Western Kingbird vs. Red-tailed Hawk

An angry Western Kingbird didn't hold back on its feelings towards this female Red-tailed Hawk.

S/he dived bombed the Red-tailed Hawk repeatedly in hopes of making her leave its territory.

But the red-tailed lives here, too. She's invested quite a bit in this ninth-hole golf estate with mountain views.

She knows the kingbird is over her shoulder, but won't acknowledge him and has no intention of leaving.

In fact she has a brood of three... fifty feet high, two trees away.

This whole squabble seems rather silly when you see the babies. They're five times bigger than the kingbird already.

Still, it is rather bold of the kingbird to take on a red-tailed, considering 'bird' is acceptable fare for a red-tailed hawk given any chance.

This baby is dining on packrat. The sibling are content to watch... already fed.

(Click any picture to enlarge)

Mother red-tailed keeps watch from the treetops. Dad comes and goes with food offerings. I haven't seen dad, but I heard he delivered a good sized snake recently. The parents don't tear up the young ones' food anymore. One youngster got the whole snake.

It's time for practice flying. In a three-foot nest, that requires consideration of one's nest mates.

Mother red-tailed circles the nest tree every fifteen minutes or so to keep an eye on things. It's a beautiful setting and also a relief from those annoying Western Kingbirds.

Allan

Credits: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
The Sibley's Guide to Birds

Abert's Towhee Baby

It's 'What's for Dinner'... a juicy green worm and a couple of crane flies.

This baby Abert's Towhee is newly out of the nest and very hungry. He was born in our lilac vine bush and that's his problem.

Both his parents provide him plenty of food, but he's trapped here in our backyard.

Abert's Towhees are mainly birds of Arizona's Sonoran Desert. They don't migrate and they stay close to their home territory all year long. They are ground-dwelling birds of brushy areas.

But people live here, too, and there are a lot of people.  People build fences around their homes. Fences keep out javelinas and coyotes, but fences are a baby bird's dilemma.

If your 'steel' fence could let a rattlesnake through, people put up an additional 'snake fence' to keep rattlesnakes out.

When a baby towhee is born behind one of these snake fences he's trapped.

Mom and Dad can easily fly over the fence, but it's tough on the little ones.

His parents perch nearby with plump treats encouraging baby to come. But he can't do it.

He flutters and claws, but runs out of energy half way up the fence.

It's only an eighteen inch wire barrier, but he's only weeks old and can't make the climb.

He drops down to find another way.

A parent offers food from the other side.

His nature is to hide, but that won't solve his problem. He looks again to join his parents.

(Click any picture to enlarge)

With perseverance and diligence he finds a seam in the fence.

With wing and claw he pushes, squeezes and struggles through into the desert beyond.

Freedom!

Allan



Credits: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
The Sibley's Guide to Birds

Cooper's Hawk Portraits

The neighborhood Cooper's Hawk lands on our railing twenty feet out our patio door. 

S/he visits several times a day in hopes of scoring a meal. 

I haven't witnessed any carnage lately, (i.e. feathers), so to be in good health, he must be eating regularly some place else.

A breeze from the Big Wash ruffles his young feathers.

I stand half inside the doorway. He certainly sees me. I'm not advancing, but he's not leaving either. I am close enough for portraits.

He turns his head in robotic start/stop motions, taking in every sight and sound. His head reacts to every shutter click. He's that close. He's not fazed.

He gave me a few exciting minutes. He even dropped to the ground and came back to the same spot on the railing.

But then he glides down into the wash and is gone.

I like to think he was tail-waving me good-bye here, though I could be wrong.

(Click any picture to enlarge)

Allan

Red-winged Blackbird

Have you ever meet a Red-winged Blackbird that LIKED YOU?
Red-winged Blackbirds have a reputation for being aggressive... towards PEOPLE.

They will get in your face and raise a racket. It's all a warning to let you know, you're in the wrong place.

Particularly aggressive ones will attack the top of your head and even draw blood, if you stray too close.

A female Red-winged Blackbird rests on a reed. She favors a cattail marsh to build a nest. Woven of plant material near the waterline it's lined with mud.

Her mate's territory may be shared with 5-15 other females if space permits. There is a lot of polygyny* in Red-winged Blackbird society.

It seems for all the bluff and bluster the males project, the females also get around. Genetic tests of offspring in a known territory have shown one-quarter to one-half come from different males.

Zoology a pattern of mating in which a male animal has more than one female mate.

With all this time and energy paid to protection, the Red-winged Blackbirds are surprisingly easy to observe.

They don't fly away.

To the contrary they'll come to you.

And they are not ALWAYS angry.

Sometimes they're calmly reflective.

Allan


(click any picture to enlarge)

Credits:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
The Sibley's Guide to Birds

Great Horned Owl

Owls hold a special fascination for me.

 

And, they seem to be just as interested in me as I am in them…

or maybe NOT. 

Being nocturnal, it could be that this Great Horned Owl was just too worn-out after a night of hunting to bother with one more problem…me. 

Maybe she  would rather I just go away, but she gave me no stress indications.

It’s their intense stare which makes one think they hold people interesting.
It's flattering being the center of an owl's world for one moment, captured in big yellow eyes, then calmly ignored by dozing in your presence the next.

This mother and owlet alternately stared and dozed.  They rested on what you'd called the front stoop of their home.  

Great Horned Owls dug or seized  this location, judging by the fresh gravel scattered 50 feet below.

               They only have one owlet.  Feathers littering the ground suggest they may have lost one or more.

Great Horned Owls are not defenseless.  With sizeable talons and a willingness to defend the nest at costs, the male stands guard an hour past sunrise. He was sleepy and his eyes would drift shut occasionally. 

If both parents happen to be napping at the same time, a skillful raptor could quickly grab an owlet.

I suspect that is what happened to this family.  

Two years ago I believe this same pair had three chicks.
  
(See: Feather Tailed Stories: 
Great Horned Owl & Pack Rat,
 link below)

While I trespassed on his territory, the male came out to investigate and draw me away from his bluff home.  

I had no desire to cause him stress so I stopped, as he had already given me a nice fly-by picture.  

He then flew to a distant branch and waited for me…I obliged by following.  He showed me how far away he wished me to stay and I respected it.

When night falls they will hunt again, unless the owlet demands food sooner. Daytime hunts are common, when necessary.

I’m not likely to capture a  Great Horned Owl's nighttime hunt, but I’m sure it’s fascinating.

Allan

(Click any picture to enlarge)

   

http://feathertailedstories.blogspot.com/2012/07/great-horned-owl-pack-rat.html

Lincoln’s Sparrow

Spring is arriving late to Wisconsin this year. March is feeling like February and new snow is falling on old snow. 

A migrating bird would struggle to find food here.  Besides the snow, the lingering cold has kept the tree buds from swelling.  Tree buds are a food source for the early-arriving males. Males come early to establish territories and the emerging tree buds are important to their survival. 

While I wait for Wisconsin temperatures to rise and the spring migration to peak, here is a Lincoln’s Sparrow from a warmer time and place.

It’s been noted that the Lincoln’s Sparrow is shy, elusive and a difficult bird to approach.  That may be true, but I found this one to be remarkably accommodating. Wary, but unafraid, he watched me…one eye at a time.  Swiveling his head from left to right and back again, he was alert to all threats.  Approaching him slowly, a few feet at a time, we shared the warm sunshine of San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Southeastern Arizona. 

Widespread and common, it’s likely you’ve already seen a Lincoln’s Sparrow. 

Recognizing a Lincoln’s Sparrow from all the other sparrows is more difficult though. They’re ground feeders.  The Lincoln’s Sparrow prefers to forage alone, so he’s seldom seen in flocks, but that is hardly a helpful clue to identifying one.  

To identify sparrows you have to pay close attention to feather detail. Sparrows are confusingly similar…you learn by trial and error. It’s not easy! 

When you get it…you’ve learned something new…something worth knowing…a reward for paying attention.    

Allan

Dark-eyed Junco

That black and white, sparrow-sized bird you see under your bird feeder in the winter is probably a Dark-eyed Junco.  He’s a ground feeding bird and he scratches the snow for seeds tossed down from above.  Snow is not a hardship for him…he prefers it.  In spring when temperatures begin to warm up, he will leave middle-latitude Wisconsin for a cooler Alaska or Canada.

     Highly variable in pattern and color, there are several different Dark-eyed Juncos including ‘pink-sided’, ‘white-winged’ and ‘Oregon’. The common one to Wisconsin has a white breast, slate gray head with a pinkish bill and a dark eye.

In Arizona I found this pink-sided, Dark-Eyed Junco scratching in the desert.

At seventy-five hundred feet of elevation on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, I found this yellow-eyed, Dark-eyed Junco at home in the snow. Dark-eyed Juncos are year-round residents at cooler elevations.

  

This one preened and cleaned in a dogwood bush until he noticed me watching him, then he froze and remained that way for a time-stamped twenty-minutes.  

                                                     All the while he keep one yellow eye fixed on me. 

Often traveling in the company of other birds such as finches, doves, cardinals, nuthatches and chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos are easy to attract. Lucky for the Dark-eyed Juncos a lot of millet seed ends up on the ground, discarded by the pickier eaters overhead.  This suits the Dark-eyed Junco just perfectly.

For a few cents worth of millet you might get a kitchen window bird show all day long. They won’t be here for long though.  Spring will come again.

Allan

White-nosed Coati

Occasionally I come across animals other than birds.  The White-nosed Coati is one of those animals.  You may have seen one in a zoo or, if traveling, in Central or South America.  I saw this one in the Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona.  Southwestern United States forms the northern border for the coati. The coati is a member of the raccoon family.    

Raccoons are common in Wisconsin and so is the coati in his homeland.     

A big male coati could weigh eighteen pounds and by guessing, this one looks to be that size.  Males are solitary and I will leave it up to you to guess the gender of this one.  It was alone.

Due to the solitary life style of the males, they were singularly called ‘coatimundis’ and once thought a separate species. 

Contrarily, the females lead a highly social life of up to twenty-five individuals apart from the males, except during breeding season.

The coati has a thick skin and non-retractable claws and claimed to be a formidable fighter against predators such as the jaguar. 

He can climb a tree if an escape is prudent and returns to the ground headfirst with flexible wrists that rotate backwards. 

His nose isn’t deformed it’s pliable. He searches the leaf litter for invertebrates and seeds, but eats a wide variety of foods.  His tail is long, but useless for gripping.  It's used more for balance or signaling others, ‘This is my food and you stay away’.    

Happy to be foraging in the daylight, this one wasn’t shy and stayed around for a while.  He was quite entertaining and made a different sort of Feather Tailed Story for me.  

Allan

Elegant Trogon

The Elegant Trogon isn’t your typical backyard bird.  You can’t see one whenever you’d like.  They won’t come to your Wisconsin birdfeeder, no matter what.  You will have to travel to see them. They live in remote areas far from people, but they don’t seem to fear people.  Far southeastern Arizona is the only place you’re likely to find one in the United States.

The Elegant Trogon is special.  He has a square-tip tail and round-tip wings. He has a red belly and a blue-green back.  His wingspan is 16 inches.   Black and white, brown and gray feathers round out his color palette with a bright red eye ring for accent. Maybe that’s why people travel so far to see him…he looks so strange.

He's a prize for birders. Compare him to: ‘Box Seats’, ‘A-Hole-in-One’ or ‘Babe Ruth’s rookie card’ to understand the level of mystique this bird holds. 

Colleen and Stein Simonsen (pronounced: ‘Stain’ in Norwegian) went to South America to see one last year. I met them on the Carrie Nation Trail in Madera Canyon, Arizona. They’re from Idaho, now living part-time in Arizona. They wanted to see an Elegant Trogon here in North America too.  We hiked together up and down the mountain trails and stood quietly for hours, our backs to each other, so we could scan the trees in 360 degrees.  Waiting for a trogon to show up takes patience, but our patience paid off.

About mid-April Elegant Trogons start moving up into Southern Arizona.  They’re looking for nesting sites along mountain slopes with Sycamore trees, one of their favorite nesting trees.  Birders flock (no pun intended) to these areas to search for the Elegant Trogon.  Bandoliered with binoculars and all lengths of lens, they’re in hopes of seeing or maybe just hearing an Elegant Trogon. 

The word was out on this year’s Elegant Trogon sightings in Madera Canyon and birders were anxious to be the next lucky person.  But Colleen, Stein and I were next!  We found this one where one had been spotted before…about a mile up, along a mountain snowmelt stream.  Perched about thirty-feet over my head, his red belly was fully exposed.   I didn’t have the birder credentials to be this fortunate, but I gladly accepted this prize. 

The Elegant Trogon is not without shortcomings though. For a bird named Elegant, he has a less than elegant voice.  His voice has been rightly compared to a hoarse barking dog.  I might add a dog crossed with an oinking pig.  Few would say his call is elegant.  It’s good he calls out, though, because that’s how you find him. His barks give him away in the dense cover of trees.  But for what he lacks in song, he more than makes up in elegant plumage. 

 

Allan

April 2012