Images by Gary Brandenburg – A winter wonderland of frosty tree limbs helped add magnificence to the panorama final week. Freezing mist/fog allowed moisture to construct up on the bushes in a tremendous manner. The chance to make new images was the theatre. All of the photographer needed to do was discover a prepared topic or topics to deal with each the frost and the creature. That is how a bald eagle was noticed close to North Heart Avenue and allowed me to report some photos taken on my lengthy lens digicam. Then I got here house whereas observing a again deck feeding station, the nice gentle and compliant Downy woodpeckers allowed me to report extra pure historical past moments. It’s good to see these birds, large or small, going about their day by day lives looking for meals to outlive.
The American bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is now a typical sight in winter, spring, summer time, or fall for anybody all in favour of watching the skies or tree strains. A giant-bodied chook sitting on a tree department is at all times value a re-assessment.
And if the positioning lends itself to doing a photograph op, even higher. In as we speak’s image of the eagle perched on a snow-covered department, the whiteness of the snow and the darkness of the tree’s bark had been an ideal match to the whiteness of the eagle’s head and the darkness of the feathers of its physique.
I solely managed to take two images of this grownup eagle earlier than it took off in flight, so I tracked it down with my digicam and was fortunate to get some respectable in-flight pictures of this large chook. I do not know if this eagle is male or feminine. Females are bigger and have a wingspan of eight ft.
Males are smaller in physique with a wingspan of six and a half to seven ft. Females can weigh wherever from 12 to 14 lbs. Males are often lower than eight to 10 kilos. If two mature bald eagles are standing subsequent to one another, maybe at a nest web site, the male will stand 32 inches and the feminine 42 inches.
Estimates of the whole variety of bald eagles hovering within the sky on the time the settlers arrived ranged from 25,000 to 75,000 over the continental United States. The issue with such a large unfold in numbers for this estimate is that the hole is big.
No person actually is aware of what number of there as soon as was. What may be safely mentioned is that it was quite a bit. What will also be mentioned is that eagle numbers have declined dramatically because of habitat loss and persecution throughout the 200 or so years of settlement actions.
Quick ahead to the current day, and biologists have realized an incredible deal about habitat wants, improved land conservation methods, and optimistic training to the general public concerning the position that enormous avian predators play in wholesome ecosystems. Regular development has been documented in census observations of eagle populations throughout Iowa for the reason that Seventies. What was as soon as uncommon is now widespread.
Examination of eagle websites in Iowa, significantly Decorah, Iowa, reveals nest shopping for and lively protection by breeding pairs of bald eagles. Distant cameras monitor actions within the nest on a regular basis.
It’s at all times fascinating to watch the interactions of the vultures as they carry meals to their mate, exchanging duties of incubating the eggs, and later within the spring the younger vultures take part in feeding items of rabbit, fish, duck or different crumbs of pulverized power.
There are about 10 to 12 bald eagle nesting websites in Marshall County. Quickly, these nests would develop into the focus for a lot eagle exercise.
Nevertheless, throughout the winter months of January and February, Saylorville Lake will host round 100 roosting eagles. Purple Rock Lake will do the identical.
The open water under the dams of those lakes ensures straightforward recognizing of fish and meals gathering.
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The opposite little chook featured as we speak is the little woodpecker. It’s referred to as the Downy Woodpecker.
It’s a small-bodied woodpecker that lives all yr in southern Canada and a lot of the decrease 48 states. The quick, sharp beak is used to look the hollows of the bark of bushes for bugs, and to get into deeper bugs, it – like all woodpeckers – has an extended tongue for probing areas.
A fast search of biology notes discovered that woodpecker tongues are used as particular instruments for locating hidden meals. The chisel-like invoice can poke holes in woody materials to entry an insect-bearing cavity. The tongue then does the remainder of the work to seek out and extract any edible meals.
Nature photographers attempt every kind of inventive methods to seize the mysteries of birds. It is one factor to get nice photos of a chook, but it surely’s fairly one other to get a movement image of a woodpecker analyzing the tongue of a woodpecker as a result of the motion is so quick.
I have been fortunate to catch hummingbirds with their tongue protruding sipping sweetened water at summer season feeders. Catching a Robin whereas pulling an earthworm out of the soil is way simpler mentioned than achieved.
Likewise, the duty of seeing a woodpecker’s tongue extract a larva or different insect is a uncommon feat. What’s completely different about woodpecker tongues is the size, with the tongue wrapping behind the cranium and pointing up the beak.
A particular bone referred to as the hyoid is a muscle wrapped within the higher beak. The tissues of the tongue are divided into two elements as they move backwards and behind the highest of the cranium, after which progress to the decrease jaw and the beak. The overall size of the tongue may be as much as a 3rd of the chook’s physique size though this will likely range with different species of woodpecker.
Woodpeckers’ brains are protected by distinctive cranial bone plates and particular spongy bony areas that assist take up shock and distribute any shock away from the mind. Excessive-speed cameras used to seize slow-motion 3D movies of woodpeckers in motion reveal pecking particulars that will in any other case be too quick for us people.
Woodpeckers pecking at useless tree branches is a method different woodpeckers can hear the echoing impact of their staccato messages. It’s the equal of human speak, or different birds singing, as different birds are continually speaking.
Mom Nature is manner smarter than we predict. That is good.
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There are some actually nice and thrilling packages coming subsequent month to Grimes Farm and Conservation Centre. The primary is the date of February 14th at midday, really from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm, for a program about South Georgia Island.
Photographer Ty Smedes can be displaying his work on a latest go to to South Georgia which lies within the South Atlantic Ocean, midway between the tip of South America and Africa. This 100-mile-long island is house to an estimated 100 million birds.
Footage of Ty could be nice recordings of what he lives on on this particular location. Name MCCB at 641-752-5490 earlier than February 10 to enroll on this free program.
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On February twenty second from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, there can be an antler measurement program. This may even be situated at Grimes Farm.
That is additionally free, however you should register earlier than February seventeenth as house is restricted. Name 641-752-5490 relating to this program.
Anybody curious as to what outcome an antler set may get and the way that result’s obtained could be all in favour of observing the method. The antlers may very well be from an animal taken final season or a deer taken a very long time in the past. An ancestor might have taken many moons way back.
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Gary Brandenburg is the retired Director of Marshall County County Council. Graduated from Iowa State College with a BA in Fish and Wildlife Biology.
Name him at:
PO Field 96
Albion, IA 50005
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Images by Gary Brandenburg – A winter wonderland of frosty tree limbs helped add magnificence to the panorama final week. Freezing mist/fog allowed moisture to construct up on the bushes in a tremendous manner. The chance to make new images was the theatre. All of the photographer needed to do was discover a prepared topic or topics to deal with each the frost and the creature. That is how a bald eagle was noticed close to North Heart Avenue and allowed me to report some photos taken on my lengthy lens digicam. Then I got here house whereas observing a again deck feeding station, the nice gentle and compliant Downy woodpeckers allowed me to report extra pure historical past moments. It’s good to see these birds, large or small, going about their day by day lives looking for meals to outlive.
