Tag Archives: Cooper's Hawk

Hawks definitely do not like children

By 18:30, the smoke and the temperatures were cooperating and it seemed like a good time to go and check on the Cooper’s Hawk family in Assiniboine Park. When I arrived at the Park, there were several cricket games going on, families were meeting and sharing a pot luck outside – many for the first time since spring 2020, there were birthday parties and children running around.

When I found the spot and knew where the hawks had their nest and were hunting for bugs and chipmunks the other day, there were children running around. I could see the hawks in the sky circling. They never went to the nest tree or came to the ground. It is the life of a birder. It would be wonderful to see them a few more times before migration. The Canada Geese do not usually begin leaving until the middle of September through to the end of October. I have seen some miss the group and wind up walking about on an early snow. Weather is such a significant factor in the challenges our birds face.

For those who are not sure what migration actually is. Our feathered friends Move from one area for breeding during the spring and summer to another area for winter. They have adapted to the pattern of coming and going in order to survive. It is based on food supplies.

Different species travel different routes to their winter homes. These are long journeys. For example, the Ospreys in the United Kingdom will travel some 8,000 kilometres or 5,000 miles to places in Africa. The birds will fly over land, sea, and desert to reach their destinations. People wonder why the birds just don’t live in Africa all the time. The answer is rather simplistic: there would not be enough nesting sites or food for all of them plus their chicks. There are also a lot of very hungry predators ready to take those lovely fluffy little ones. So they disperse from Africa to sites in the United Kingdom and Europe.

The birds decide when it is time for them to migrate. The hormones in their body begin to change. Unlike spring when this hormone change leads to breeding, the autumn sees the birds restless until they know that it is time to depart. These hormones trigger a lot of eating. Fat begins to gather under their skin. They gain weight. It is that fat that will see them through their migration. Still, they stop and feed along the way. Normally they hunt for food in the early mornings and late afternoons. High pressure systems are good for flying but low pressure systems bring winds and rain. When the birds get into a low pressure system, they will normally stop flying, if they can, and wait til another high pressure system comes through. Migration times vary because of the winds and the weather. Birds that soar and ride the thermals can travel as much as 465 km or 300 miles in a stretch. Some gather in flocks like the storks in Latvia and Estonia. Sometimes birds pair up to migrate. For the Ospreys, the female leaves and the male stays behind until there are no fledglings crying for food.

Not all birds migrate. Even I have a sedentary Sharp-shinned Hawk that defies all logic to stay on the Canadian prairies for the winter. The Osprey in Australia do not migrate. The birds in the Amazon Rainforest do not migrate. There is plenty of food and nesting sites for them year round. This past spring and early summer there was much discussion over the migration of birds from Florida. In Jacksonville, Samson, the father of Legacy, stays in the area of the nest year round. Gabrielle, on the other hand, migrates north – yes north – to cooler summer climates. This year she might have discovered it is hotter up north! Even some of the Ospreys in Florida do not migrate; they stay year round. There are plenty of fish for them as well as nests.

Birds take different routes. The White Storks from Latvia either taken a western route or an eastern route. Dr Erick Greene and his team in Montana study the migratory movements of the Ospreys from the Clark Fork River area with satellite transmitters. In the United States, some fly over Hawk Mountain where there is an annual count. In fact, you can go to this site to see the number of birds traveling over this marvellous area with its thermals. Here is the link for you for their autumn migration count that will being in about a week!

https://www.hawkmountain.org/conservation-science/hawk-count

Migration is extremely challenging and we hope that all of the adults will return to their nests the following spring and that we will see the juveniles who take their first flight to Africa in a couple of years.

And now for some birding and nest news

Poole Harbour: Blue 022 and CJ7 who were so visible until a few weeks ago sky dancing, mating, and working on the nest with the streaming cam are now working on another nest in the area. There is no camera. They are still doing everything together and everyone is looking forward to the first hatches in Poole Harbour for 200 years.

Dahlgren: A large part of the nest in King George, Virginia, collapsed today. It will be fixed in the fall well after Jack and Harriet’s migration.

Kielder Forest: All 16 of the 2021 juveniles have fledged successfully. Everyone is elated. This is 6 more fledglings than their previous best year. Congratulations everyone!

Mlade Buky: Bucachek and his new love spent the night on the nest in Mlade Buky, Czechoslovakia. Oh, how sweet! Just as the dawn is beginning to appear, they are both preening.

Balloons, something that impacts all birds: Virginia, Maine, Maryland, and Delaware have or are going to pass shortly the release of balloons. Hawaii has already passed a law on helium balloons.

Port Lincoln Ospreys, Australia: Dad and Mom have been taking turns incubating the eggs. Here is dad on the nest. A little earlier he had been pestering Mom. He kept pulling on that turquoise rope wanting his turn. It was too funny. The Port Lincoln Ospreys are an example of sedentary birds. They do not migrate. There is no need.

Loch Arkaig: The two juveniles of Louis and Dorcha have now fledged. I have not heard anything about the chosen names yet.

Collins Marsh: Malin was a little wet off and on during Saturday. S/he is sleeping on the nest alone tonight. There is no perch – let us hope that the parent or both parents are in a nearby tree in case there are any owls about. It seems like a pattern. Does mom always spend Saturday night off the nest?

WBSE, Sydney Olympic Forest: 27 and 28 continue to eat until their crops almost burst and sleep. Meanwhile there has been an intruder today and Lady and Dad were honking in alert.

And last but very special, A Place Called Hope. Along with other wildlife centres, they are receiving quite a number of starving Great Blue Herons and other herons. Why would they be starving? It has been raining in the Connecticut area and all the herbicides and pesticides that people put on their lawns and gardens makes its way into the environment, into the water table, into the ponds. It is poison. If your gardening centre or lawn care person tells you that the chemicals they use are ‘Green’ – well, think again. Whatever they are using kills. So sad. It is OK if your lawn doesn’t look emerald green.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Have a lovely Sunday. Take care of yourselves. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Thank you to the following for their streaming cams and their FB pages where I grab my screen shots: A Place Called Hope, Mlade Buky White Stork Cam, Collins Marsh Osprey Nest, Port Lincoln Osprey Project, and Sea Eagles, Birdlife Australia and the Discovery Centre.

The featured image is Dad at the Port Lincoln Osprey Barge taking his turn incubating his two eggs.

Saturday 17 July in Bird World

I promised some updates on Big Red, Arthur, and the Ks. Right up front I want to thank Suzanne Arnold Horning for allowing me to share her images of Cornell’s birds with all of you. She lives in Ithaca and once or twice a day she heads out with her family looking for the Ks. Thank you Suzanne!

This first series is from 16 July. Both of the Ks are on the corner of this unidentified building. K1 is on the left and K3 is on the right at the corner of the building.

Isn’ she gorgeous? This is K1, the mini-Big Red.

On the 15th, the Ks were hanging out on Weill.

K1 is doing the hawk walk! So cute.

She stops and looks for her brother, K3, who has just flown away.

K3 flew over to the middle of the hockey rink roof and landed! Good gracious.

Later, K3 rejoins his sister on Weill.

Meanwhile, where are Big Red and Arthur?

Big Red is on top of the Cornell Clock Tower.

Here’s a much closer look at Big Red.

And here is an image showing the position of Arthur and the Ks. The green arrow is where Arthur is on the light stands and the purple arrows points to the corner of the Weill Building where the two Ks are located.

Thanks Suzanne for the arrows and the images. It is reassuring to know that everyone is safe and sound.

There is some other news today. K1 caught her own prey. I know it happened but I do not have an image I can show you. Of course, no one knows if this is the first time or not but this is incredible. She is certainly related to Arthur who is like the stealth bomber of hunting! And Big Red is really good herself.

The Ks will be leaving their parents territory in August. They need to be able to fly well and hunt. As you can see Big Red and Arthur have now moved them around Weill and other areas farther from the nest. Soon they will have them hunting in the fields out by the Holey Cow Barns. Why holey and not holy you ask? The cows have clear tubes inserted in their sides so that the students in the Vet School can see what is happening inside the cow’s body. I have to admit the first time I heard this I was quite happy not to be there seeing it. But then wow – how would these students learn otherwise?

Suzanne Arnold Horning also went out to the Cornell Osprey nests and took some images. She believes that the nestlings are about to fledge!

There is only one Osprey nest on the Cornell Campus. It is located on the university athletic fields on a light tower at the soccer field. The adults there fish in Cayuga Lake, Beebee Lake, and Six Mile Creek. Those are within a few miles of the nest. The adults are Olin and Olive.

Off the Cornell Campus there were 38 Osprey nests around the Cayuga Lake Basin. While it isn’t a steadfast rule, most male Ospreys do return to the area of their natal nest. I am assuming then that when Olin showed up as a bachelor and began building a nest that he had hatched from one of the nests around Cayuga Lake several years earlier.

Olin would fly around the soccer field and people began to wonder if he was going to build a nest on one of the light towers. He made several attempts with sticks at the Game Farm Road soccer field. Olin did attract a female – Olive.

The nest you see in Suzanne Arnold Hornings’s images is the new nest that was built for Olive and Olin.

There are three little ospreys ready to fly in that nest this year.

Don’t you just hold your breath when they are hovering? I do! Wings everywhere. Looks like Olive needs to duck.

The Hornings and the Sedlaceks wrote a lovely article about the first year with Olin and Olive. There are some good images. I will attach it below this. Olin and Olive originally had a nest on a light and it was precarious. This is a wonderful nest that was constructed for this Osprey couple. Just look at it. They figured out the height, the measurements the nest should be and made sure that it was storm proof. Amazing.

Here is the link to the article. Please read it, it is lovely.

https://sites.google.com/site/cornellssurpriseospreys/

On the earlier part of the Ferris Akel Live Tour, there was a lovely juvenile Cooper’s Hawk. I think I have a couple of reasonable good screen shots to show you. What a lovely bird. We have Cooper’s Hawks that come to breed on the Canadian Prairies in the summer. They are protected under the Manitoba Wildlife Act of 1994.

Indeed, when I first encountered the hawk that comes to my garden, it was not clear if it was an adult Cooper’s or a Sharp-shinned. Turned out to be a Sharpie Adult, Northern. Like the Sharp-shinned, the Coopers are a medium sized Accipiter. These are the green-blue-grey (or celadon if you want to describe them like a pottery glaze) of a juvenile. The eyes of the adult male are red and they have a white breast/belly with ochre streaking, blue-grey hood and wings. You can see those red eyes in the image directly below.

“Cooper’s Hawk” by airboy123 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This juvenile might look like a Red-tail Hawk if you only saw its back. Like my Sharpie and the Red-tails, the length of the wings attributes to the silent stealth manner in which they hunt. They live in forests and even in urban back gardens and they need to be able to turn quickly which they can also do with their wings and their medium size. You can see those celadon eyes of this juvenile in the image below.

Look at the image below. Do not peek at their blue Darvic rings! Which one of those birds is Tiny Little?

It might be a surprise to you. Tiny Little is the bigger chick at the back!

I watched Tiny Little for several hours. He is absolutely hilarious. For awhile I wondered if he had forgotten how to fly. He hovered, he flapped his wings and he really wanted to go but he couldn’t get it in forward gear. But never mind. White YW brought a fish on to the nest and thoughts of flying went right out the window. Tiny Little was up to his old tricks. What you are seeing in the image below is the second sibling that Tiny Little has tormented over the evening fish. BTW. Tiny Little had a huge breakfast! His MOD is to stare at the fish, then do some flapping, go back and stare and make the sibling nervous til they walk away and leave the fish. And guess what? He is really good at it.

Blue 464 gave up the fish! Because of his behaviour you will know which one is Tiny Little below but please look at the size and look at the other bird. This is the female, that big female that tormented Tiny Little, Blue 464. Unfortunately I took about 300 images of this nest today (maybe more). I have one of Tiny Little standing next to Blue 462, the male. 462 has the thinner longer legs of White YW. Tiny Little’s legs are stout like a female and she is a big bird.

Just like she wanted. Tiny Little gets a nice feeding by Blue 35. Indeed, I think the two of them shared almost half a fish after 464 and then 462 tried to self-feed.

Here is an earlier image of the Foulshaw Moss family minus Blue 464. White YW is on the front left. Then Blue 35 is next at the rim of the nest. Then don’t peek, which one is Tiny Little? If you said the one on the far right, you are correct. Now necklaces in themselves do not indicate a female but with those stout legs and her size. Well..

‘Silo’ chick on the Patuxent River Osprey Nest 2, the one who fell out of the nest into the water last evening, was up and moving about in the afternoon so everything seems alright there. Fabulous.

Thank you everyone for stopping in today to find out about the birds. It is great to have you with us.

Thank you to the following for their streaming cams where I took my screen shots or who gave me permission to use their images: Suzanne Arnold Horning for the images of Cornell’s Red tail Hawk family and the Osprey Nest of Olin and Olive, Ferris Akel Live Tour, Cumbrian Wildlife Trust and Foulshaw Moss Osprey Cam, and Patuxent River Osprey Cam 2.