet Owl for everyone to photograph! Everyone was so excited with the that there were many people out there photographing this cute little owl. Check out just one local nature photographer Jeremy Martin who took both of these pictures! Make sure you stop by and say hello on his photostream.

Posted by mon@rch | 13 October 2006 | Categories: Bird Banding, flickr meet-up | Leave a comment

Buffalo Mid October Snowstorm

Blustery photo was taken by http://www.flickr.com/photos/chauss513/ who is a WNY photographer. Please take some time to go visit his photostream. You can see the Nexrad Radar shows heavy lake effect is still dumping a ton of snow over Buffalo. I am going to assume that the National Weather Service lost power and resulted in the radar being down. This storm has been located in the same location for the past day and is very not typical for this time of the year.

There is a wonderful discussion on the snowstorm (Blizzard of ’06) on flickr on damage done on members property. It has been snowing over the city of Buffalo since late Thursday night and this is all the TV news channels have been able to talk about. This heavy snow has dropped around 30 inches of snow through out many locations in Buffalo and the melting will become an additional problem. The news has reported that this storms has very strong winds and mixed snow lightning which has crippled the city with about 200,000 households without power. Everyone is saying that it almost looks like “a bomb has hit the city”.

Posted by mon@rch | 13 October 2006 | Categories: Weather | Tags: Radar | Leave a comment

An Owls 3rd Eyelid

Today we caught two Northern Saw-whet Owls with wonderful WNW winds. While Photographing this owl, we happen to notice that with each picture it would use its 3rd eyelid (as if to protect itself). After looking in a few of my Ornithology Manuals – I finally learned that this eyelid is called the Nictitating membrane!! After a quick google search: answers.com I found this about the eyelid: nic·ti·tat·ing membrane (nĭk’tĭ-tā’tĭng) also nic·tat·ing membrane (nĭk’tā’tĭng) n. – A transparent inner eyelid in birds, reptiles, and some mammals that closes to protect and moisten the eye. Also called third eyelid.

FYI: Nexrad Radar shows a very strong movement of birds taking off just after sunset. Click link to see the Clip.

Posted by mon@rch | 9 October 2006 | Categories: Bird Banding, Birds, Ornithology, Owls | Tags: Radar | Leave a comment

Slow Evening Banding

We opened nets at 7:15 EDT with great anticipation in another Owl. I guess the fact that we didn’t catch any owl could have been expected with the bright moon and southern winds. Do note on the radar we had very limited movement of birds. Tomorrow we are expecting more northern winds and should be a good day!