Right before we got out of the woods after we banded the Great Grays, I spotted a pile of poop which I was immediately able to ID as moose poop, although I've never seen a moose or its poop before. The bird bander verified that I was indeed correct in my ID and he was very impressed. (g) That is as close to seeing a whole moose as I got on this trip. Many moose poop sightings later I was still mooseless at the end of my vacation. Maybe next time.
We drove some distance away to the woods where the bander had put up a nesting box and a Saw Whet Owl couple had taken up residence. We had an even more terrible time getting to this box than we did trying to get the Great Grays' nest. There were little inchworm type worms dangling from threads all over the place and we were all covered with them. Ick. They kept getting squished on us. When we finally arrived at the nest box the bander climbed a ladder that he had lugged in and started removing the nestlings one by one. There were no adults in sight. He carefully placed them in a pouch he had brought along for the purpose and lowered them to someone on the ground. After he had climbed down he removed the first one. It was the largest of the 5 babies and was ready to fledge. It immediately flapped from his grasp and fluttered into a swampy area a few feet away from where we were standing and landed with a splash in the swamp water. I was horrified, expecting to see it disappear into the water before my eyes, however, it had landed in only about an inch of water and only got its feet wet. I was ready to plunge in after it, but the bander beat me to it. Everyone was very relieved to see that it was OK.
We set them all up on a branch and there they all stayed, blinking at us while we took photos of them. They looked just like five little stair steps as each one was slightly smaller than its sibling. I believe they hatch out on different days. The smallest was about half the size of its oldest sibling and was so tiny it had to keep using its beak and flapping its wings to steady itself on the branch. Several of them dozed off while they were waiting to get banded. I can't get over how tame they all were. The bander told us to be careful not to hold them so their tails were aimed at our bodies because they can squirt out a foul smelling spray that would stink up our clothing for the rest of the day and he didn't want to ride with us if that happened. We were careful and no one got sprayed. Hard to believe something so cute could emit something so foul. When he was done banding them all, he carefully returned them all to the nest box. The oldest did not want to return. He kept trying to get back out. I'm sure he fledged the next day at the latest, if he didn't hop out after we left. He was more than ready. Mama and Papa never did show. They were so adorable with their bushy white eyebrows and tiny white handlebar moustaches contrasting against their serious little brown faces. And their big round eyes will just melt you all to pieces. I certainly had a cuteness overload for that day! I was sure I had died and been fortunate enough to go to heaven.
I never dreamed I would ever get to hold a wild bird that wasn't hurt or sick. Life just keeps getting better and better! We were also to have seen a Short-eared Owls nest that had already had the babies banded the day before, but it had been destroyed by a storm and a fox during the night and all the babies were killed. They like to nest in stubble fields and the farmer had plowed the field leaving the nest exposed to the elements. What a rude ending to my cute little owl day. I guess Mother Nature doesn't always hold with happy endings.
The bander told us lots of very interesting information. For instance, he has been asked to collect the owl pellets from the nests of the birds he bands and dry them out and send them to someone who is doing a rodent study at Drumheller. After the pellets dry out he sends them to this person and they figure out what kind of rodent bones are in the pellets. He said that from one of the pellets he sent them from a Saw Whets nest they discovered some type of lemming bones from a lemming that they had previously thought never went into that area. The nearest record of it before he sent in his pellet, was 300 miles away. I thought that was kinda neat that without ever leaving their lab, they can get all this info from all over the place and make new discoveries. Those scientists have it real tough. The Saw Whets nest that we went to had a large "pad" of sawdust and pellets. The bander said it really stank. He was going to come back later with fresh sawdust for them and he would remove the pellets and the old sawdust and replace with fresh dust. I saw his garage. It is full of feathers, mice cages (he has real fancy setups for his mice), bones and stinky pellets drying all over the shelves in his garage. He goes around to schools in the area and gives lectures on banding. He was leaving the next day to go down south to band Ferruginous Hawks and Golden Eagles. We were fortunate to catch him before he left. The rest of the birding was kinda anticlimactic.
The Alberta mosquitoes could whip the Florida mosquitoes hands down. I had to use DEET for the first time ever. It really does work, but mercy, my hands got stuck on my binoculars, the car dashboard and it ate my nail polish off. I hope it does not cause skin cancer. We spent part of one day at the Ellis Bird Farm near my parents house. This is land that Union Carbide has maintained as a preserve, no doubt in exchange for polluting some other parcel of land. There are over 300 Bluebird houses and other bird houses on the property. A little teahouse is there and you can watch the birds at the feeders while you are having tea. They have very quaintly landscaped for birds and butterflies. They have 20-30 Bluebird nestboxes on display that people have built and sent to them from all over the countryside. They have a plaque beside each one saying who sent it and where they are from. Interesting to see the different styles of houses. Abbie, there was one from a guy in Maryland - a Jack Davis- do you know him? We saw a Great Horned Owl up in a treetop being mobbed by a pack of crows. I did get 6 lifers on the trip. Besides the owls there were Franklin's Gull, California Gulls, Brewer's Blackbirds, Goshawk and a Tennessee Warbler. The bird bander and his wife almost laughed us out of the car when they heard that we were excited about seeing the gulls. Of course, "I" laughed when I called the RBA there and heard that everyone was rushing to see a Black-throated Blue Warbler, a Wood Duck and a Great-crested Flycatcher. One mans trash bird is another mans lifer. Chuck and I wandered around below the tree that the Goshawk was in for quite awhile, making sure that we had a correct ID. We were so engrossed in trying to ID it that neither one of us thought to take a photo of it. It was so close to us too! I hate it when I do that.
We spent one day at Drumheller, which is a place where they are digging up dinosaur bones. There is a huge, interesting museum there with tons of bones and other things in it. We lost one of my aunts there and didn't find her for over an hour. It is called the Royal Tyrell Museum and is well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. You can actually watch scientists working on bones they have just dug up in the area. And that's how I spent my summer vacation.
The end. Cheri/FL
Copyright © 1997 by Cheri Pierce
and Richard L. Becker
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