Missouri River Bird Observatory Blog

Of Birds, Food, and Biostatistics

2014-09-06T17:27:00.001-07:00

By Dana Ripper

Ethan and I returned yesterday from two weeks in Scotland and Sweden. Since this is a blog, I’m going to try to keep it as short as possible – but it was one of the best trips, both professionally and personally, that we’ve ever been fortunate enough to take and I could go on & on & on…but I won’t. :)

Part I: Scotland for Biostatistics

Dr. David Borchars explains basic concepts of
spatially explicit capture-recapture statistics.
Trust me, it's cool.

A Rook claims our favorite
St. Andrews deli as his own.

In 2012, we had attended the Introduction to Distance Sampling course at the University of St. Andrews. We returned to this delightful town for the Advanced Distance course – and had our brains absolutely bent for 9 hours a day by some of the finest minds in biostatistics. Most notably, the Advanced course taught us how to use Distance to create density maps for our grassland study species – thus allowing us to conform our bird survey data to the habitats and management actions that occur on MDC Areas across Missouri. We will use this method to develop maps for managers showing exactly how vegetation types and management regimes affect density of species like Henslow’s Sparrow, Bobolink, Upland Sandpiper, and Grasshopper Sparrow. We were also able to re-hone our fundamental Distance skills and pick the professors’ brains about the best ways to organize and analyze the huge datasets MRBO is amassing on grassland and wetland birds.

We had little time for birding or any other extracurricular activities in St. Andrews, but nonetheless is was not only stimulating but humbling to take a class at a University that is 350 years older than our country!

Part II: Sweden for the International Bird Observatory Conference (IBOC)

Birds at the Falsterbo point, a staging
area for migrants about to take the leap
out of Scandanavia.

As luck had it, while we were planning the trip to St. Andrews early in the year, we found out about IBOC – the first ever international meeting of bird observatories. The IBOC meeting just happened to begin the day after the Distance training ended – and how often could we say, “well, as long as we’re in the area….” to a conference in Europe?! As it turned out, attending IBOC was one of the best things we’ve ever done for MRBO. The presentations by people from all over the world were beyond inspiring – as well as humbling, as many bird observatories are now drawing on 50 or even 70 years of data on bird populations. MRBO was the newest and one of the smallest bird observatories represented. We heard from ornithologists working in all parts of Europe, Iceland, Australia, China, North America, and Africa. One of the most moving presentations was the keynote address by Dr. Yossi Leshem of Tel Aviv University who has spent more than 40 years working for bird conservation and education in the war-torn Middle East. We came away with a thousand ideas for improving MRBO, our projects, and our education efforts!

Stu MacKenzie of Long Point Bird Observatory
presented exiting migration research!

The conference was hosted by the staff and volunteers of Falsterbo Bird Observatory – an absolute class act. I would not want to be the guy that hosts the 2^ndIBOC – Falsterbo is an almost impossible act to follow. The presentation schedule was perfect, the venue and meals outstanding, and the field trips top-notch. (It was also the most reasonably priced professional meeting I’ve seen in ages). Additionally, though we were around people we considered idols and heroes, and the institutions they represent are the finest in the world, everyone was incredibly warm and friendly!!

Part III: Scotland for Touring

One view of the Scottish Highlands and the wetlands below.
No pictures (at least not mine) can express the vastness of this landscape.

Ethan at the most famous Scot battle site.

I was about to title this part “Scotland for Pleasure”, but the other parts of the trip were just as pleasurable even though they involved work. For two days at the end of the trip, we rented a car out of Edinburgh and set off for the Scottish Highlands and the coast. This region is exactly as awe-inspiring and beautiful as it is depicted in movies. We were able to visit three National Heritage for Scotland sites and learn about local habitat, wildlife, and geology as well as culture and history. Aside from the scenery, there are two things that stand out about Scotland – the people, whose warmth and joviality can not be overstated, and the cuisine and wine selections, which I would give five stars! Here’s an example: in the town of Ullapool, a fishing town on the northwest coast, the smallest local hole-in-the-wall bar had elaborate beef, lamb, and game dishes as well as gourmet fishes of the day and an extensive wine list.

A piece of shot from the wood pigeon I ate.
The menu did warn of this possibility!

The inns and restaurants we visited all served local meat and

Local meats and cheeses.

produce, and we learned that the food system in the UK bears essentially no resemblance to that of the US. When asked where typical beef came from and how it was raised, people looked at us as though we were crazy and said it came from down the road and was raised on grass and hay (this is a big contrast to the US system, where one has to search for local and/or non-feedlot produced meats). Also unlike Missouri, restaurants are able to serve wild-harvested game – and we partook of this with gusto, eating duck, quail, wood pigeon, and venison. I would also like to note that despite its reputation, haggis is GOOD!!

The visitor center and viewing blind outside of Tollie where the once very
scarce Red Kite is likely observed. We viewed four as they were riding
the thermals far above.

All in all, the whole trip left us emotionally and intellectually motivated and ready to get back to work at MRBO – for conservation in all its many forms.

Summer Education Events

2014-07-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

Veronica speaks to a group of visitors about hummingbirds.
Thanks to Colleen Crank of the World Bird Sanctuary for this
photo and for helping with the event.

Since the breeding bird survey season finished at the end of June, we have been doing education events across the state! Most recently, MRBO’s Project Coordinator Veronica Mecko, one of only two active hummingbird banders in Missouri, hosted a hummingbird banding demonstration and information session at the Arrow Rock State Historic Site.

Just a few days before, we all had the opportunity to work with the folks at Missouri River Relief to hold a banding demonstration at Eagle Bluffs CA for their summer campers.

Summer campers view a young male Indigo Bunting during Missouri River
Relief's summer camp program. Thanks to Alex Prentice of MRR for this photo.

Eight bright, engaging high school students spent a week with MRR staff learning about the Big Muddy and engaging in a huge variety of outdoor- and wildlife-related activities. We were excited to have several cool birds for the kids to see – including Indigo Bunting, Warbling Vireo, and Worm-eating Warbler. We were especially thrilled about the latter, as this is the first of this species we’ve caught anywhere in Missouri.

Other recent events where we’ve spread the word about birds were at Marshall Public Library’s summer series youth and adult sessions, and at Butterfields Youth Services Center. In both venues, it was great to have the opportunity to talk with young people about the wonders of birds and the fun they can have in the outdoors. We also got to do just one Purple Martin banding this year, but it was a great one! A Martin Landlord we work with in South St. Louis County invited all his neighbors and their families to view nestling banding. The kids that were there each got to hold a Martin baby and the adults discussed Martin migration, ecology and conservation.We have more events planned for the next several months; traditionally for MRBO, late fall and all of winter is education time!

A young man from St. Louis holds a baby Purple Martin.
Thank you, Gary N of south St. Louis County for this photo and for
hosting the event!

An Evolution: Bird Survey Data Collection Using iPads

2014-06-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Spring Creek and Rowe Audubon Nature Center director, staff, and volunteers train on using the iPads for bird surveys in Nebraska this week.

You may recall surveying for birds using a compass, map, pencil, and write-in-the-rain pads. Well, this has changed...

Infield data collection screen displaying survey area and a sample
of shapefile layers we can work with in the iGIS app.

In 2012 we were using our trusty Garmin Etrex Legend GPS devices and spot mapping bird locations on printed data sheets with aerial imagery. You can imagine how we cringed at printing 800 data sheets. The cost of paper...ink, and the time. There is also the havoc moisture can bring in the field when writing on paper or the slight errors that may result from small amounts of inaccuracy magnified through data collection and data entry processes.

This year we did a little R&D and found a solution that saves us time and money, while increasing efficiency and accuracy.

The device... an iPad (must have 3G -GPS capability). We were pretty excited to pull the iPads out of their boxes and find them displaying our exact location even without WIFI or a cellular plan. As we collect data on survey there is what we refer to affectionately as "the little blue dot" (I know... I know... very geeky) that shows our exact location.

Swank iGIS dropdown menu for detection attributes.

The App... I'm forever thankful for those Australian folks at http://www.geometryit.com who develop the iGIS app. It works quite seamlessly with ArcGIS shapefiles as the backbone. They use google imagery as a base layer of arial imagery, but can host your own tiled base maps. I've been tinkering with tiling schemes, but find that the iPads can cache imagery when wifi enabled and it can be used remotely in the field for a couple days (preloaded). The iGIS folks even provide a help file to get you started, if you want to create your own dropdown menu for adding points, lines, or polygons. This makes grassland bird surveys a breeze. You simply click a point where you see a bird and select your species from a list, add attribute info, and your done. These shapefiles can be exported to dropbox for cloud backup, iCloud backup, emailed, or sent in a message as a nicely zipped file. From there we enter them into ArcGIS and do all the statistical magic.

We've already deployed this for grassland and marsh bird surveys, MAPS station spot mapping, tested it on nest box checks, and have found a few other uses. It is so fun and easy to use, that it makes field work even more enjoyable and allows more time focussing on collecting data rather than navigating. We are surprised this hasn't yet caught on like wildfire in the science world.

A Busy 2014 Field Season

2014-05-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

A bumble-bee visits flowers on Diamond Grove Prairie
Conservation Area near Joplin.

You may have visited this blog recently and said, "Wow, this blog isn't updated very often." Rest assured there is a reason outside of laziness. We are headlong into the field season and we are busy!

We are once again attempting to survey nearly every public and many private grasslands in the state of Missouri. That's 100 properties with about 19,000 acres of direct coverage in in a month and a half. Meanwhile we are conducting 45 marsh bird surveys, spanning the state and conducting severel educational events in the same timeframe... phew!

This week we stopped into Joplin and Audubon's Wildcat Glades Nature Center to check in their Prothonotary Warbler nest box project. Later, we plan to help them by color-banding the young.

Prothonotary Warbler nestlings are checked on by Audubon's

Wildcat Glades Nature Center Staff. We plan to band them this

year.

We made a trip to survey grassland birds at Diamond Grove Prairie, Schell-Osage, and Wah-kon-tah Prairie Conservation Areas. Veronica and Zeb were Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship with volunteers on Prairies in the Hi-Lonesome Conservation Opportunity Area before surveying in the north-central part of the state for marsh birds. Later, they caught up with us at Wah-kon-tah near El Dorado Springs.

We teamed up with Matt Hill, Len Gilmore, Elizabeth Middleton, Kevin Sullivan, and several other MDC staffers to host a field day for the stellar students of Montrose High School. Hi-Lonesome Master Naturalist extraordinaire(s) Roxanne Stockdall and company added support for the students, as well. I think we all learned a lot that day... as with most days on those amazing prairies.

A turkey nest in the prairie that MDC's Matt Hill helped Montrose High School

students find.

Conservation at a Missouri Teacher's Conference

2014-02-23T12:18:00.001-08:00

By Dana Ripper

This weekend, I was fortunate to attend the Interface conference for the first time. This is a science and math conference for teachers from all over Missouri, and was one of the largest meetings I have been to in a while. I was invited by MDC Education Consultant Cynthia Green to co-present a training session for 3^rd-5^thgrade teachers on how to effectively incorporate birds into the Nature Unleashed curriculum. Unleashedis one of the four curricula developed by the MDC to replace traditional science courses with ecology and conservation-focused classes for K-12 students. These MDC Discover Nature Schools curricula meet state and national education standards while providing information tailored to Missouri’s wildlife and habitats. I have heard that a couple other states are developing similar programs, but the MDC has been at the forefront of this effort for years – we are the first state in the US to have such a progressive science curriculum available.

Some of the MDC's Discover Nature Schools student guides and teachers' manuals,
which are free to Missouri teachers.

While at Interface, I was also able to attend several of the 90-minute training sessions, including “Doing Inquiry through Citizen Science”, “Nature Unfolds for Primary Educators” (where I learned the new K-2 unit launched by MDC), and “The Nature of Missouri Owls”. The latter two were presented by MDC Education Consultants Jay Barber and Jeff Cantrell, respectively.

I was extremely heartened to see teachers’ engagement in and response to these training sessions that all integrated a conservation ethic with classroom activities. Yet again, I felt fortunate to live in Missouri where our conservation science opportunities are far more accessible and effectively used by school teachers and other educators. Only through public education will we be able to conserve our Missouri habitats for the long term.
For more information on the MDC’s Discover Nature Schools, see: http://mdc.mo.gov/education/discover-nature-schools

MDC Education Consultant Jeff Cantrell of Neosho, Missouri provided a training workshop on Missouri's owls for teachers interested in incorporating this charismatic group of birds into their lesson plans.

ROAD TRIP! Raptor banding in Iowa

2013-11-09T06:50:00.001-08:00

by MRBO Educator Alie Mayes

Earlier this week Nic and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel to Iowa to get more experience with banding Saw-whet Owlsand introduced to the process of hawk banding. We first met up with MRBO’s Veronica Mecko, who is currently running a Saw-whet owl station near Maloy, IA. It was fairly windy when we opened nets that night, but luckily we were still able to catch an owl and Veronica walked Nic and I through the net extraction and banding process.

The next morning, we headed to Hitchcock Nature Center in Honey Creek, IA to meet up with Raptor Bander Jerry Toll to spend the day learning how he captures and bands hawks and the night getting more experience at his Saw-whet Owl station. We arrived at the hawk banding station at about 10 a.m. and Jerry walked us through the site, showing us the Bel-Chatri trap and the mist-nets (used to catch the smaller hawks). The four of us spent the better part of the next four hours huddled inside a shed, scanning the skies through the small open windows for hawks. The hawk count was low that day, and by two in the afternoon no one had shown any interest in our bait.

But then, a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk flew from behind us and got caught in one of the mist nets! Jerry rushed out to extract the hawk from the net before it could rip through and get away. It was so amazing to see a Red-tailed Hawk in hand. Jerry walked us through the banding process and then asked Nic and I if one of us would like to let it go. You better believe I jumped at the opportunity, calling dibs before poor Nic had even heard the question!

Luckily for Nic (and my guilt), another Red-tailed was caught in the Bel-Chatri soon after. However, this hawk was already banded, making it only the second recapture in Hitchcock history, and the first Red-tailed Hawk recapture. Veronica walked us through the measurements and information needed for a recaptured hawk. Jerry was later able to determine from the band number that this hawk was banded at Hitchcock in 2009 as a hatch year bird.

We stayed at the banding station for about another hour. During which time two Sharp-shinned Hawks went for the bait, one even briefly went into the mist-net, but unfortunately neither were successfully caught. Veronica, Nic, and I then left Jerry and visited the Hawk Watch Tower, which boasted a pretty view, a chilly breeze, and Clem, who was the hawk counter that day. And even though there were not many hawks going by at the time, Nic and I were able to add Greater White-fronted goose to our life list when a flock flew overhead.

That night we opened the Saw-whet Owl station. We were lucky enough to catch one owl per net run. Both Nic and I were able to extract and process two owls apiece. Two of the owls were recaps (both from earlier this season), and two we banded. It was really great to be able to see four owls in the same night and have Veronica and Jerry there to guide us and answer questions. We stayed in a cabin at Hitchcock that night and in the morning Veronica, Nic, and I headed out to Desoto National Wildlife Refuge, where we spent a rainy morning birding before Nic and I headed back to Marshall, where we look forward to catching and banding more Saw-whet Owls this month.

A special thank you to Veronica Mecko and Jerry Toll for facilitating such a great experience for Nic and I. Your time, expertise, and patience was greatly appreciated. Thank you to Dana Ripper and Ethan Duke for funding our trip. Also, thank you to Brian and Betsy of Maloy and the Hitchcock Nature Center for hosting us during our visit!

Public Events in Arrow Rock

2013-09-18T15:36:00.001-07:00

Back to Back Public Banding Events in Arrow Rock

Missouri River Bird Observatory staff were invited to Arrow Rock State Historic Site two weekends in a row to do banding demonstrations for visitors.

During the first event on September 7, three white-breasted nuthatches provided an opportunity to study age and plumage.

Two of the nuthatches were adult males and the third was a juvenile male that had hatched and fledged this year. All three were caught in the same net at the same time and so it was especially interesting to be able to compare the difference in plumage between the juvenile and adults.

Adult male White-breasted nuthatch at top, young below.

The photo above shows one of the adult male’s wing at the top of the photo and the juvenile bird’s wing at the bottom. The adult male’s flight feathers are uniformly dark and have a slaty blue edging, while most of the juvenile bird’s flight feathers are brownish and have a brownish gray edging to them or no edging. From the photo you can also see that the adult bird’s flight feathers match the color of the feathers on its back. The juvenile’s brownish feathers contrast with the slaty blue back feathers as well as the tertials, the wider, medium-length inner flight feathers closest to the bird’s body.

This juvenile nuthatch was also molting in new tail feathers and in the photo you can notice that the tail feathers are different lengths as they molt in.

Among the other birds banded were several chickadees, titmice, a red-bellied woodpecker and a ruby-throated hummingbird.

The following Saturday brought about 40 visitors from Missouri and as far as Oklahoma to Arrow Rock to learn about the diversity of hummingbirds and observe hummingbird banding. The day was cool and sunny and the hummingbirds were active at the feeders around the visitor’s center.

Hummingbird bander Lanny Chambers has been banding for about 13 years and he and his wife Linda do several banding presentations each spring and summer at Montauk and Onondaga State Parks. I had visited them at Montauk State Park during their May presentation and then in August I was able to join Lanny in banding the hummingbirds since I had completed a training during the summer and was granted a permit. It was exciting to have Lanny and Linda come to Arrow Rock and share their knowledge of hummingbirds.

We banded about 10 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds during the morning including the young male pictured to the right. This male was hatched during the summer and it is normal for young males to have one or more red feathers on the throat during the fall that also should be visible in the field when the bird is perched. By next spring, this bird will have replaced his throat feathers with a full gorget of red feathers.

I also recaptured the hummingbird that I had banded the previous Saturday. This particular female had gained some weight during the week and would need to gain more before finishing the long journey south. The hummingbird banding is part of a project to study hummingbirds during migration, comparing their stopovers at different sites as they move south, so it was interesting to know that this female had remained in the area for at least a week.

by Veronica Mecko

For more photos of the event see the MRBO facebook page. For more information on hummingbirds go to www.hummingbirds.net.

"Cicadian" Rhythms

2013-09-11T08:10:00.002-07:00

A suspended platform with a microphone (top of
photo) and an ARU (foreground).

We deploy an autonomous recording unit (ARU) for the purpose of recording nocturnal flight calls of

migrating birds during each migration season. As time allows, we review nightly recordings (from a half hour before sunset to a half hour after sunrise) by scanning them with software and creating visual sound spectrogram thumbnails of each sound that fits the parameters of a bird call. If only it were that simple...

Depending on the season, frogs and insects compete within the same frequency range of the birds we are trying parse from the hours of recordings.

How loud are the singing insects?

Friends and family that were visiting from the north last week noticed the cacophony of singing insects in Missouri. In fact we had raise our voices in order to speak over the cicadas, katydids, crickets, and grasshoppers. One of the guests in advanced age couldn't hear them at all. We handed him a parabolic reflector and headphones to see if a mechanised boost in amplitude would give him is old ears back. "Ah... I think I hear it," he said loudly. "Oh, wait... that's Bill's knee replacement clicking."

After a round of laughs, he redirected the reflector to the insect source and could eventually hear them. "Man!", he said. "Now I understand why people could find them annoying."

A blessing or a curse?

It is impossible to find a place to record on our postage stamp property that doesn't have what recordists call "noise." Given time, we'll try Bill Evan's set-up. Over the years, he has mastered a way of limiting unwanted sounds. He has employed his system over the continent. The nearest listening station is at Riverlands Audubon at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

In the meantime, we've dealt with the curse of competing sounds and have learned from them. Singing insects are active throughout the day and night, depending on the species. The soundscape is dominated by them at times and a they exhibit patterns each night. Although our goals is to collect bird data, the timing and diversity of singing insects is a opportune medium for the study of daily and yearly patterns in the natural world. Climate change theorists have one more tool with which to track phenological shifts.

A dawn soundscape of mostly insects. You can see a couple birds in the 2-3 kHz range (Carolina Wren and White-breasted Nuthatch), but the main frequency bands for night flight calls of birds are dominated by the singing insects.

Soon the singing insects will be less competitive. The temperatures will drop and with it will come more migrating birds. Not the ideal situation, but until we have a Bill Evan's set-up, the exploration will continue.

PUMAs!!

2013-06-27T13:30:00.001-07:00

By MRBO Intern Cassie Ziegler
We're banding PUMAs! Now, I'm guessing that you're first thought is not what we're talking about. I can just imagine you saying, "Pumas?! I thought she was working with birds! I'm so confused!" Well, maybe not exactly that but you get my gist. We're not talking pumas, as in cougars or mountain lions, but PUrple MArtins. See what I did there? Pretty tricky. Did I get you?

Anyway, we've just started banding the purple martin nestlings for this breeding season. We work with people across Missouri that have purple martin houses on their property and have been monitoring the nests. When the nestlings are 11 days old, we can band them and we try to band none older than about 24 days because they fledge the nest at 26 days and it gets risky handling them. For these little cuties, we put 2 bands on them; one on each leg. One leg will have the aluminum U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) band and the other leg is banded with a colored band matching the last 3 digits of the USGS band. Different organizations and states will use different colors so we use gold bands with black writing, colors that make resighting bands and the numbers somewhat easier with binoculars or a spotting scope. So, we get the nest, band the babies, take a few measurements, and them put them back into the nest where they proceed to huddle into a little ball of cuteness with their siblings. Now, I don't do the banding but I take about a million pictures of these little guys and record the data, handling a few every now and then to get a good look at the age.

There's only been about a 10% return rate of nestlings returning to the same area the following seasons to breed but having people resight the bands and numbers help to determine where the birds go otherwise.

A lot of people don't know that purple martins are a type of swallow (just minus the world swallow in their name). Swallows are some of my favorite birds. If you've ever seen them fly, you probably know why I love them. It's pretty amazing to watch. The wing lengths are as long as the entire body and sometime longer and they are so sleek and beautiful. During the spring migration we banded 11 swallows one evening: 9 tree swallows, 1 barn swallow, and 1 northern rough-winged swallow.

There are a few random tidbits about purple martins I find very interesting:

1. The nestling and adults can be banded with the same size bands. The leg width is the same for the nestlings (11 days) and the adults.

2. Okay, so don't you hate it when you see bird poop on your car or other places just splattered? Well, the nestling have little fecal sacks that contain the feces in the nest and the parents will remove them. It seems as though they try to keep a tidy little household.

3. Purple Martins form large colonies, hence when you see the specific houses for them you usually see a fair amount. The property we were at the other day not only has metal houses but artificial gourds and the purple martins will nest in both. Any animal that forms colonies is fascinating to me, intriguing me to learn more about their overall behavior and the specifics of how the colonies are formed, if there is a hierarchy (which I've been told there is regarding nesting placement in houses), etc.

If you're curious about more info regarding Purple Martins, I recommend this website:

http://purplemartin.org/

Purple Martins
Marshall, MO & Concordia, MO
June 19th & 21st, 2013

News from the Cole Camp Prairies

2013-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

By MRBO Grassland Bander Veronica Mecko
The past several weeks of migration on the grasslands site at Hi Lonesome and Mora Conservation Areas have been amazing. The grasslands crew, which includes several Master Naturalists, has been banding birds and also counting the birds that we hear or see at both of our sites.

I am from southern Iowa and am familiar with the general pattern of arrivals of mirgratory birds through April and May where I live. Coming to central Missouri (which is about 3 hours south of the Missouri/Iowa border) I was expecting to see somewhat earlier arrivals for most birds. But with the cold, rainy weather throughout the month of April, we have had to be very patient waiting for the migrants to arrive and we’ve had the pleasure to observe some species that usually would have migrated earlier.

At our site on Hi Lonesome CA we continued to hear and observe Wilson’s Snipe through the entire month of April. These are birds that migrate to Canada and the northern U.S. to breed. On May 1 we captured and banded a White Crowned Sparrow, another bird that spends the winter in central Missouri then migrates to northern Canada. Eastern Kingbirds and Common Yellowthroats were observed or

Grasshopper Sparrow at Mora CA

heard the last week of April and birds such as Dickcissel and even Gray Catbird were not observed at either site until the last few days of April.

On the site at Mora Conservation Area we have heard the “che bunk” of Henslow’s Sparrows throughout the month of April. Part of this site is predominantly warm-season grasses without much brush and the other part is wetter with mixed grasses with lots of brush and sapling trees. We have observed and captured the Henslow’s Sparrows in both of these habitats.

Field Sparrows are another species that we have observed and captured at both sites throughout the month of April. Other sparrows banded have been Vesper, Savannah, Clay-Colored, Song, Grasshopper and Swamp. Eastern Phoebes were observed throughout the month and one was banded on April 7. Shortly after on April 11 we observed a Scissortail Flycatcher at Mora CA and have seen them fly over both sites occasionally.

Every morning, usually not before 9:30 a.m., the Turkey Vultures catch a thermal and start working

A Savannah Sparrow at Hi-Lonesome CA

their way north. We have counted 113 vultures at Hi Lonesome CA and 137 at Mora CA flying overhead. We’ve also observed three Broad-winged Hawks and several Sharp-Shinned and Cooper’s Hawks and at both sites have seen a Northern Harrier most mornings throughout the month of April.

In the second week of April, we decided to try opening the nets in the evenings at both of our sites. We had seen Tree Swallows at both of our sites since the first week of April, then Barn Swallows started appearing the second week of April. From our site at Mora CA we could look south across the large warm-season grass field and watch the swallows catching insects over the grasses. On the evening of April 24 we set out to open the nets and could see several dozens of swallows swooping and doing acrobatics over the field. While we waited to check nets and were counting birds, the swallows continued to swarm over the field. We had never captured any of the swallows--they fly around and

Barn Swallow, part of a small flock captured at
Mora CA during evening operation

over the nets, maneuvering quickly and acrobatically to avoid them--but on this warm, spring evening we had swallows in the nets on our first run. We banded nine Tree Swallows, one Barn Swallow and one Northern Rough-winged Swallow. A storm came through the day after, followed by south winds, and we haven’t observed again as many swallows over the field since that evening.

April 28 we set up at Mora in the morning and in the evening. The temperature had finally warmed up so that we could open nets before sunrise and on this morning we could hear for the first time several Sedge Wrens!

MRBO Grassland Bird Surveyor Josh Smith
getting a good look at a Sedge Wren

When we returned in the evening we caught two Sedge Wrens and two Swamp Sparrows. Sedge Wrens are very tiny and secretive and very few have been captured and banded anywhere in the US. It wasn’t until after we had caught them that Dana let us know that there had only been 14 of this species ever banded in Missouri! When we returned to the site two mornings later, we didn’t even hear any Sedge Wrens – they had already moved on!

Spring 2013 is finally here!

2013-04-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

By MRBO Bander Brittney Cross

Brittney and a male Ruby-crowned Kinglet showing
his often-hidden red crown.

Lincoln's Sparrow

Spring 2013 is finally here on the Missouri River with the kick off of MRBO’s Grand Pass Migration Banding Station, opened for the first time on April 15, 2013. The MRBO staff had a little bit of a damp start Monday morning - we had to pull back every net due to heavy rains during Sunday night and were unable to open our nets until around 9:00am! But, the day ended on a good note with the capture of 18 new birds and 3 recaptures from previous years. Some of the species that were caught were White-throated Sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Orange Crown Warbler, Blue Jay (recapure), Black-capped Chickadee (2 recaptures), Tufted Titmouse, Northern Cardinal, and the Ruby-crowned Kinglets (RCKI).

The most interesting bird that we caught that day I would say was the RCKI! We caught eight of these guys that are so little and extremely cute.

A female Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Getting a grip on these small ones was tough to begin with but after the first few, handling them became easier. But what was really intriguing was listening to Ethan Duke, assistant director of MRBO, tell the story of this tiny bird’s migration journey. This little bird flies from the southern United States and Mexico and is just stopping by here in Missouri before heading further north - as far as the boreal region of Canada and Alaska! They will stopover to refuel on food and to store up fat before moving on again to complete their long journey to their nesting grounds. Attracting these little guys to your backyard during their migration path is quite simple. Providing bushes with small fruits and avoiding insecticide sprays will make a yard more attractive to Ruby-crowned Kinglets. Avoiding insecticide sprays is the most important thing - note that the Ruby-crowned Kinglet is mostly insectivorous, having a diet that consists primarily of small bugs. So killing your your backyard insects will almost guarantee they skip right past you to find more suitable habitat!

RCKI range map, by Terry Sohl (www.sdakotabirds.com)

On April 16^th, our second morning, we had a spotty chance to get rain according to weather radar, so we drove out to the site at 5:30am to check out the scene. It was not raining until we got to the main gate at Grand Pass Conservation Area - just our luck! We drove to the site and decided once the rain stopped we would open just 10 of our 21 nets in case we had to quickly close them due to rain. On our first net run we captured two White-throated Sparrows (WTSP) and a Brown Thrasher. Upon arriving back at the banding station and only banding one of the WTSPs, it started to not only down poor but also hail! We released the other two birds before being able to band them, then ran as fast as we could to close all our nets making sure no bird got wet and cold. We didn’t reopen our nets but called it a day. As a researcher it’s sometimes frustrating to not be able to work during the busiest part of the day but safety of the birds is the utmost important in these situations. I cannot say that enough, and even though the weather has been a bit soggy I think the Grand Pass Crew has had not only a blast but a great start to the Spring Migration Season of 2013!

Innovative Studies of Grassland Bird Migration

2013-04-13T10:36:00.004-07:00

Henslow's Sparrow at Mora CA.

The migratory patterns and pathways of grassland birds remain largely unknown. One of the most important aspects of conserving populations is providing habitat not only for breeding activity but also for migration stopover and wintering. Though migration can be quite difficult to study – things change daily according to weather fronts, wind direction, and birds’ motivational state – stopover habitat use remains a critical piece of information in the puzzle of grassland bird conservation. Accordingly, MRBO has established two monitoring sites in grasslands this season, one at Mora and

An Eastern Meadowlark at Hi-Lonesome CA.

one at Hi-Lonesome Conservation Area. Our Mora site is located in an area that the MDC restored to native warm season grasses, while the Hi-Lonesome site is dominated by native prairie. While daily captures are relatively low, as is typical in grasslands, many interesting and understudied species are being banded, and high diversity and numbers of migrating birds are being observed daily.

The MRBO grassland migration sites are staffed by a dedicated crew who must deal with extreme weather conditions and constantly shifting schedules while constantly maintaining standards of bird

One of the MRBO grassland crew, Cassie Ziegler, extracts at Junco.

safety. Their hard work is rewarded by having birds in hand that are seldom documented in migration, let alone captured. To date, the crew has banded LeConte’s, Henslow’s, Vesper, Field, and Savannah Sparrows, Eastern Meadowlarks, and Wilson’s Snipe. By site and sound, they have also recorded other species using the prairie during migration, including Loggerhead Shrike, Northern Harrier, and Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.

This season represents the first attempt by MRBO to document grassland bird migration. This is an extremely under-studied phenomenon in general, and to our knowledge, there have been very few attempts anywhere, ever to mist-net migrants in a prairie setting. All information collected by our grassland crew, therefore, is new knowledge that will shed light on the importance of Missouri’s grasslands for birds at all times of year.

Field Sparrow at Mora CA.

Education, Outreach, and Professional Development

2013-03-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Our fortune has been great thus far in 2013 to be a part of more than 20 public outreach events throughout the state of Missouri. Just the past month has seen MRBO in Clinton, Washington, Kansas City, Cole Camp, Jefferson City, and St. Louis. The next two weeks take us to Rolla, Joplin, and the Missouri Bootheel. The two best things about all of these events are 1) the people and 2) getting to see, throughout a year, pretty much every habitat in Missouri.

This past weekend, we held a training for banders and aspiring banders at Missouri Valley College and at our home in Marshall, MO. This event coincided with mist-net training sessions we've been doing with the Missouri Master Naturalists of Cole Camp. At each session, biologists of all ages and backgrounds came together from not only Missouri but also Arkansas to share in learning about birds. It was great to have so many different perspectives together in one room, and we felt honored to have so many people interested in working with us. Below are a few photos from the education events of the past several weeks.

The feather tracts in a typical passerine wing, of great importance for banding & ageing birds in the hand!
Reproduced from Birds of Borneo, Phillips and Phillips 2011.

Dr. Virginie Rolland of Arkansas State University and her MS student Jessica
work together on a Red-winged Blackbird.

Determining Oregon from Slate-colored Juncos at a workshop in Clinton. The bird on
the left was eventually confirmed an Oregon by Missouri bird expert Brad Jacobs.

Steve and Regina Garr of Birds-I-View entitled this photo,
"Dana Speaks Hairy Woodpecker".

Missouri Master Naturalists of the Hi-Lonesome Chapter learn mist-netting. Left to Right: Rita Brown, Kim Nichols,
MRBO's Veronica Mecko, Theresa Cline, Renee & Mark Freeman.

2013 = Education and Outreach

2013-01-13T14:32:00.002-08:00

By Dana Ripper

The first two weeks of the New Year have seen MRBO at six different education events. We started out with a day at Birds-I-View in Jeff City, where we learned about the American Kestrel Partnership

Fellowship with conservation-minded people building American Kestrel
nest boxes in Jeff City.

and pledged membership in the program. Following a Kestrel box-building workshop with many Missouri home- and land-owners, we did the second in our winter series of bird-banding demonstrations at the Birds-I-View Garden. The following day, we headed over to the Burroughs Audubon Library in Blue Springs, where approximately 35 visitors throughout the morning were treated to many different birds. A Backyard Banding demonstration in Sweet Springs with friends from the Sweet Springs Historical Society on Monday was followed on Tuesday by Ethan presenting at the Missouri River Relief Speaker Series in Rocheport. On Thursday, Eth worked with a wonderful teacher at the Sacred Heart School in Sedalia to make bird-feeders and

I show how to age a Carolina Chickadee to visitors and friends at
Birds-I-View.

bird-houses with 2nd - 5th grade students. Finally, on Saturday we banded birds to a packed house at the Burr Oak Nature Center's Big Year Festival. This was an excellent event with bird walks, presentations on Bird ID, and talks by bird videographer Tim Barksdale.

Whew! That was a lot of travel but so very worth it. I'd estimate that 70-80 adults and about the same number of kids learned more about birds this week. Most of them even saw Downy Woodpeckers, White-breasted Nuthatches, and other familiar, engaging birds up close.

Brittney talks about woodpecker beaks at Burr Oak Woods Nature Center.

Ethan shows the gentle way to touch a Chickadee at Burroughs Audubon Library.

A New Year ‘for the birds’

2013-01-03T10:04:00.001-08:00

Above: A Northern Mockingbird takes a look at us.

Photo by Ryan Steffens.

Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) are a long-standing tradition http://birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count. If you’ve never participated before, you are missing out on fun day in the field. We participated on two separate occasions in the past month to continue the over 100-year tradition.

Our first CBC was two days after Christmas in the area around Cole Camp, MO. We saw one Great-horned Owl and one Barred Owl on the way into Cole Camp. As usual, directives were given to the entire pool of participants and specific areas were delegated at our usual pre-dawn meeting place.

The Cole Camp CBC was full of little surprises, like large mixed flocks of wintering sparrows (Harris’s, American Tree, and even a Vesper Sparrow). A single American Pelican rested on a lakes icy edge as Bald Eagle kept an eye on it from just meters away.

Above: An immature Bald Eagle and an American White

Pelican standoff.

Photo by: Stephanie Putnam.

Our task was to count birds in region north of town. Local bird student, Ryan Steffens, rode with us with and Missouri Valley College Alum, Stephanie Putnam and partner Kalen Brady (MO Valley student) drove behind us. The bird action started just as we were leaving town. A Barred Owl flew directly at my truck. Slamming on the brakes was just enough to avert disaster as it’s talons clicked across the top of the windshield.

Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers, and Kestrels dazzled us throughout the day. Numbers on the day were tallied in the evening over warm, home cooked goodness.

Our second CBC was on New Year’s Day in the area around Swan Lake. It was a long drive in on icy roads that led into Sumner, MO. Steve Kinder and Larry Lade greeted us and gave us maps for our assigned area. Red-headed Woodpeckers and other birds taunted us in the parking lot at the Refuge Headquarters, making us all eager to get started.

It was a peaceful, fun-filled day of pleasure as we hiked along Yellow Creek and drove around to agriculture and Wetland Reserve Program lands. Yellow Creek was absolutely packed with Red-headed Woodpeckers. American Tree Sparrows were everywhere along roadsides.

We enjoyed watching Harriers, Meadow Larks, and Horned Larks throughout the day. At one point, we stumbled upon a large flock of Trumpeter Swans in a cornfield. Towards dusk we watched flocks of geese stream overhead and into the setting sun.

Thus ended the first day of the Year. Another day and other year… with and for the birds.

To all our Members and Friends...

2012-11-22T13:27:00.002-08:00

Late September Highlights!

2012-09-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Le Conte's Sparrow at Hi-Lonesome Prairie.

The first Brown Creeper of the year at Van Meter State Park.

Grasshopper Sparrow at Hi-Lonesome Prairie.

Lincoln's Sparrow at Hi-Lonesome Prairie.

Red-breasted Nuthatch at Van Meter State Park. We'd been hearing one for days before this capture.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet at Van Meter State Park.

Centralia 2nd-graders learn to use binoculars before going on a bird walk.

Kicking off fall with ASM

2012-09-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we were honored by the Audubon Society of Missouri by being invited to present an evening program and morning banding at their annual Fall Conference at Camp Clover Point, Lake of the Ozarks. Seth Gallagher, MRBO Board Chairman and long-time friend, also presented a program at the meeting. Seth started off the weekend with a Friday night presentation on the Rocky Mountain

Me trying to explain everything we do to ASM members.
Photo thanks to Stephen Dilks.

Bird Observatory, describing what a well-established observatory does to promote science-based bird conservation. Ethan and I then followed up on Saturday night by talking about some of the programs MRBO has become involved in here in Missouri. We hope that the birding community came away with more understanding of our work, and that they enjoyed the (long!) presentation.

I wish I could report that banding was stellar, as we very much hoped to catch a rare bird or two to add

Ethan bands one of our few captures while some nice folks gather 'round.

to the weekend list. Alas, I must report that the mist-nets were slooooooow both Saturday and Sunday mornings. We did catch an Eastern Phoebe, Carolina Wren, Carolina Chickadees, and a beautiful adult male Summer Tanager. We actually trapped the Tanager both mornings - seems he was happier chasing other birds around and vocalizing stridently than he was interested in migrating! Camp Clover Point was absolutely packed with Summer Tanagers; other birders reported seeing lots of aggressive interactions by this species all weekend. Some other birds observed by our group while waiting on the mist-nets were Black-throated Green and Chestnut-sided Warblers, Yellow-throated Vireo, and a Northern Parula that

One of the lovely children of the caterers hung out
with us during the Sunday morning banding.
Photo thanks to Stephen Dilks.

sang his little heart out all weekend.

Our sincere appreciation goes out to ASM for having us. We had an excellent time and were warmly welcomed by everyone at the meeting. Also, I reached my goal of gaining 5 pounds by taking seconds and thirds at every one of the amazing spreads put on by the family that has been catering the ASM meeting for 30 years.

Very special thanks to June Newman, Edge Wade, and Bruce Beck for their support and encouragement.

Seth and his son Will with the Summer Tanager.

The week so far...

2012-09-20T16:39:00.002-07:00

By Dana

It has been a great week so far at MRBO!

A Savannah Sparrow caught at sunrise on Hi-Lonesome Prairie.
Photo from Sherry Leonardo.

On Monday Ethan and I ran at the home site and caught 21 birds, including Ovenbirds, a Swainson's Thrush, and Brown Thrashers. We are very glad to see these migrants using our property as stopover habitat.

Blue-headed Vireo at Van Meter SP.
Photo from Mandy Lightcap.

On Tuesday morning we caught our first Savannah Sparrow at the new Hi-Lonesome Prairie site.

Wednesday morning saw a number of highly usual catches...including Blue-headed Vireo and Sharp-shinned Hawk at Van Meter, and a Whip-poor-will (my first one in hand ever) at Grand Pass.

Sleepy Whip-poor-will at Grand Pass CA.

Sharp-shinned Hawk not liking me.

Daniel liking the Sharp-shinned Hawk!

Ethan explains migration to 2nd graders from
Columbia Public Schools. Photo from our
new Board Member Julie Fisher!

Today we provided a station at an education event held by the Columbia Audubon Society. Several hundred Columbia 2nd-graders rotated through stations focused on adaptations, habitat, and birds - raptors provided by the Mizzou Raptor Rehab Project and songbirds provided by MRBO. I'm pleased to report we had birds for every group of kids - including a Yellow-throated Vireo and a Northern Parula!

I want to send our thanks to Brittney, Daniel, and Joanna for working extra hard lately and running the Van Meter station independently while we test other stations and go to education programs. Joanna was also a great help at the Columbia event today. More pictures from that event (we were a little busy) and a newspaper article coming soon :)

Fall in Full Swing

2012-09-11T12:43:00.001-07:00

by Dana Ripper
Not much time to write here - fall migration is underway and we are running four sites! Our good old fall standby, Van Meter State Park, is showing it's usual high diversity, and we are testing three other sites in widely differing habitats. I am especially excited about our new Grand Pass test site, located in an early-successional habitat where the Flood of '93 inundated the area. There's about 3 feet of sand covered by willow and cottonwood saplings - not a fun thing to cut net lanes through, but it's up and running and doing well! Today's surprises there were the first Ruby-crowned Kinglet and first Lincoln's Sparrow of the season.
Here are a few pictures from the past two weeks of migration fun...

Daniel and a Least Flycatcher. I'm pretty happy in the background.

One of the first things our new intern, Joanna, asked was
whether or not we get Wilson's Warblers - she's been getting
a couple each day to be pleased about!

Brittney with a Nashville Warbler, which are coming through regularly.

Here, you can see a bit of this male's "Pepperoni Head".

An adult male Rose-breasted Grosbeak displays his "basic" fall plumage.

The second Blue-winged Warbler caught at any of MRBO's migration sites. The first was at Grand Pass in Spring 2010;
this young female was caught at Van Meter on Monday.

MRBO in the Kingdom of Fife

2012-09-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

by Dana Ripper

A typical home garden in rainy St. Andrews.

Last week, Ethan and I had the incredible good fortune to attend a bio-statistics workshop – in St. Andrews, Scotland! Presented by the world’s leading authority on Distance Sampling – the Centre for Research in Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM) – the workshop provided us with both extensive theoretical knowledge of the statistics behind distance sampling, and the capability to design field studies such that they’re statistically rigorous. The theories apply to both point counts and line transects, and, basically, when one conducts surveys there are a number of factors that must be taken into account: how accurately the observer measures distances to each bird, how often birds remove themselves from the observer and how far they go, the effect on detectability of the placement of the lines or points in the landscape, etc. These factors affect your sample of birds (or whatever you happen to be surveying), and therefore your estimates of densities and abundance. In five days, we learned an incredible amount thanks to Dr. Eric Rexstad, Dr. Steven Buckland, and their many graduate students.

Since MRBO has established point count surveys at our migration and prairie sites, and has been performing innumerable line transect surveys on private grasslands, it was imperative that we gain the statistical background for properly analyzing those data and to improve our methodology. You can see how producing the most accurate measures possible of density and abundance is of greatest importance for conservation!

A sign at The Central, an archetypical pub on Market Street.

It was humbling to attend classes at a university that is about 350 years older than our country. The University of St. Andrews was established during the years of 1411-1413, making it the third-oldest university in the English-speaking world (only Oxford and Cambridge are older). My favorite university building was Edgecliffe, overlooking St. Andrews Bay, which housed the Department of Moral Philosophy and the Department of Logic and Metaphysics.

The town of St. Andrews, Kingdom of Fife, was nothing short of charming and beautiful. Due, I expect, to the cultural influence of the university and (for you golf fans) the Old Course, the dining was varied and excellent. All in all, between the excellence of the workshop and the culture of the town, five days of 10-hours-a-day biostatistics classes felt like a grand vacation.

We’ll be saving our pounds – and our data! – for the Advanced Distance Sampling workshop at CREEM next summer!

Not much like the College Street in Marshall, MO!

Reflections on Summer 2012

2012-08-16T16:38:00.001-07:00

By Dana Ripper

Quality habitat at Mora Conservation Area.

A good example of why the MDC and Mo Prairie Foundation continue
their efforts - here, a prairie-native Cream Wild Indigo hangs on in what is
now a corn field bordered by a hedge row.

Since last summer, we and most everyone we know was praying that summer of 2012 wouldn’t be as bad as 2011. What a surprise – it was worse! Record heat, record drought, record number of days over 100 degrees. On our field projects, we went out daily with all concentration on keeping birds as safe and as little stressed as possible. Thanks to a very competent field crew on our MAPS project, and to the care and efficiency of our Purple Martin landlords, every bird that

Devin, me, Ethan, and Jeremy Duncan with all of the
babies from an eight-chick Purple Martin nest at the
Duncans' Platte City colony.

passed through our hands was released or placed back in the nest in good condition.

Overall, the summer’s heat seemed to take a toll on the people more than the birds! We saw many family groups at our prairie sites, and captured and banded many fledglings. With few exceptions, Purple Martins arrived, nested, and fledged much earlier than in previous years, thus beating the worst of the heat.

We had great success with the two aforementioned projects as well as with the series of statewide marsh bird surveys and multi-state grassland bird surveys. There were also several education events, festivals, meetings, and trainings wrapped up in the past few months. One of the best parts of the summer was working with our crew of interns, some of whom are staying with us for the fall

Devin, Veronica, and Daniel return from a net run
at Grandfather Prairie.

season.

Just today, we finished our Annual Report which describes the gamut of MRBO activities from last August until the present. This can be found on our homepage at www.mrbo.org.

A Second-Year Bell's Vireo captured at
Paintbrush Prairie.

I think we’re all more than ready for fall and the waves of fall migrants. One of the things we’ll be able to learn at the fall monitoring stations (there will be at least three!) is the young-to-adult bird ratio of this year’s passerines. This will give us an idea of just how well our birds fared this summer.

Coming soon: a brief trip to Scotland to attend a Distance training workshop! I think this training will be pivotal to MRBO’s ability to design and analyze future survey projects.

Catch of the Day

2012-07-15T11:30:00.003-07:00

Last Thursday at Ionia Ridge was a very slow day...but what we lacked in numbers we sure made up for in neat surprises.

Thanks to Sherry Leonardo for these photos!

Ethan asked me if I had a good bander's grip on the bird as I was pulling it out of the bag...
I wondered why, until I saw what we had! Daniel laughs in the background, after himself getting
cut up a bit by this bird's beak!

Female Loggerhead Shrike. She packed a mean bite - a small scrape from the tip of her bill drew blood!

Upon request, Dev Couture hams it up for a Shrike photo.

Last but absolutely not least, we captured this female Grasshopper Sparrow. Grasshoppers and Henslow's elude our nets constantly and it's always a wonderful treat to get one.

Another Ghost Bird Search?

2012-07-07T17:21:00.002-07:00

by Dana Ripper

A male Cerulean Warbler.
Photo Frode Jacobsen, Central Hardwoods Joint Venture.

The Cerulean Warbler is a species of concern with continued population declines; conservation interest in this species peaked in the 90’s and 2000’s during the time the ornithological community was more interested in neotropical migrant songbirds than in most other guilds. Since then, the Cerulean Warbler (CERW), along with most other warblers, has been pushed out of the conservation spotlight regardless of its lack of recovery. Thankfully, surveys for this beautiful bird continue in several places across the eastern US, including on hard-to-access Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) and Department of Defense properties in Missouri.

For the second time in three years, Ethan was contracted by the very organized, competent, and friendly Kalamazoo Nature Center (http://www.naturecenter.org/) in Michigan to conduct CERW surveys in Missouri. Ethan worked with CERWs for several seasons in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee, where the bird is much more abundant than in most areas of Missouri. Our colleague Veronica Mecko was similarly contracted to search several areas in Iowa. I was lucky enough to go on one part of the Missouri CERW search, the Long Island survey. Long Island is a portion of the Great River National Wildlife Refuge, owned by the ACE but managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

A small channel of the Mississippi at sunset.

On the way to where we would launch, Ethan and I crossed the Mississippi River at Quincy, IL at about 5 p.m. the night before. As I looked out over the bridge, I was thinking to myself….Hmmm. Ethan and I both have canoe experience - in smaller rivers, in the bayou country of Arkansas and Louisiana, on some lakes and creeks in Tennessee, New York, and Wisconsin. But were we really going to just hop in a canoe and cruise down one of the largest rivers in the western hemisphere? One of the largest in the world? I was scared. From the Quincy bridge, the Mississippi River looked absolutely HUGE. It was going to eat us.

At the Quincy public boat ramp, we talked to a couple, clearly locals who were comfortable with the River, who were putting their boat on a trailer. We asked them about the route, possible return channels to the Quincy launch, and whether or not we were crazy in the first place for canoeing the Mississippi. Fortified by their totally laissez-faire attitude and specific directions, I left my truck at the parking lot and we continued towards the Bear Creek Public Use Area outside of Ursa, IL.

I love this job.

A drive through vast cornfields – apparently industrial agricultural interests are dominant on the Illinois side of the Mississippi floodplain – ended at the federal levee and there was another world on the river side. We continued through some mature bottomland forest to a gorgeous (and deserted) ACE campground right on the bank of the River.

Early the next morning, we launched the canoe and floated very peacefully down secondary channels through mature forests. Contrary to my expectation of heavy river traffic (I had envisioned paddling madly to get out of the way of a barge), we saw only one fisherman the whole morning. Great-crested Flycatchers, Red-eyed Vireos, Northern Parulas, and Pileated Woodpeckers abounded, and I have not heard so many Prothonotary Warblers since my time in the White River NWR of Arkansas. But, we covered more than 12 river miles and did not catch even a glimpse or a song from a Cerulean Warbler. The morning had been optimal for hearing birds at long distances, and it was still cool enough that many birds were singing unto 11 a.m. and noon.

The presence of many other mature forest-dwelling species is indicative that the Long Island unit should be good habitat for the CERW. Not a single individual turned up on later surveys in the Missouri bootheel, in the Fox Island Unit of the Great River NWR, nor on any of Veronica’s search areas in Iowa. I hope that researchers continue to find strongholds for Ceruleans in the Missouri Ozarks and Tennessee; perhaps someday they will re-colonize our big river bottomlands as well.

WILD, Unleashed, Unbound!

2012-07-03T13:59:00.001-07:00

By Alie Mayes, Education Intern

Last week, Ny and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to St. Louis to participate in the MDC’s Conservation Workshop for Teachers. This five day conferences covered an array of environmental education program materials and thanks to a grant from the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation, all materials and conference fees for participants were covered.

On Monday we met at Busch Conservation Area in St. Charles, MO. We spent the day learning about the MDC Discover Nature Schools. We did a fun activity with science note-booking (a theme which was carried throughout the week) and then broke into small groups for the targeted DNS training. I participated in the Nature Unleashed for grades 3-5 while Ny chose the Nature Unbound for high school students. I was impressed by the DNS program, and am glad that it is an option for Missouri schools. BUT, the highlight of the day was defiantly Nancy’s woodcock dance!

Alie and her frog friend at Busch Conservation Area.

Tuesday was probably my favorite day of the conference because we covered Project WILD. We met at Powder Valley Conservation Center and spent the day doing example projects from the program and going over how to use the program materials. And not to be outdone by Nancy’s wonderful woodcock dance, David Burns played and sang a little ditty about deer. It was a great day of Micro Trekking, dissecting owl pellets, and crafting fish.

Wednesday we found ourselves at the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in St. Louis for the Project WET portion. We did example projects such as “Water Olympics”, “Macro invertebrate Mayhem “, and “Just Passing Through”. We also took a mini field trip down to the Confluence to learn more about the history of the area and go on a short river edge hike.

Thursday we met at Rockwoods Reservation in Wildwood, MO for a fun filled day of Project Learning Tree. We did projects that focused on taking a second and closer look at trees, leaves, and “Birds and Worms”, which is a project that looks at camouflage and selection. This was a great example project to show how easy it is to modify these programs to cover a variety of topic. We also went over how to use PLT with DNS.

We ended the week with a much anticipated float trip down the Meramec River. The float was seven miles of exploration and fun. There were plenty of stops along the way to take time to swim, talk, and explore. At one stop we did Stream Team activities and looked at the macro invertebrates in the river. At lunch, Ny and I found the BEST swimming hole with a rock platform you could dive off of! The float trip ended with a fish fry hosted by MDC and a presentation of certificates.

This conference was very informative and well done. It was the first conference that the MDC had hosted that covered such large amount of materials, and I thought they did a FANTASTIC job. A special thanks to Liz Lyons, David Burns, Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Snider, and everyone else who helped. Also, Kevin took about a bazillion pictures during the week, which will be available at http://www.buschrockwoods.smugmug.com/