New, rare and wonderful birds

BY JOHN KARRIGAN

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The last couple (or more?) of months I have started out writing about the odd weather. The weather is still odd (in my opinion), now giving us serious drought conditions. But I will write about birds instead, at least to start with.

After a gap of several years, a rare bird passed through the yard just before sunset, on Sept. 14!! A Ruby-throated Hummingbird!! First I saw a strange small bird shadow moving on the west side of the garage. I could see neither a normal size bird in the yard nor a large bird far away that had made the shadow. I went for a close look and found the hummingbird, quickly checking out small red flowers as it moved through the yard from south to north. The whole event took less than 30 seconds, so it could easily have been missed.

Another unusual yard bird, but not nearly as unusual as the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, is a Hairy Woodpecker that is now coming to the yard feeders several times a day. Some of the Hairy’s considerably smaller but similar looking woodpecker relatives, Downy Woodpeckers, have been coming to the feeders quite often, sometimes with young, for some time. You can watch Downies from a few feet away. So far, the Hairy does not want any close yard company. There are a moderate number of Hairies and Downies in the park, sometimes easy to see, and sometimes out of sight, for a lot of the time.

The Goldfinches, Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, English Sparrows and Cardinals are still regular in the yard. The House Finches, Robins and Mourning Doves seem to have moved on. At least one White-throated Sparrow has made a fall yard appearance.

Now from the yard to the park. I will start out with the scary, troubling part and then get to the various new arrivals and regular birds and maybe another scary part. At the start of my park walk on the moderate 80-degree late afternoon of Sept. 15, I saw a small sign on a tree. I thought the sign would be about a lost pet or some sort of neighborhood children’s event. Instead it was one of many small identical signs, one on every Ash tree in the park, warning about the danger and devastation of the Emerald Ash Borer insects. The ash borers are now in the state and the city and as any park user can see, the loss of all those trees would make a major change in the park, for all the birds, animals, people and most anything else in the park. And many of us who have lived here for a while, of course, remember the change the Dutch Elm disease brought to the city. And if you have done much traveling to the east of here, you may have seen what ash borers have done to some areas, and if you have seen some areas of the mountain west, you know what the Pine Bark Beetles are doing to the mountains and forests for the last few years in those areas. I have seen the problems both in the east and the west, and really get troubled when I imagine the terrific tree loss that could come to Powderhorn. I am not much of a tree expert, so I was glad to read in the next day’s (Sept. 16) StarTribune story about the Powderhorn Park Ash tree tagging, that borer infected trees can, and hopefully will, be saved by timely chemical treatments.

Back to birds and other more pleasant things. The Herons seem much less visible in September but I still see the Great Blue Heron on some occasions, and a Black-crowned Night Heron fairly regularly (often at night). I have seen a couple of fairly large schools of goldfish in the lake recently. This might be what is keeping the increasing numbers of Double-crested Cormorants and Ring-billed Gulls happy.

There are often up to two dozen Cormorants and almost as many Gulls on the lake lately.

From one to three Pied-billed Grebes have returned to the lake for their usual fall visit, and the Canada Goose numbers are again getting quite high. The Mallard and Wood Duck numbers are about the same, but some (at least three) of the mature male Wood Ducks have returned from their “summer up north” to rejoin their families in preparation for migration. Of course, the lake is as low as it has been all year, but the water birds seem OK with that and so is the muskrat, which I saw in the middle of the night in mid-month. There might actually be two or three muskrats.

Small flocks of White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos (a member of the Sparrow family) arrived about Sept. 20. The Juncos will probably stay in the park and various backyards all winter. I saw a pair of Eastern Phoebes in the park today (Sept. 25). I usually see some Phoebes in the park in spring and some years I see them all year and they have young. Other years I only see them during migration times. I don’t know what they have been up to this year. They could have been here all summer, just staying out of sight.

I have seen various migrating warblers in the park in the last few weeks. I am sure I saw Yellow-rumped, Canada, Cerulean and Common Yellowthroats. I saw various other members of the warbler family but never well enough to positively identify them. As the experts say, fall warbler identification can be difficult because most female warblers and first-year male warblers are in very dull non-breeding plumage.

I was able to easily identify a Cooper’s Hawk though today. I saw one quite high over the park and quite noisy. It was probably one of the Powderhorn hawk family, but I don’t know if it was a parent or one of the new siblings.

Now to the other scary part I said I might write about. On Sept. 19 and 20, I received reasonable reports about a coyote in the park. All the reports had the coyote near the lake, in three different places, none near the park building end of the lake. I have seen no coyote or any evidence of one, but I don’t know what I would see except the animal itself. I have no idea what it is or was up to, but I don’t think there are any good places for it to stay in the park on a regular basis. But who knows? It could just be looking for a good place to live, or it could have found a place somewhere nearby. Coyotes are upsetting people in various suburbs (some nearby) and are entering various new territories. Time will tell. They seldom eat adults. Actually they never seem to eat anybody.

Comments and observations are always welcome. Send them to me, in care of Southside Pride. Thank you.