The notch in a Peregrine Falcon's beak...

From reading about birds over the years, I knew falcons had a notch in their beaks called a "tomial tooth" that other raptors did not have, but I had never looked at it closely until this autumn...

The notch in a falcon's beak is called the tomial tooth, and it's an adaptation suited to their hunting style.

Here you can see how the top notch (the tomial tooth) and the bottom notch fit together. The powerful beak and shape of the notch work together to allow falcons to bite through the cervical vertebrae and sever the spinal cord of their prey with ease (with Peregrine Falcons, the prey is primarily birds).

The Tomial Tooth is an adaptation unique to falcons. The only other bird that has a tomial tooth is the shrike (click here to learn more about shrikes).

...an entry from my sketchbook on the Peregrine Falcon's tomial tooth.

If you want to accurately represent a falcon in a painting or drawing, it's important to pay attention to the shape of its beak. I wanted to spend a little time studying its unique shape, so I sketched it out a few times.

Beak Bit

Also specific to the falcons is the shape of their wings. Falcons get their name from the Latin word "falco" or "falx," which means "sickle" or "scimitar-shaped" and refers to the shape of their wings, which are long and narrow and pointed at the end, similar in shape to a sickle.

Basic Raptor Silhouettes

...another sketchbook entry. By looking at the silhouette of a falcon, you can see the sickle shape of the wings and their pointed tips. When I first started looking up at the sky to identify raptors by silhouette, it took me a while to figure out the basic forms. After a while, it became clear...the shape of the tail feathers helped me the most. Accipiters (Cooper's Hawks, Sharp-shinned hawks) longer and thinner...and Buteos (Red-tailed Hawks, Red-shouldere Hawks) shorter and wider. Falcons are distinct...fast and sleek with a very thin tail.

Additionally, falcons do not have well-defined supraorbital ridges like hawks and eagles (click here for a few posts that describe the supraorbital ridge--the bony ridge above the eye that helps to cut the sun's glare). Even though falcons have a much less defined bony ridge, they all have a dark stripe under their eye (called a malar stripe), which cuts the sun's glare to help them hunt.

p.s. The close-up shots of the Peregrine Falcon came from the photo-shoot at RAPTOR, Inc. back in autumn. For more close-ups of the beautiful raptors Matty and I photographed that day, click here. As always, artists can feel free to use these photos as reference shots. It's so hard to get close-up references of falcons in the wild. Going to a RAPTOR, Inc. event lets you study the birds and learn their subtleties. I would never have been able to study the notch in the beak if I had not seen this bird up close.

A Long-eared Owl in his winter roost...

Yesterday at 4:00 p.m. I headed up to the Caesar Creek area with my birding and turtling friend, Paul Krusling, to look for a Long-eared Owl that is wintering in our area. Paul had seen the owl with his family the previous weekend and offered to go up and help me find what would become my next life bird...

A Long-eared Owl roosts in a tangle of cedar branches near Caesar Creek State Park.

If you pick up a book and read anything about Long-eared Owls, you'll probably come across the word "secretive." I've seen the word in almost every description of the bird I've ever read, and I often wondered about that. What owl isn't secretive? Well...after seeing the bird in person, I now understand. He was nestled so deep in a tangle of cedar branches if I wasn't looking in a specific place, I would never have seen him. To photograph him I had to shoot through several trees and many branches. I'm surprised he's visible at all. Thank goodness for telephoto lenses and the crop tool!

Warm caramels, rich browns, deep blacks, and pale buffs all come together to create a stunning bird, and even though a Long-eared Owl is a formidable raptor that kills its prey by biting the back of their skulls, "pretty" is the word that kept coming to mind as I watched at him through the camera lens. His colors and patterns are beautiful...and pretty...

When nervous or wary, a Long-eared Owl will pull in and compress his feathers to make his body look taller and thinner. When you combine the thinner cylindrical shape with the cryptic colors of his feathers, he looks like a limb! The very large tufts of feathers on his head add to the illusion by making him look like a broken-off limb.

Not just Long-eared Owls compress their feathers when nervous, but this was the first owl I've ever seen do it. Because he appeared so thin, we immediately left the area by his roost and climbed higher on the hill so we could look down on him from a distance. Through the binocs and the camera lens, we could watch him relax, and it didn't take long for him to puff back out to a plump, little owl!

...he's already getting a little puffier here. Right after I took this photo he regurgitated a pellet. I wish I had been videoing him. It was effortless the way he coughed it up...nothing like a cat hacking up a hairball!

...and finally within minutes he became a puffball with sleepy eyes. We left, going wide so he would not be disturbed.

Even though Long-eared Owls often roost communally in winter, ours was a solo-owl. If others were about, they were really camouflaged! What an incredible experience. This was a life bird for me, and one I probably won't see again any time soon...

Beak Bit

Every now and then I post "Beak Bits," which are tiny bite-sized bits of bird science. I started doing these a couple of years ago when my cousin's little girl started reading my blog. Anna has become quite the birder and recently did a science project on backyard birds! Yeah! We've added another bird-lover to our ranks. Hi Anna! This Beak Bit is for you...

The long "ears" on a Long-eared Owl are not ears at all. They are feather tufts that have nothing to do with hearing. The long tufts help provide camouflage for the owl by breaking up its shape and helping it imitate a broken branch. The Long-eared Owl's "real" ears are hidden under feathers and are located inside its facial disk. Since Long-eared Owls are strictly nocturnal and do their hunting in the dark, they have to hear very well. The owl's facial disk funnels sound to the owls ears, which are located behind the eyes and are asymmetrical. The left ear opening is higher than the right, which helps the owl narrow in on mice running in a field.

A male Golden-crowned Kinglet displays his orange crest!

While walking along the Little Miami River, I heard the high-pitched see-see-seeing of a Golden-crowned Kinglet. It didn't take me long to find a little female flitting from branch to branch looking for something to eat. She was fairly high in the tree, so I did a little pishing to see if she would come in a little closer. She was very curious of the sound and dropped right down! While I had my camera lens trained on her, a male popped into the frame. "Whoa!" raced through my mind as I watched him raising his "tangerine beret" for all he was worth. His orange crest was brilliant, and I paused to watch. Mistake. He was out of focus in flash and flitting here, there and everywhere...

(If you're not familiar with "pishing" in a bird, check out Mike's post on 10,000 Birds, "The Fine Art of Pishing," for a description! :-)

A female Golden-crowned Kinglet on the left was more interested in my pishing sounds than the male's incredible territorial display of his orange crest, which normally stays hidden among yellow feathers.

The male quickly got used to my pishing sounds and decided nothing was amiss. His tangerine feathers instantly settled back down among the yellow...all but hidden from sight.

...the little female Golden-crowned Kinglet was very curious about the pishing sounds and hung around a little longer.

Luckily she turned around to give us a perfect view of her golden crown.

...but mostly she stayed safely tucked behind a tangle of branches—a special talent kinglets have!

...yes, I see you!

The Little Miami River at the abandoned Peter's Cartridge Factory is an ideal place to find Golden-crowned Kinglets. In the winter, bike traffic is low, so the trail is quiet, and the Golden-crowned's high-pitched calls carry through the trees effortlessly, making it easy to spot the little balls of fluff. I see them almost every time I walk the trail in winter.

Beak Bit

Golden-crowned Kinglets are tiny birds. The only bird in our eastern woods smaller is the Ruby-throated Hummingbird...and to top that off, Golden-crowned Kinglets can be found here all year! It's amazing these birds stay through the winter because they are insect eaters. Kinglets will eat a few grass seeds and elderberries, and they sip from sap wells created by sapsuckers, but they prefer insects. During the winter, they survive by devouring the insect larva and eggs hidden in crevices in bark, branch tips, and dried leaves. This provides a valuable service to us, because by eliminating the eggs and larva in the winter, kinglets help control plant-eating insect populations in the summer. In "Birds of Forest, Yard, & Thicket," by John Eastman (a book I've had for a long time and always enjoy reading, plus it's the source of this information), Eastman writes:

"They consume an abundance of tiny springtails (Collembola) and many bark hibernators—pine and spruce aphids, psyllids, fly larvae, and scale insects—plus eggs of aphids and other insects. Such a diet, researchers believe, provides the major winter sustenance of north-wintering golden crowns..."

Acadian Flycatcher along the Little Miami River

…along with Angry Birds and Disappearing Cardinals, Friday’s walk along the Little Miami brought in close-up views of an Acadian Flycatcher (Empidonax virescens). He’s not the flashiest of all the spring migrants along the river, but he is fun to watch as he flies out to hawk insects…and he is noisy too. He didn’t shout out his “peet-sa” call at all while I photographed him, but he had been singing shortly before I found him sitting on a branch overhanging the trail...looking for something to eat...

I always hear these little birds before I see them.

The standard mnemonics for his call is a quick "Peet-sa" (click here for a link to the call).

...his pinkish, yellowish lower mandible is so cute...

...upper mandible is dark...

...I'm not sure, but this might be a Stink Eye.

The Acadian Flycatcher is a riparian corridor bird of Ohio (click here for details),

and one of the best indicator species of riparian quality.

...a glimpse of his broad, flat bill. For the size of his little head, he really does have a big mouth!

It must make catching insects mid-air easier...

For an earlier post with a little more info on the Acadian Flycatcher, click here.

Beak Bit

A riparian corridor is a mature woodland growing along a river or stream. With the Little Miami, this forested river corridor offers an unbroken stretch of woodland (which gets harder and harder to find) offering ideal habitat for the woodland warblers and spring migrants. Since the Acadian Flycatcher is one of the best "indicator species" of riparian quality, I'm always happy to hear his happy call. If the Acadian Flycatcher is living along its banks, the Little Miami river corridor is doing well and is free of pollution!

For more information on indicator species, click here.

For more information on riparian corridor birds of Ohio rivers, click here.

For more information on riparian corridors or a riparian zone, click here.

Two Cooper's Hawks square off in our half-dead weeping willow tree...

Tuesday, as I got out of the car with groceries in hand, I heard strange hawk sounds coming from the backyard so I ducked out of the garage to have a look. Two Cooper's Hawks were fighting over the prime viewing branch in our great big beautiful half-dead weeping willow tree. "Oh my gosh...I've got to get this" was going through my mind, so I quickly carefully/gently (sort of) dropped the grocery bags on the driveway and dashed inside to get the camera. I shot through the kitchen window and caught the end of the fight. It's the first time I've ever seen two hawks fighting over the branch, but not the first time I've seen two hawks in the tree at the same time. I've often seen an adult and juvenile Cooper's Hawk perched on different branches, and once a Red-shouldered Hawk joined them without any squabbles. This time the juvenile was challenging the adult for "the branch," but she didn't dislodge the adult...he remained king, showing off a few awesome threat displays and not budging when she directly attacked him.

"I'm bigger than you, kid. Beat it."

"Reiteration...bigger, badder, meaner, smarter. Beat it!"

"Actually, pops, I'm bigger." Glare.

Attack!

...another "Art of the Flying Fan Dance" shot (remember the first one?).

"Uh huh...that's what I thought..."

...slyly checking to make sure the interloper was loping away.

King for another day...

Beak Bit
Larry of The Birder's Report let me know he was just reading about Cooper's Hawks and discovered their eye color can be an indicator of their age. Larry wrote, quoting "Birds of North America Online," the eyes are:

"bluish-gray in fledglings, increasingly replaced by yellow in immatures. In brief, yellow or light orange in yearlings, shifting progressively to darker shades of orange and red with age, males averaging darker than females of the same age, and detectable change ceasing at about 5 yr of age."

So our king of the perch may only be a yearling or an older brother of the immature female. Since the younger bird was already larger than the older hawk, I decided she was a female since female hawks are usually larger than the males of the species.

Sweet little Sanderlings chasing the waves...

Birding Longboat Key, Florida

…continued from yesterday’s eaglet post.
From the eagle’s nest, we headed over to the ocean and immediately found a little flock of Sanderlings foraging for their breakfast in the receding waves. The sun was still low on the horizon, so the morning light stretching down the beach was soft and rosy and made these little birds glow against the dark, wet sand.

Probing the sand for invertebrates washed in with the surf, this little fellow soon nabbed a tiny mollusk as the waves retreated.

Sanderlings certainly work for a living by constantly running away from the waves as they roll in and then chasing them back to the sea as they roll out. Who can resist those little black feet as they pad along in quick motion?? They are just so cute! Several of my guides mention that Sanderlings are the only sandpipers that lack a hind toe. This photo clearly shows, no back toes on those feet!

The soft morning light highlighted his reflection as the water skimmed back to the ocean's edge. One of my favorite German words, "spiegelglatt" (mirror smooth), fits perfectly.

A very efficient Sanderling, this guy plucked tidbits from the sand every time the waves retreated.

What a cute mug. I don't know why, but he makes me think of a sad little puppy with a wet, black nose!

Beak Bit

These little guys may be cute, but they are powerhouses too, flying up to 8,000 miles to return to their breeding grounds in the Arctic. During the winter, they spread out all over the globe, spending time on sandy beaches on almost every continent in the world! ....and this is interesting....I read on Cornell's Birds of North America Online site, that Sanderlings regurgitate pellets made up of a mixture of sand with crushed crustacean and mollusk shells. Cool! When I was watching them pluck those little mollusks from the sand and swallow them whole I wondered what happened to the shell...

...this one's not cute...

A friend mentioned that I only show cute birds doing cute things on the blog and wondered if I ever photographed non-cute birds doing non-cute things.....

...well, as a matter of fact, I do.

...it's just that I usually don't post the non-cute acts. I did post a Red-shouldered Hawk eating a vole last January after Matty spotted him, but usually, the gruesome shots stay tucked in the archives. I photographed this guy in my backyard last week and decided to post him. After all, a hawk has to do what a hawk has to do to survive, and this guy was doing it very well. I was amazed at how quickly and efficiently he plucked through the bird's feathers.

After clearing the feathers, he ripped through the skin.

Hawks are definitely not cute. They are magnificent...fearsome....beautiful...but not cute.

Beak Bit

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Bird's site explains that Cooper's Hawks kill birds by squeezing them to death with their feet, not biting into the bird until it's dead. They also list that Cooper's Hawks have been known to drown birds before eating them too...

To see bird photography from all over the world, visit:

What a face…what a face…(or beauty "in" the beast)

Our winter starlings have started visiting our feeders. (Oh, boy...right?) Actually, it's quite exciting when a flock descends on the yard. Hundreds and hundreds of birds swirl about squawking, scolding, and fighting...tree branches drip with the little feathered beasts, and I can hear them tapping across the gutters and on the roof. They bring in a lot of energy. Unfortunately, they eat up a lot of sunflower seeds, and they wreak havoc on the less rowdy birds that usually hang out. We have starlings year round, but they only become a nuisance during the winter when the ground is frozen. During the spring, summer and fall they keep to the ground, using their sharp bills to dig in the yard and root out grubs. They only get a little "beastly" during the winter...

I'm back, so you better get used to me!

When you step back from the “ucky stuff” they do, European Starlings are striking. Up close you can see their beauty, and they actually do a lot of good on the insect front. Invertebrates are their primary food source, and when bugs are available, European Starlings really do prefer Japanese Beetles to sunflower seeds...

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful...

Grumpy, Grumpier...and Grumpiest
There are no Japanese Beetles in winter, and the June Bug grubs have burrowed beneath the frost line, so what's a starling to do? Be grumpy...and eat all of the sunflower seeds!

When the sun highlights their iridescent colors, they really are eye catching, but unless you look closely, you might not see it. Additionally, in the winter, their feathers are fresh and new, which adds a beautiful speckled pattern. By summer the speckling has worn off... 

...another bit of beauty starlings add to the world is their incredible winged ballet. A huge night-time starling roost is about a mile from our house, so in the early evenings of winter, we get to witness this spectacle…swirls and turns, a giant black cloud that moves at incredible angles quickly and without pattern...it makes me stop and stare every time I see it. Click here for a video from England that shows an example of this incredible sight. Click here for a post titled "How do Starling Flocks Create Those Mesmerizing Murmurations?" on Cornell's Round Robin blog by Andrea Alfano detailing these murmurations.

...so while the ground remains frozen and covered with snow, we will probably always be a daytime roost for one of the flocks of starlings from our neighborhood night-time roost. 

I always try to remember that with the bad comes the good. We don't use pesticides on our lawn, so in the summer, starlings go to work for us. They are great at aerating the soil by digging up White Grubs (the larval stage of "June Bugs"), Sod Webworms, and other juicy invertebrates, which helps keep our lawn healthy.  The US Department of Agriculture's Farmer's Bulletin (1928) No1571 reports, "The starling is one of the most effective bird enemies of terrestrial insect pests in this country. More than half (57 percent) of the annual food of the adult starling consists of animal matter, including insects, millipedes, spiders, mollusks, a few crustaceans, and bits of suet and carrion." For more on the diet of the European Starling, click here. To learn more about night-time roosts and starling behavior, click here.

Happy Birding!
     Kelly

365 days later Ol' Blue is stealing peanuts from Red...and is still trying to get me to rename the blog...

…and that’s just fine because he’s fun to watch, and really he’s just doing his job. After all, Ol' Blue is a bird set up for seed dispersal. He has a built-in carrying case called a gular pouch located under his tongue. This expandable sac extends down into his throat as far as the upper esophagus. Blue’s gular pouch gets quite a workout around our house! As soon as I stock the peanut feeder the Blue Jays start arriving. One, two, three…sometimes up to 15 at a time will perch in the big Ash Tree and take turns swooping in for a peanut, often returning to their original perch to hatch out the peanut and slip it into their gular pouches. It’s fun to watch their throats grow!

Blue sitting in our Ash Tree with his first peanut of the morning.

...he hammers away on the shell...

...eventually grabbing the peanut...

...and slipping it into his gular pouch.

In late summer and early autumn Blue Jays and other birds start hoarding acorns and other seeds/nuts in winter caches. By storing their food, they can survive harsh winter conditions when normal food sources freeze over or run out. (Click here for an earlier post on this subject.) Blue Jays play a critical role in acorn dispersal. When they cache their food, they often dig small holes and bury the acorns, and according to Cornell’s site, All About Birds, Blue Jays store a lot of acorns! In one study, six birds with radio transmitters each stored 3,000 – 5,000 acorns in one season! Not all of the seeds or acorns are retrieved, however, and those that are abandoned often germinate. For this reason, Cornell also mentions Blue Jays were responsible for repopulating areas with oak trees after the last glaciers retreated.

Trip 2, flying in for another peanut after hatching out the first one.

...trip 3...

...trip 4. Rarely do they take just one peanut and move on. They usually return to their same perch to open the shell and store the peanut in their gular pouch before returning to nab another.

How many acorns can a Blue Jay move at once? A lot! A Blue Jay can move up to five acorns at a time—2 or 3 in the gular sac, one in the mouth and the last one at the tip of his bill. I’ve seen Blue Jays hatch out and swallow 8 or 9 single peanuts before moving on. I’ve also seen them swallow a hole peanut shell into their gular sacs…then take another in their mouth….and another in the tip of their bill, but usually, they hatch the peanuts out of the shell and take those.

Blue Jays harvest several thousand acorns each fall 

and bury them in the ground. Any acorns the Blue Jays 

don’t eat sprout into saplings, so squirrels aren’t 

the only ones important to seed dispersal.

So after a year of blogging (my first post was January 3, 2009), Blue is still trying to get me to rename the blog “Blue and the Peanut” (click here for that early post), but I don’t think Red has anything to worry about! I have had so much fun over this past year. I had no idea I would meet so many other birders and bird bloggers. I’m so happy to be part of a community of bird and nature lovers. Thank you for always dropping by to visit and leave a comment or two. (...he's still at it...click here.)

Beak Bit
I wondered how many other birds had gular pouches. Quite a few do, some of the most famous are the pelicans. I love watching them scoop fish into their pouch and carry them off in their big pouches. The frigate birds also have a famous gular pouch, inflating the well-knows red skin during courtship displays in the spring. Other birds with less conspicuous pouches are White-winged Crossbills and Ptarmigans. The gular pouch allows these northern species to store food to make it through the arctic nights or bad snow storms (click for more info). Local birds with gular pouches include, owls. If you’ve ever seen a Great Horned Owl hooting, you’ll see the white feathers under his bill poof out…that’s his gular pouch. Cormorants have visible gular pouches also (click for more info)…just to name a few...