The Babies of Spring: Great Horned Owls and Red-tailed Hawks

One of the wonderful pleasures of spring bird-watching is the possibilities of catching sight of the new chicks. The birds of course go to great lengths to keep their children hidden from predators, but once in awhile one gets lucky and gets a peek at some of the young ones. Today I stopped by the covered bridge a few miles up the Tuolumne River and found that the Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) had hatched and there were at least two chicks in the nest. No matter what stage of life they are in, I find the stare of an owl unsettling.

I haven't been allowed back to work at my campus, but there are no rules against walking around the grounds, so I stopped there last week to see if the Red-tailed Hawks had laid eggs or not. The pair have been around for weeks, but I didn't see them on the nest they used last year, but as I looked carefully I saw something move up there.

Zooming in, one can see there is at least one baby present. I couldn't tell if there were others. They fledged two young ones last year.

Spring rolls on! I'll be watching for the Ospry babies next. There are at least four active nests up the river.

Hey, That's Avian Harassment! When the Little Guys Get to Win

 Allow me a few moments to relate a story...

Those who've known me in my latter fatter days will have a hard time believing that I was once half the man I am today. I mean that literally; I was 6'2" and weighed 130 pounds. That meant that I was better adapted to competing on the cross-country team as opposed to, say, football. We did okay in those days, but the real winners among our high school teams were the water polo players. Big, heavy, but buoyant, those guys fought dirty underwater and made mincemeat of the other teams in the conference.

Somewhere along the way, someone suggested a tackle football game between the monstrous water polo players and the skinny, mostly short cross-country runners. To say we looked overmatched was an under(water)statement. But come the end of the season (when injuries wouldn't be as consequential) the game was on. If you consider that I was the main lineman and tackle, you can guess at the effectiveness of both defense and offense. It was going to be a bloodbath.

But it wasn't.

We were small, nimble, and fast. When they tried a run up the middle, we mostly got knocked over, but we got up and swarmed the ball carrier. They scored a few touchdowns. When we had the ball, we linemen got knocked over every time, but the quarterback could run fast, and so could the receivers. When the game was over, we prevailed. The little guys were victorious for once!

I remembered that game from so many years ago because of two pictures I took this week. They're grainy and out of focus, but they show hawks being harassed by much smaller birds. In the first picture, a Western Kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis) is chasing and attacking a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) above the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail in Waterford. The other shows a Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) attacking a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensus) on the campus of CSU Stanislaus. The action is called mobbing, and the smaller birds are defending their nests from predation, or protecting their territory. The small agile birds are generally not in a great deal of danger because of their speed and mobility, not unlike a bunch of small thin cross-country runners playing football against big heavy water polo players.

The Red-Tailed Hawk Babies are Born! The Newest Raptors at MJC...

The Red-tailed Hawk babies have hatched! I've been watching the activity around the nest since late February when I first noticed the parent hawks building the nest. I feared the eggs might have been lost at one point during a particularly violent windstorm a few weeks ago. I was comforted when the parents were cursing at me in hawk language when I walked by a few days later. Today I thought I saw something move that wasn't "hawk" colored. It was downy white instead. Out came the camera, and there is at least one chick. There may be more...I'll be watching and reporting as I see anything. The hawk baby  (or babies) will be in the nest for around six weeks before they start flying and getting trained in hunting skills.

ADDENDUM: There are TWO chicks (so far)

Something New at MJC: A Nesting Pair of Red-tailed Hawks

Things have been afoot at MJC's West Campus over the last few weeks. A lot of birds have been agitated by the presence of some Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). I've seen Red-tails there fairly often, but most of the time they've been soaring high above the campus and over the surrounding territory. Lately though, a pair has been loitering around the sheep pasture and pond on the northwest corner of the campus. The Yellow-billed Magpies and several other species have been rather unhappy about these unwelcome neighbors, and I've seen them trying to harass the Red-tails a couple of times.

I suspected that they might be nesting, but I was having a tricky time confirming it. There are two large nests in a Deodar and a Eucalyptus tree on the south side of the pond, but during the last two weeks I couldn't see any birds occupying either of the nests. Until this week. I spotted one of the hawks carrying nesting material, and it eventually alit in the Eucalyptus and seemed to be watching me.

I walked away towards the other end of the pond and eventually the bird hopped over to the empty nest and started to work on the lining. They are obviously getting ready for babies. That's a first for the campus, at least during the last three years that I've been paying attention to such matters. I'll keep an eye on things and see if I can get some pictures of the young ones....

Red-tailed Hawk Up Close: A Three Day Story...

I don't know what to make of this. I rarely get all that close to Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) on my travels. When I've gotten close-ups, it was because I was in my car at a wildlife refuge, in essence from a movable blind. When I'm on foot, they tend to give me a wide berth, spooking and flying off long before I approach. And they're usually perched up high, on telephone poles and in the highest trees.

But for the last three days that I've walked the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail, there's been an individual hawk (or several, I can't be sure) that has been perched close to the trail, and who really didn't care that I was there. It was great to get these two shots (above and below) on the first day...

But the next day, on New Year's morning, it happened again! It was perched just fifteen feet or so above the trail on one of the old snags. And it watched patiently while I took pictures again.

In some of the pictures I could see flecks of blood from its last meal.

But today was the most unusual. I saw the bird perched in one of the oak trees just ten feet above the trail. I had to walk by if I was going to get anywhere and I assumed that it would fly long before I approached. But it didn't. It just watched me as I padded closer and pulled up my camera. I was moving slowly of course, but I was amazed that it just watched me. I got the opening picture of the blog, and the one below. And the bird never moved.

It's hard to imagine getting any closer to a wild bird (without getting really scratched up). But that was the way of it. I know other people walked by without spooking it (but they didn't notice the bird either), but I'm still curious why this one didn't flee. It would be nice to know that it's seen me on the trail so many times that it doesn't see me as a threat anymore, but that seems unlikely. Then again, maybe it's thinking "If I could lure that one in, I wouldn't have to hunt again for a couple of weeks..." (cue the Jurassic Park dinosaur attack theme...).

What's For Dinner? For the Red-tail, it's Something Reptilian...

Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) have a rather strained and tenuous relationship with the other birds on the West Campus of Modesto Junior College. As often as not I see them being mobbed by crows or magpies, and I'm sure they are guilty of consuming the occasional unsuspecting or careless bird. But tonight it was rather clear that they enjoy reptiles in their diet as well. I was standing by the sheep pond on the northwest corner of the campus, which is pretty much the most wilderness-like part of our campus. I sensed a large bird soar over me and the hawk landed in the tree in front of me with dinner hanging out of its mouth. It was a strange sight, to say the least. It gave me a few quizzical looks and took off for a tree a little farther away to finish dinner without the paparazzi snapping pictures...

Does anyone know what reptile the victim is?

Red-tailed Hawk Hovering for Dinner at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge

I always try, but I rarely get good pictures of hawks or eagles in flight. It's not easy to focus in on a moving target and get much of a picture, but today was a little bit different. There was a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) hovering, or kiting, over the empty fields around the viewing platform on Beckwith Road (part of the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge). It was hovering in place long enough to get focused in. It didn't get any dinner while we watched, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Things were pretty quiet otherwise at the viewing platform. We saw dozens, maybe a hundred or two of the Sandhill Cranes off in the distance, but no geese. It may be that they were out foraging for food, but it is also possible that they have begun the journey north to the Arctic. The viewing platform usually closes in March when the birds are gone.

Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk on the California Prairie

We saw quite a few species on our short excursions through the California prairie last weekend. As we drove south from the Willms Ranch stock pond, we passed a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) on Crabtree Road. It didn't worry about us enough to fly off, but it certainly kept an eye on us.

I'm slowly getting better with my identifying of hawk species, but Red-tails can be especially challenging because their coloration is highly variable (in other words, I could be wrong and welcome corrections, as always). The hawk is one of the most visible raptors in North America with a range that extends from Panama and the Caribbean Sea to Alaska and the Arctic Circle.

Red-tailed Hawks at Pillar Point near Half Moon Bay

The Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) is probably the most common raptor in northern and central America (it's also endemic here, being found nowhere else in the world). I certainly see them all the time at home, living as I do in the former prairies of the Great Valley in California. They are a long-lived species as well, with at least one known to have survived for thirty years.

This pair caught my eye last weekend when we exploring around Pillar Point north of Half Moon Bay on the California coast. They were perched on the fence surrounding the Pillar Point airfield and didn't fly off as we drove by, so I stopped and snapped a couple of shots.

Little known fact: Every hawk or eagle in the entire world sounds exactly like a Red-tailed Hawk. Well, o.k., not really. But just about every movie hawk or eagle sounds like a Red-tail. It's the stock sound effect. Like the Wilhem scream, or the screech of tires when an airplane lands. The call of the hawk in the real world is wonderful to hear, however.

Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

Hawks for me are skittish. Probably with good reason, they don't like it much when humans get too close. So, although I see them often enough, the pictures I get are often pretty distant and fuzzy. We were on our way home after Thanksgiving and made a stop at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge near the town of Willows in the northern Great Valley.

There were lots of birds out and about, as this is the big migration season, but some of my favorite shots were of this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). It was perched in a tree only 20 or so feet away from our vehicle. Mrs. Geotripper had to point it out to me because I was focused on distant birds and simply missed it hiding in the foreground!

Actually, It's not such a surprise that I didn't see it right away. The color pattern on its breast was an almost perfect camouflage against the branches and leaves. 

As always, I'm always a bit unsure of my hawk identifications, so I happily accept corrections.

Red-tailed Hawk on the West Campus "Mini-wilderness", Where Big Plans are Afoot

Unlike many colleges and schools, our campus has been blessed with a lot of land, and some of it has been kept as undeveloped habitat. I've mentioned quite a few times the mini-wilderness that sits on the northwest side of Science Community Center. It is a drainage pond that has been ignored more or less since the 1940s. It is thick with cattails, and the trees include mature Valley Oaks, Cottonwood and Elms. Sheep occasionally graze the plot, but most of the time it serves as wildlife habitat. I've noted three dozen species of birds hanging out on the little section at one time or another. Last year more than a thousand American Robins wintered in the trees there.

We had some good news about the pond and mini-wilderness last month. We are developing an outdoor education area adjacent to our Great Valley Museum, a facility that will include native vegetation, geological displays, and natural animal habitats. It was to include a pond, but the ongoing drought put that out of the planning. We instead are planning for a vernal pool, a dryland environment that will illustrate one of the Great Valley's most unique habitats. But we'll still get a pond, because one is already in place. We'll be adapting the pond in the mini-wilderness into part of the educational experience with some walkways and an access point for collecting water samples.

I often walk around the pond during my breaks, and today I got a rare treat. A Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) was patrolling the area and making the other birds a bit nervous. It soared around the campus a couple of times and moved off to the west into the farmlands beyond, but not before perching for a few minutes. I don't see them on campus often, but it's good to know they are around.