Orion's Story

I've spent a lot of nights this past week outside listening for owls (see previous post). While I haven't heard much, I have been able to enjoy the beautiful night sky. Readers of this blog are aware that I'm pretty passionate about the science and natural history side of nature, but I secretly also love the stories, and one of my favorite sources for awesome stories is in the constellations. Orion, for example, has been particularly prominent these past few nights.

The Orion constellation is one of the most easily recognized and prominent in the winter night sky. Three particularly bright stars located very close to each other, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, make Orion's belt. Above and below the belt are two pairs of very bright stars, making Orion's shoulders and knees. Orion's left shoulder is the star Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetle juice"), which glows reddish-orange. Betelgeuse is one of the largest visible objects in the night sky, with a diameter larger than the orbit of Mars! In contrast Rigel, the star of Orion's right knee is the brightest in the constellation, giving off a blue-white glow.

At Wolf Ridge, there is one story about Orion in our Star Lab (inflatable planetarium) lesson plan. As I've read and researched more about the protagonist, I can find no other accounts of this particular story. Nonetheless, it's one of my favorites, so I will share it here. Maybe in a future blog post, I'll share other stories of this constellation that I've found elsewhere.

Orion was a strong, very good looking hunter, who enjoyed to hunt for nocturnal critters. At day, he would rest under a tree in the woods and at night, he was out hunting. While hunting, he ended up catching the eye of an admirer: Artemis, the goddess of the moon. Artemis' job was to drive a chariot, pulling the moon across the sky each night and every night, she would watch Orion, longing to join him. One night, she petitioned her father, Zeus, for the chance to go meet Orion. Zeus, truly nervous at the thought of his daughter, grown as she may be, wanting to go meet a man, insisted that she had a job to do, thus she was not allowed to go meet Orion.

However, every night, Artemis' longing grew stronger until, eventually, she took matters into her own hands, parking the chariot with the moon in the middle of the sky. She went down to the earth and met Orion; of course, it was love at first sight. Orion and Artemis began to spend lots of time together as Orion taught Artemis how to hunt and Artemis taught Orion the ways of the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus.

Zeus, thoroughly upset by this developing romance, decided that he needed to make it stop, by removing Orion from the picture entirely. He recruited Scorpio the scorpion to take care of Orion, but Zeus required the assassin to make it look like an accident so that he would remain blameless in his daughter's eyes. The scorpion found Orion and Artemis, napping under Orion's favorite tree. Sneaking up on the great hunter, it only took one sting to kill him. Artemis, waking immediately, realized what had happened and, in her anguish, grabbed the scorpion by the tail and flung him into the sky.

To honor Orion, Artemis took his body and placed it in the night sky, where she could be with him every night. She was very intentional about the placement, though, because she didn't want Orion to ever have to face the scorpion again. So, as the constellation of Orion rises in the east, the constellation of Scorpius sets in the west. Zeus, realizing the sadness he had caused his daughter, decided to allow Orion to remain in the night sky and that is where he and Artemis spend every night together to this very day.

Listening for Owls

My latest owl sighting, another great gray owl on Highway 6 on March 10; although, all credit for spotting this relatively small guy goes to my sister, Katy, who was up visiting with my mom for the weekend. 

On Thursday, I drove out to Isabella and met up with a birder named Steve, a retired forest service and DNR employee. For the past 20+ years, he has been conducting owl surveys in Isabella and I wanted to join him for a night to see what the process was like and maybe begin similar survey work at Wolf Ridge. The survey is conducted by listening for owls.

Owls are the most vocally-inclined family of raptors, some species producing more than a dozen different types of calls. The most prominent of these calls is the male's advertisement, used to proclaim ownership of a given territory. In addition to territoriality, various owl calls are used when owls are indicating fright, threatening an enemy, summoning a partner, begging for food, preening a mate, copulating, or transferring prey. The calls are unique to each species; in fact, it was the difference in calls that caused ornithologists to recognize the Eastern and Western screech owls as two separate species in 1983.



In addition to the varying calls of the different species, each individual owl has a uniquely recognizable voice. Researchers have recently started to use sonogram technology to identify different owl individuals, which opens up tons of research possibilities; for example, some researchers are now studying lifespan and length of territory occupancy in barred owl individuals.

Captive male barred owl at the Raptor Center in St. Paul, November 2012

Most owls sing at night, beginning around dusk. It had just gotten dark when Steve and I reached the beginning of the route we were planning to survey. We got out of the car and silently listened for three minutes for the sounds of any owl calls. Hearing none, we got back into the car, drove about 3/4 of a mile, got out and listened for three more minutes. This distance is determined by the fact that the quietest owl calls, those of the Northern saw-whet owls, can only carry 3/4 of a mile in good conditions; conversely, great-horned owl calls can be heard up to three miles away. This was the basic process, and this is what we did for the next four hours. It was certainly tough at times, mind-numbingly repetitive. Also cold. But at least it was a beautifully clear night and I was able to do some star-gazing to compensate for the complete silence of the owls.

Steve was surprised that we didn't hear any owls. The owl calling usually begins around the middle of March and will persist through May. Some owls will continue to sing even as they are incubating eggs, and occasionally even after the chicks have been born. On the other end of the spectrum, boreal owls will cease singing as soon as they find a mate. Steve was particularly hoping to hear some boreal owls during our survey (theoretically, there should be more around than usual because of the irruption); if we had heard one, we would have strapped on some snowshoes and gone searching for its nest, as it might be the only time that owl advertises its location vocally. In fact, Steve was so excited about hearing a boreal owl that we ended up driving more than ten miles down an unplowed road to a location where a resident pair has nested for many years. At one point, we had to shovel his truck out of a snowbank, and still heard nothing to reward our efforts.

Boreal owl seen at the Kohlstedt family bird feeder, early February 2013 (photo: John Kohlstedt)

Despite our coming up empty, I know we'll start hearing owls eventually. Owls are famous for being noisy and persistent. One Swedish great gray owl was recorded for four hours every night, repeating his hooting sequence no less than 310 times. A Western screech owl in Washington was recorded calling for two hours straight every night (at 8 calls a minute, that's 960 calls a night!) Boreal owls in the Western U.S. typically call for 2-3 hours straight, rarely pausing in between. Owl calls are also infectious: it isn't uncommon to hear multiple species calling in the same area. There are even five species in which the male and female are known to sing duets together.

Since Thursday night, I've done a little bit of listening at Wolf Ridge (and also amplifying different calls  from my iPod to see if that triggers a response). Still nothing, but I'm hopeful that as the weather warms and spring quickly approaches, it won't be long before I'm listening to the calls of the owls every night.

Raven Enrichment

(I apologize that the videos in this post are such low quality. I can't upload gigantic video files into blogger, so this is the best I can do).

I've posted a couple times about Korppi, our captive raven, and how she's a pretty smart bird (biggest brain in the bird world).  Since Korppi has this large brain, our daily challenge as animal caretakers is to keep her brain engaged. Furthermore, since she is living in a small enclosure instead of in the great outdoors, we need to keep her body active. We've been creating tons of daily enrichment activities for her, constantly assessing to see if the enrichment is keeping her occupied and appearing to be challenging to some degree. Her enrichment comes in the form of a multitude of different activities that encourage a healthy body and mind, but generally fall into four larger categories: 

-Foraging enrichment is creating a situation where Korppi has to work to obtain her food. This is especially important because ravens are scavengers in the wild, meaning they are always searching and working to obtain their food. For Korppi, we might hide peanuts around her enclosure, put raisins in the branches of her tree, bury a hard-boiled egg in the snow, put crickets in a plastic container with one small opening, or put live minnows in her pool of water. In all cases, she has to do some level of work to find and/or obtain her food, just like she would in the wild.

For this foraging enrichment, we gave Korppi three pinecones with peanut-butter and raisins in them. They are a relatively new item to her, so she is treating them with great caution. When ravens approach a potential food source in the wild, they have to ensure that it is dead, so they often will approach and then fly back quickly, as she demonstrates here, until they gain more confidence.

-Sensory enrichment is anything that engages Korppi’s senses of vision, hearing, smell, or taste. In other words, we are constantly putting novel stimuli in her enclosure to mimic the fact that she would always be encountering new things in the wild. This might include hanging a colorful toy from a perch, playing frog call sounds on a CD player, or adding interesting spices to her food.

For this sensory enrichment, we put a cake pan, a novel item, in Korppi's enclosure. The pan would initially be visual enrichment as it is new and shiny and if she eventually approached it, could be aural enrichment, as it makes loud noises when dropped, moved, and pecked at with a raven beak. In this video, Korppi is constantly moving around her enclosure, looking at the cake pan from all different angles. Eventually, she must have approached it, because when I returned later that day, it had shifted positions.

-Manipulanda enrichment is anything that Korppi can manipulate or “play with,” that will specifically challenge her motor skills. This represents the effort that is oftentimes required for ravens to obtain food in the wild. This might include giving her a phonebook to tear apart, hiding food inside a paper bag filled with newspaper strips, or putting treats inside of an old mayonnaise container that she has to figure out how to open up.

This is one of our favorite manipulation enrichment activities: half of an egg carton with peanuts punctured into it hanging from a perch. There are multiple steps that Korppi has to figure out how to maneuver: getting the carton up to her perch, getting the peanuts out of the carton, and then getting the peanuts out of the shells.

-Training involves working with a human and performing certain actions to earn positive reinforcement (in this case, raisins, mealworms, peanuts, etc). I wrote a little bit about training in a previous blog post (http://miskwaadesi.blogspot.com/2012/12/training-korppi.html). When Erin and I first started training Korppi, our main objective was simply to get her comfortable with humans (specifically us) and teach her to correlate humans with positive experiences. This primarily involved giving her lots of treats for coming closer and closer to us. As Korppi learned to trust us, we began to train her to do more complex activities, which has included perching on various perches in the enclosure, flying to perch on our arms, or staying in one spot while we enter and leave her enclosure. Training is an important part of Korppi’s daily enrichment because she is constantly trying to figure out what we want, how she can earn a treat, and we are able to positively reinforce behaviors that will help Korppi to be a more successful education animal.

I have been trying to incorporate students into the creation of Korppi's daily enrichment activities when I teach our birds class. I explain a little bit about Korppi's story and the necessity of enrichment to the students and then ask them what activity we should make for her. The kids always come up with great ideas. For example, one class had me take three identical containers into her enclosure and show her that I was putting apple slices into one of them. Then I mixed up the containers to see if Korppi would remember and go for the one with the apple slices first. She didn't, but he look of wonder on that class of eighth graders’ faces as Korppi figured out how to get the apple slices out of a closed yogurt container was just one more demonstration to me of how many great lessons this education animal can teach us all.

The Northern Goshawk

While driving home from work today, a bird flew across the Wolf Ridge driveway. It's coloration and flight pattern were unfamiliar to me (and I've become pretty familiar with our resident, winter birds). Based on size and wing flaps, I quickly hypothesized that this was a Norther goshawk. There have been a few potential goshawk sightings in the past month, which is what motivated my theory. It's pretty fitting because tomorrow, I'll be assisting with our first round of goshawk surveys, an annual survey that takes place all across Northern Minnesota. Wolf Ridge has participated in various capacities over the years, but the DNR is especially encouraging wide-spread participation this year because of fear of a declining population.

A Northern goshawk in flight.

The Northern goshawk is the largest of the North American accipiters, a family of hawks that are best identified by their distinctive flight pattern: flap-flap-flap-glide. Other accipiters include the cooper's hawk and the sharp-shinned hawk. The name "goshawk" originated as a shortening of its colloquial name, the "goose hawk" (or sometimes "grouse hawk"). When used in falconry, goshawks were famous for their ability to hunt larger birds, sometimes as big as cranes.

The first part of the goshawk survey involves simply identifying if goshawks are present at Wolf Ridge. Tomorrow, Tom and I will hike an area where sightings have happened in the past with a megaphone connected to an ipod in hand. We'll project a goshawk call through the woods to see if we can get the attention of any resident goshawks. If we do identify the presence of goshawks, we will then be searching for a nest, a task for which we will don helmets to protect ourselves from attacking raptors, as goshawks are known for their fierce protection of nests. If a nest is identified, we will closely monitor the nest while keeping a respectful distance so as not to disturb the birds.

A juvenile Northern goshawk (left) with brown plumage next to an adult (right) in gray.

We'll be able to identify adult Northern goshawks by their silver-gray back, fine-gray barring on the front, and distinctive stripe of white just above the eye. As an accipiter, it has short, broad wings, which help it to maneuver through dense woodlands when ambushing prey, typically large birds, squirrels, rabbits, and hares. Minnesota goshawks rely primarily on ruffed grouse and snowshoe hare for food. Northern goshawks are known to be quite persistent when it comes to hunting prey: there is an account of one goshawk following a snowshoe hare for more than 45 minutes before the hare finally came out into a clearing where it was immediately grabbed by its pursuant.

In the 19th century, goshawks in the United Kingdom and Ireland were almost entirely wiped out, having been targeted by gamekeepers. Thanks to a concerted effort, the European populations have since bounced back. Goshawk populations don't seem to be as affected negatively by chemical pesticide poisoning as other bird species. Today, the biggest threat to goshawk populations, both locally and internationally, is habitat loss. They rely on forests and woodlands for hunting and nesting, a habitat we humans are continuously destroying. There have been multiple efforts in the past to get the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list this bird as "endangered" or "threatened" because of damage to nesting territory, old growth and mature forests. While not successful, these efforts motivated the implementation of a number of goshawk surveys nationwide, including the one that I will be partaking in this spring.

February Bird Count

All of the most intense birders (and many less intense birders too) keep what's called a "life list" - a list of all the bird species they've seen in the wild in their lifetime. I have not yet sat down and written out my life list. I have experimented with a number of different formats that I'd like to record my birding observations, but none have yet stuck. Nonetheless, I am aware of what bird species I have and haven't observed since I started paying attention to birds in the first place (which, by the way, was in vertebrate biology class, senior year at St. Olaf).

This month has been a good one for my life list. Four of the six species I observed were "lifer" birds for me. Yes, I only observed six new species this month for my 2013 bird count: the two owls I already wrote about and four birds at Sax-Zim Bog, the premier birding spot in Minnesota. New birds for my "life list" will be indicated with an (L).

2/5/13:
15. Boreal Owl (L): Wolf Ridge, chickadee landing (see previous blog entry)

Wolf Ridge's boreal owl, checking me out through the branches

2/12/13:
16. Great Gray Owl (L): Silver Bay, MN, 4 miles west of the Lax Lake Rd. Forest Rd. 11 intersection (see previous blog entry)

Another Great Gray Owl we saw on our drive home from Sax-Zim Bog on the 23rd

2/23/13: Peter, our resident birding expert, took Robyn, Nikki, Anne, Tom, and me on a birding field trip to Sax-Zim Bog. People travel here from all over the world for the birds (we met birders from California and Florida during our trip). In addition to the four species listed below, we saw a ton of birds that we commonly see right out our backdoor in Finland. The fact that people travel from all over the world to this spot to see birds that are common for us was kind of an exciting realization of just how awesome we have it, bird-wise, at Wolf Ridge in the winter. We also experienced a crazy person yelling at us about trespassing, threatening to call the police, and making us fear for our lives as he reached into his car to grab what we thought was going to be a shotgun (it was his cell-phone), but that's an entirely different tale.
17. Gray Jay: Sax-Zim Bog, Admiral Road feeder station
18. Boreal Chickadee (L): Sax-Zim Bog, Admiral Road feeder station

A little smaller than the much more common black-capped chickadees, with a lighter head and brown sides.

19. Brown Creeper: Sax-Zim Bog, Admiral Road feeder station

A beautiful bird with great camouflage, famous for its behavior of climbing up the sides of tree trunks.

20. Hoary Redpoll (L): Sax-Zim Bog, Owl Road feeder station (probably would not have been able to identify this one if another birder hadn't been there to help us see the subtle differences between the aptly named common redpolls and their rarer cousins, the hoary redpolls.)

Hopefully, this coming month will start to see some of the earliest migrants returning for the spring and summer, as well as a few more owls I've gotten tips on and will be taking off to find this weekend.