CSI West Kennebunk

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about finding evidence of a large bird having landed near some of our feeders and wondered if a hawk was haunting the area. These suspicious were confirmed last weekend. 

Around noon on Sunday, January 23, I looked out a second-floor window onto the feeding area and saw more marks made by large wing feathers in the snowbank; they're barely discernible in lower center right of this shot [click on it to bring up a larger copy of the image]:

Here's a close-up shot, taken from ground level:

Once I got a good look at the wing marks I began searching for further evidence. There was nothing right there under this feeder, but back up on the path  in front of the house there was plenty of it--lots of feathers in the path and in the snow banks:

There was one largish feather sticking out of the snow in a bank near the house:

I dug around it a bit and quickly uncovered a small trove of others:

Judging from the color, and the spots on some of them, I think the victim was most likely a Mourning Dove. Of which there are plenty around here. The photo on the Cornell site shows feather spots like quite clearly.

I kept looking around for more evidence and noted an odd depression in the snow on the opposite side of the path, on the lawn. I trudged through the knee-deep snow to get a better look and was rewarded by finding a very clear imprint of a large bird:

 

He or she came down facing the house, and had probably approached from one of the trees in the middle of the front lawn. I didn't think to measure the print but the most likely culprit was a Cooper's Hawk. It was definitely much larger bird than a Sharp-shinned Hawk like the one that crashed into the house in late December.

After gathering what evidence I could I made mental plans to do a blog post about what I'd found, but before I had the chance to do so the hawk struck again! On Wednesday afternoon, about 3:15, I again looked out at the feeder area from the upstairs window--I check the area frequently to see what visitors we're hosting--and saw what looked like a couple of feathers underneath the large bottle feeder. I went out to investigate, and, sure enough, it was a small tuft of feathers, this time with a bit of bloody flesh attached. These had a reddish tinge to them, so I suspect that a female Northern Cardinal was the victim this time. 

I again walked back towards the front of the house and again found the marks of large wings in the snowbank. [NOTE: The late-afternoon light was very poor for taking pictures so I've cranked up the contrast in this and the following shots to exaggerated, grossly unnatural levels in order to bring out the detail.]:

I went back in the house, thinking that I'd seen all that was to be seen, but when I looked out a second-story window at the front of the house I was surprised to again see a strange imprint in the snow. I went back out, camera in hand, and again trudged through the deep snow to get a better look. There, not ten feet from where the earlier imprint had been, and in much the same orientation, was clear evidence of another crash-landing by a large bird:

I don't quite know how to interpret the marks up near where the head was; it almost looks as though a Pterodactyl was here! The bird must have been thrashing around and those marks are tracks left by its beak.

This time I had the presence of mind to bring out a tape measure in order to give some sense of scale:

Again, click on the images to bring up a larger copies and to make the numbers on the tape readable. The spot where I placed the end of the tape was probably not where the top of the bird's head actually was, so the reading of 24" is probably too long. The Sibley guide gives 16.5" as the average length of a Cooper's Hawk; the Cornell site gives 14.6-15.4" as the average length for a male and 16.5-17.7" for a female -- females of most raptor species are generally larger than the males. If my bird really was nearly 2' long from stem to stern, that would suggest a Northern Goshawk. Not impossible, but Goshawks are birds of the deep woods. Unless and until I actually get a good look at our local predator, I'm going to assume that it's most likely a female Cooper's Hawk.

Since finding the second set of evidence I've been more vigilant about monitoring activity outside the house. So far there's been no further sign of the hawk. Thinking back, however, I recall that on the day before the second kill I'd noted some odd behavior from a male Hairy Woodpecker. Hairys are a nearly-constant presence at our suet, so it was not at all surprising to see one clinging to the tree just under one of the suet feeders. What was surprising was that when I checked again, several minutes later, he was still there, in nearly the same spot. I made subsequent checks over the course of several minutes, and though he moved a bit, he never got far from the position in which I first saw him. It was almost as if he was frozen to the tree. I finally went out to check on him, thinking there might be something wrong with him, but upon my approach he flew away very quickly. I wonder now if the "frozen" bird was adopting that posture to avoid being spotted by a hawk?

Barred Owls, Part 2

A few odds and ends to follow up on my post about Barred Owls from two days ago.

A nice framed print of Audubon's rendering of the Barred Owl is among the numerous bird images that hang in our home. It's a decent copy of the engraving that appeared in Audubon's magnum opus, The Birds of America. 

The image depicts the owl poised to nab a gray squirrel, one of his favorite menu items. The squirrel seems to be unnaturally cooperative, just sitting there, waiting to be snatched up. While it is true that Audubon took some flak for portraying scenes that were not always scientifically accurate, in this instance the fault may lie not with him, but with Robert Havell, the English engraver who transformed Audubon's original art works into images for the printed page. In Audubon's original painting there is no squirrel:

 

Audubon rendered the squirrel separately, and Havell combined the two images when he did the engraving. The original painting of the squirrel was, I believe, of a single animal, but it was used yet again in Audubon's second great work, The Quadrupeds of North America, with a companion added to the composition:

Audubon wrote of the Barred Owl [in his Ornithological Biography] that it "...is found in all those parts of the United States which I have visited, and is a constant resident. In Louisiana it seems to be more abundant than in any other state. It is almost impossible to travel eight or ten miles in any of the retired woods there, without seeing several of them even in broad day; and, at the approach of night, their cries are heard proceeding from every part of the forest around the plantations." [Text and images taken from the site Audubon Images.] 

Many other writers talk of the Barred Owl's relative abundance. Arthur Cleveland Bent, in his Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey, characterizes it as "our commonest large owl." Bent describes some of its habits: "It is a forest-loving bird, living mainly in the deep, dark woods, heavily wooded swamps, gloomy hemlock forests, or thick growths of tall, dense pines, where it spends most of the day in the quiet seclusion of its shady retreats. In such resorts it is seldom disturbed, but when its haunts are invaded it is not caught napping; it often greets the intruder with its weird hooting notes and flies about quite actively, even in broad daylight. Much of its hunting is done in the open country and about the farms, and in fall and winter it occasionally ventures into the villages and even into cities in search of food. "

Although modern ornithologists recognize only a single species of Barred Owl, given the Latin name Strix varia, in Bent's time [1937-38] there were thought to be two distinct species: the Northern (Strix varia varia) and Florida (Strix varia alleni). I do not know when the two were collapsed into one.

The Barred Owl has not just been the subject of painters and photographers, but of poets as well. Distinguished American poet Richard Wilbur has written of calming a young girl's fears engendered by hearing an owl's cry, in his poem, "A Barred Owl." The text, and an audio file of the poet reading his own work, can be found at the Poetry Archive. 

Then, of course, the bird's name itself has great literary connotations! Once, following a birding expedition on which I'd seen a Barred Owl, a friend who is an English professor and birder himself, asked if I'd seen any good birds. I told him that the most interesting thing I'd seen had been a "Shakespeare owl."  He didn't get it... 

Lots more information about all sorts of owls can be found on The Owl Pages. I've just barely begun to explore them. For a lovely online presentation of all the images from Birds of America, check out this virtual catalog from the Musée de la Civilisation in Montreal.

Brown Creeper

Before continuing with more about owls, I'll note--with delight!--that there's been a Brown Creeper hanging around the yard for the past few days. He or she has been joining the woodpeckers and nuthatches at the suet feeders. They're such fun to watch as they start at the bottom of a tree and go spiraling upwards around the trunk--just the opposite of the nuthatches, who start at the top and work their way downwards.

Brown Creepers fall into that category of birds that are not especially rare, but that are uncommon enough that visits from them, or sightings of them in the field, are always welcome. I've not made any attempt to photograph our present visitor; the shots below were taken almost a year ago--February 1, 2010--in Madison, Wisconsin, on a tree outside the Memorial Union on the Univ. of Wisconsin campus.

These little guys sure have the protective coloring thing down pat!

"Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?"

Owls have long been regarded as creatures of mystery and are held in awe by people in many cultures. In the contemporary popular imagination they are characterized as birds that possess great wisdom, but just as often they are viewed with fear and suspicion. Navajos, for example, traditionally see them as harbingers of death, or as the consorts of witches or other evil spirits. The fact that owls are creatures of the night and thus rarely seen goes a long way to building the aura of inscrutability that surrounds them. Also, their role as predators--many of them very large and powerful predators!--contributes to their reputation as birds to be reckoned with, and that must be treated with respect.

I love owls. Always have. Never see enough of them. I wish we had owls in our woods, if for no other reason than to keep the chipmunk and gray squirrel population in check. Only once have I heard owls here. One night, or, more precisely, very early one morning, last summer, when I was up late writing and had the windows open, I heard a pair of Barred Owls having a bit of a conversation in the woods down near the river. I daresay that the call of the Barred Owl is the one that is most familiar to the most people; the "who cooks for you?" pattern is easily recognized. And easily imitated. I have, on numerous occasions, had conversations with Barred owls at various spots in Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Kentucky. Sometimes of an evening I venture onto our screen porch here in Maine and try to call one up, so far without success.

But they are certainly around. An acquaintance on the Maine birding e-mail list who lives across the Mousam River, and somewhat upstream from us, has had a Barred Owl around regularly recently, and there are fairly frequent reports of them from around the state.  Barred Owls are generally regarded as the most common large owl in New England, and because they do sometimes hunt during the day, if people have a casual sighting of an owl it's most likely to be of a Barred Owl.

F'rinstance.....my son and daughter-in-law from California visited after Christmas this year. On the afternoon of December 30 we went for a drive around the area.  As we got near Cape Porpoise, just up the coast from Kennebunkport, Veronica suddenly said: "There's an owl!" I turned my head just in time to catch a glimpse of a nice Barred Owl perched low in a tree, right next to the road. I turned the car around and approached it slowly, pulling over to the right side of the road several feet shy of the owl.

My son, Dave, was in the back seat, on the right side of the car, and had his camera in hand. He lowered the window in the car and was able to get numerous nice shots through the open window.

 

The owl seemed unconcerned by our presence so Dave pushed his luck, slowly opened the car door, and got out. This gave him the chance to get some even closer shots, including a great one of the bird's impressive talons.

Woe be unto the mouse or chipmunk unfortunate enough to get in the path of this guy when he's in search of dinner!

Dave continued to creep ever closer and ended up getting a terrific portrait:

Eventually the owl decided he'd reached the limit of his tolerance and took off across the road, disappearing into the trees in the cemetery on the other side. Of course he did so just at a time when Dave was reviewing shots on his camera and was not poised to shoot, so he was not able to get any good photos of the bird in flight. But we were all delighted to have had such a long, clear, close look at this magnificent bird!

Ironically, the previous time I'd gotten what my friend Melissa calls a "walk-away look" at a Barred Owl [i.e., you have the chance to look at a bird as long as you care to and walk away only when you're good and ready] I was also with Dave. That time it was at Radnor Lake State Park, in Nashville, TN, early in January 2009. We were not far from the east parking lot, just beginning our walk around the lake, when we spotted an owl flying in the woods to our right, fairly close to the road. He landed in a tree on a limb overhanging a small creek, and was wonderfully visible from the trail. We stood on the bridge over the creek and Dave took numerous photos of the owl.  As he was shooting away I told him to relish the moment, because he'd never again get such a good look at a Barred Owl, or have a such good photo op with one! Boy was I wrong...happily so!

Tennessee owl.

As always, click on any of the photos to see larger copies of them.

I'll be back with a second post on Barred Owls soon!

Pair o' Pileateds!

I love the view out our home office window. We look out onto our woods, and since the office is on the second floor, and the land slopes away from the house, we have a good view into the upper parts of most of the trees. During migration season it's a great vantage point from which to spot a lot of warblers that might otherwise go undetected. A Cooper's Hawk has on occasion landed in the trees right outside my window, giving me the chance to engage in an eyeball-to-eyeball staring contest with him. In winter, with the leaves off the trees, the visibility is excellent. A couple of feeders hang by the deck that's below my office window, so I get to see a lot of chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, goldfinches, and small woodpeckers on their way to and from the lunch counter.

Late this morning, as I was staring vacantly out the window [an important part of the writing process!] I saw something large in one of the trees about midway between our house and the neighbor's. I grabbed the binoculars that live beside me on my desktop and quickly confirmed that I was seeing what I'd hoped it was--a Pileated Woodpecker! Sally quickly joined me, and it was not long before we realized that there was not one, but two woodpeckers on the same tree!  We've seen and heard Pileateds here before, but very infrequently, and not for some time.

We both ventured downstairs and out onto the deck for a better view. Took awhile to find the birds, but one showed itself again fairly quickly and we got some superb looks as it kept hopping from tree to tree. It worked its way around to the northeast end of the house, near where our suet feeders hang. We were hoping he/she would find the feeders, but no such luck. We never did see the second bird again, though we could hear it hammering.

We hope that they'll come around more often. There are numerous dead trees in the woods, some of which show signs of having been visited by Pileateds in the past. We deliberately do not make any effort to clean up these trees as they serve as food depots for numerous critters.

Our visitor this morning never came close enough for me to get any photos, so I'll have rely on Audubon for an illustration:

Audubon writes fairly extensively of the Pileated in his Ornithological Biography. I quote a small portion of his entry [taken from the site Audubon Images]:

While in the Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, of which I have repeatedly spoken, I was surprised to see how differently this bird worked on the bark of different trees, when searching for its food. On the hemlock and spruce, for example, of which the bark is difficult to be detached, it used the bill sideways, hitting the bark in an oblique direction, and proceeding in close parallel lines, so that when, after awhile, a piece of the bark was loosened and broken off by a side stroke, the surface of the trunk appeared as if closely grooved by a carpenter using a gouge. In this manner the Pileated Woodpecker often, in that country, strips the entire trunks of the largest trees. On the contrary, when it attacked any other sort of timber, it pelted at the bark in a straightforward manner, detaching a large piece by a few strokes, and leaving the trunks smooth, no injury having been inflicted upon it by the bill.

We did not have the opportunity today for such extended observation of its working habits. Anyone who has ever encountered a dead tree which a Pileated has dug into in search of lunch cannot help but be impressed with the power of the bird's ability to perform major excavations!

Another of my favorite bird writers, Edward Howe Forbush, also describes the Pileated's ability to wreak havoc on tree bark:

Pileated Woodpeckers are such powerful birds that they can split off large slabs from decaying stumps, strip bushels of bark from dead trees, and chisel out large holes in either sound, dead, or decaying wood. They like to strip the bark from dead pines, spruces, and especially hemlocks. Their size and strength and their long spear-like tongues enable them to penetrate large trees and draw out borers from the very heart of the tree.

Nearly as striking as the bird's power is its voice; its raucous call is said to have been the inspiration for the laugh of Woody Woodpecker in the cartoons, though I find any resemblance between the two to be comparable to that of the imitation fruit flavors of candy to the real thing. I well recall when as a teenager, walking in the woods on the Massachusetts farm on which I grew up, hearing a wild call that sounded for all the world to me like a monkey in the zoo! I gradually worked my way towards the sound, sometimes following it when whatever was making it moved about, and was eventually rewarded with a good look at its source: a large, beautiful Pileated Woodpecker! This experience served to forever imprint the sound on my brain.

Winter

This is the first full winter we've spent in the Maine house, so we've been anticipating some new visitors to the feeders and woods. So far, though, we've mostly had the Usual Suspects. There have been, and still are, a few Tree Sparrows around, and a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches have been here semi-regularly. There seem to be more White-breasted Nuthatches than usual--I've seen as many as four at one time.

 

They're always fun to watch, but because the Red-breasted are less common around here it's always more of a treat to see them. After not seeing many Goldfinches for awhile, they've come back in fairly good numbers. Even in their subdued winter plumage they're lovely little things. It's great to have plenty of Juncos around, and there also seem to be a few more Blue Jays than we've had in the past.

Although there's pretty constant traffic to the suet feeders, we aren't replacing the cakes as often as we were a few months ago. Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are around most of the time, helping themselves to the suet, but Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, and even our resident Crows patronize the suet at different times. 

 Today I saw a single Common Redpoll, probably a female, but it did not seem to hang around long. Odd to see just one, since they seem to be quite the flockers. We had quite a few here in February of 2009, along with a few of their Hoary cousins, but saw none at all last year. Apparently this is not unusual; the info on the Cornell site indicates that they typically are seen in the northern U.S. every other year.

In the meantime, other folks on the Maine bird list are reporting lot of Bohemian Waxwings, White-winged Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks, as well as Redpolls in various parts of the state. I hope that some show up here!

We have had a bit of avian excitement here, however. We got our first substantial snow of the winter just after Christmas, on December 27, to be exact. It was not a huge storm, but we got maybe 8" or so. As I was shoveling off the back deck that morning I was surprised to see a lot of feathers sticking out from under the snow. I brushed the snow off with my hands and was astonished to find not just some feathers, but an entire Sharp-shinned Hawk buried there, quite dead, and quite frozen!

 

It appears as though he broke his back. He was lying on his back when I found him. He must have run into the house, presumably in pursuit of a smaller bird, and perhaps confused and with his vision impaired because of the snow. The snow began sometime in the late afternoon the day before, and the collision must have happened soon after it started; he was completely covered by the snow. One odd thing about this is that we've never happened to see a Sharp-shin around here before. There's been one [or more] Cooper's Hawks around on occasion, and certainly Sharp-shins are not at all uncommon, but we'd just never seen one in the yard before.

So, now that I have this hawksicle, what am I to do with it? My understanding is that it's illegal for individuals to possess specimens of migratory birds [and I trust that nobody who reads this will bust me!], so I'd love to find a good home for him/her in some educational program. I offered the hawk to Wells Reserve for their education programs, but got a polite turn-down. Meanwhile, he resides in our freezer, in a very large zip-loc bag. 

We may have had another hawk in our yard early this morning. Yesterday was our heaviest snowfall of the winter. White stuff came down all day and there were still some flakes in the air when we went to bed last night. This morning, though, all was clear and we had a bright, sunny day. When I first peered out the bedroom window this morning into the yard where most of the bird feeders are, I was pleased to see all the tracks in the snow from all those Early Birds we always hear so much about.

All of these marks were probably made by the Chickadees, Juncos, Jays, etc. that feed here all the time. But I was puzzled by another set of marks nearby:

That claw-shaped mark in the left center of the shot was particularly intriguing [click on the image to get a larger copy of it]. It wasn't until later in the day, after we'd shoveled out the paths to the feeders and thus disturbed some of these marks that it finally hit me what that was--the pattern of the primary feathers on the end of a bird's right wing! A fairly sizable bird at that...possibly a Crow, but more likely a hawk of some sort. There's no obvious evidence of a kill, but there's certainly lots of other markings there in the snow. That hook-shaped pattern in the lower part of the shot is curious, and is something I still haven't quite figured out. To the right of center there is what could be marks made by the large bird's left wing. I regret that I did not tumble to what I was seeing sooner than I did, or we could have given the site a more thorough examination, with an eye to gathering forensic evidence, than we did!