Birds
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Lunch is served
This morning we counted eight male cardinals at once at our feeder out back. Countless other small birds fluttered around along with them: house finches, goldfinches, female cardinals, nuthatches and chickadees, red bellied and downy woodpeckers. “If a Cooper’s hawk showed up right now, he’d be on overload,” I remarked.
Obligingly, he appeared on the swingset.
He didn’t get anybody while we watched. After snapping these pics, I let Younger Daughter go outside and he startled and flew away.
How can I be so fascinated by both the songbirds and the hawk that hunts them?
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Autumn state of mind
The woods are so much quieter now than they were in the spring and early summer that it’s easy to lose the sense of expectation. But it’s a good exercise in faith to remain attentive; invariably we are rewarded with wonders large and small.
It was a little eerie on a recent walk in Ithaca. My husband and daughters and I were coming to the end of a stroll on an overcast day when our paths intersected with some characteristically cheerful sounding chickadees. My daughter, the bird-whisperer, sounded her chickadee call to attract them, and it seemed they were responding with more and more vocalization. Then we rounded a corner and saw the silent silhouette of a hawk.
No doubt the chickadees were sounding the alarm. It may have been the redtail that haunts Sapsucker Woods, but it seemed a little small for a redtail. My guess is it was a broadwing. It clutched a chipmunk in its talons.
How typical of us humans to think that we were controlling the scene, when all along a life and death drama that had nothing to do with us was playing itself out.
Another hawk has been making unwelcome appearances in our area: a Cooper’s hawk. Our feeder is situated next to an evergreen so that the birds have cover, but I think this hawk is attracted by the busy chatter of the goldfinches and the two or three chipmunks who feed on the ground beneath. We haven’t seen it successfully catch anything yet, but here it is perched in the middle of the food court.
No wonder the chipmunks hide!
See it in the log? I’ve seen some tiny warblers in recent walks in the woods, but few have rewarded me with photo-ops. I did manage to get a shot of this one, tentatively identified as a Nashville warbler.
It was a treat to see this red-eyed vireo feeding with some chickadees, too. Vireos are so much more easy to hear than to see; they are so like the leaves themselves.
The white-throated sparrows are coming through on their way southward. We have four or five of them hanging around our yard this week, but this one was spotted in a nearby preserve.
Last but not least, the deer have been everywhere, and they have actually seemed to pose for me.
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Green herons
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. I’ve reduced my screen time quite a bit this summer and experienced corresponding benefits. But I’ve continued to observe and enjoy some favorite haunts during this all-too-brief (here in the Northeast) warm season.
One bird I started really noticing last summer is the green heron, and I’ve had some good opportunities to photograph some this year. At one pond here locally, there must have been a successful nesting pair, because young herons have been marauding together, discussing everything and everyone. In the process they’ve posed nicely for some pictures.
This bird took a break from looking lordly atop its snag, and scratched an itch. You can see its nictitating membrane in this pic.
Then it flew away. It looks awkward in flight, maybe because its tail is so short.
Another bird that posed for photos was this next green heron, which the girls and I watched through the windows at Sapsucker Woods. It seems almost too easy, this kind of nature study. In this setting, the bird’s small size next to the crowd of talkative ducks was striking. It was hunting with great concentration.
Like any good fisherman, it posed for a moment with its catch. Then it turned the minnow neatly and swallowed it, head first. It was interesting to me to see the disturbance in the water’s surface increasing as the heron waited and then snatched. I’m not sure if the minnows were reacting to the heron, or if the heron was merely watching the minnow activity as the group approached it under the water.
So much of “nature study” involves watching animals simply eating or taking care of young. They are just surviving, doing the same ordinary things we humans do. But they have the intrigue of being different species, highly skilled and adapted.
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Contradictions
I realize it’s lame to take pictures at the zoo. It’s not exactly “wildlife photography.” It’s “captive creature photography.”
But still, it’s a way of taking the experience home with you. Last week, we went with some home schooling friends to the Syracuse Zoo. It’s a great zoo, full of happy and healthy animals. Some were playing “King of the Pool” on a hot day.
And even the inevitable sleepers looked contented.
Most of the penguins were shooting nimbly around in the water.
But this one taught me that even in the sociable penguin community, there are introverts.
Naturally, we visited the aviary twice. Not only are we bird people in general, but the exotic bird room provides a less bounded experience of the wild than the rest of the zoo. We walked through the tropical habitat and enjoyed the whoosh of wings over our heads and the sight of avian wonders unfamiliar to us, close enough to touch.
Some of them found us pretty amusing.
Roseate Spoonbill 
White-crested Laughing Thrush Others seemed like super-vivid dream versions of local birds. This Troupial reminded us of a Baltimore oriole, but bigger and brighter.
Troupial And this Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove faintly suggested a rose-breasted grosbeak on steroids.
Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove There were lots of gorgeous birds, but Simon the macaw’s personality stood out. At first, he seemed to like us.
“Hey baby! Come here often?” But suddenly…
“What are YOU staring at???” On the way home, in a congested section of highway, a pigeon was wandering, disoriented, in the shoulder. It was toddling in the wrong direction, out into traffic. It may have been hit, and dazed. I swerved a little to avoid hitting it, but the last I saw of it in my rearview mirror, it was in direct line with the front tire of the car behind me. I looked away, wincing.
It’s happened several times lately. I’ve seen animals in desperate straits on roadways, and I’ve been unable to do anything about it. What would I do if I could? I’m not sure. At the least, I’d move them out of harm’s way, or try to get them to help. But on a highway with both lanes full, there is no stopping.
I was struck — am struck — by the contrast between the carefully kept and fenced-in beauties we had seen at the zoo, and the common pigeon mowed down on the roadway on the way home. There is a degree of unavoidable brutality built into our systems at times.
I imagine a world in which birds on the road and birds in the zoo — and all the other living things, human and nonhuman alike, that surround me — could be taken into account and respected. Yet I’m sure that the contradictions of the present system run all through me, in ways I’m aware of and ways that are hidden to me.
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June 23, 2012 Morning Sights
Red eft 
Black-eyed Susan 
Fern fairyland 
Chestnut-sided warbler 
Female yellow warbler? 
Robin, nesting quietly 
Robin fledgling in the same bush 
Yellow warbler 
Tree tunnel Also seen: Eastern towhee, Baltimore oriole, house wrens, blue jays, oven birds, deer, chipmunks, common yellowthroats, rabbits, woodchucks, toads, pearl crescent and least skipper butterflies.
Heard: Deer, woodthrushes
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Songbird Scepter
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Another delightful find
An American redstart nest!
American redstarts and yellow warblers are both gorgeous little birds I’ve noticed for the first time over the last year. They’re also resourceful. Both are often targeted by brown-headed cowbirds, who lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Redstarts and yellow warblers, when they notice a cowbird egg, counter by building another layer of nest over the top.
I’d love to see the male redstart, which is more colorfully marked. I saw my first one last year, not far from the site of this nest. This seems like a promising vicinity to see another one!
Last year’s redstart sighting -
Bathing Beauties
There is debate about many things related to bird behavior: how, and whether, they “teach” their young; how they chart their migratory courses; why they do this or that. But when I see a bird taking a bath, there’s no question in my mind that they are having a blast! The only creatures who like to play in the water more than my daughters are the birds.
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Hidden
My daughter spotted this yellow warbler nest on a walk we took this morning. It’s a great example of something I’ve marveled about before: more eyes = more wonders. It seems like you would see more going alone into the woods because it’s much quieter and less disruptive. But you never know what you miss for the lack of additional eyes. I’ve seen some neat things by myself, but this one I’d have missed entirely!
The girls are excited about going back each week to investigate the nest activity.
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Final fledge, and other neighborhood hawks
Chick #3 a few hours before fledging The girls and I went to Cornell yesterday morning with the awareness that it would probably be fledge day for the final eyass. As it turned out, the chick did fledge, but not till later in the day. It was chilly and overcast during the two hours we waited at the nest site, and though we did see all three chicks, there wasn’t a lot going on.
“Look, Sis — it’s the two-leggeds again.” 
Imagining flight… 
Big stretch For a tenth of what my parking ticket cost last week, I purchased a two-hour visitor permit, and during that time the girls and I enjoyed meeting a few other folks from the hawk chat. Almost everyone who drove, biked, or walked past did so while craning their necks, looking up at the tower. Everyone seemed aware of C3; one young woman who passed by said that she walked by every day on her way to work. “I think about how amazing it would be if the third one jumped off and flew while I was on my way past!” she said.
The chick’s first flight was marvelous, and probably the first intentional fledge of the three. The first two appeared to fledge by accident, blown from their perches by a breeze, but this one took off like a pro. I wasn’t watching at the time, so I was glad for this video capture.
Best of luck to you, C3!
My parking permit ran out around 1:00, just as the sun was starting to break through. So we ate our bag lunches and then drove around for awhile, visiting some sites of interest to us raptor geeks.
One was a large pheasant farm to the Northeast of the nest. Someone told me that it produces pretty much all of the pheasants in the state, and when it was proposed recently that funding be cut because of the state’s economic woes, there was quite a protest.
One of the three or four fields of pheasants However, it’s not only humans who appreciate the pheasant farm. There were flocks of pigeons, crows, and blackbirds there, pilfering the feed (or so we guessed). One turkey vulture visited, for some mysterious reason. I’ve heard that they frequent natural gas lines because of the smell of decay. I doubt that there were any dead pheasants around; it’s to all appearances a very well-maintained farm. But maybe there was some other explanation.
A pheasant would be too heavy for a hawk to carry away in most cases. But the pigeons and, likely, small rodents attracted by the feed must in turn attract hawks, because there was a pair of redtails there.
A hawk perches on the right-hand pole, studying the pheasant farm across the road. 
A harrassed hawk Just to the southeast is a long field of utility poles. The southern end of the field is visible sometimes when the cam pans the landscape near the cemetery where Ezra is thought to hunt. Back in April, we observed a pair of redtails actually mating atop one of the poles. They were there again yesterday.
Hawk flying with legs down — a new sight for me 
A hawk is perched on the near pole. Bradfield Hall, a tall brick building near the cam hawk nest, is visible in the distance. Was this one pair of hawks, or two? Was the pair monitoring the pheasant farm Red and Ezra? We could only be at one place at a time, but we can say for sure that there is at least one other pair of redtails in Big Red and Ezra’s near neighborhood, and perhaps two. The utility field hawks look enough like Red and Ezra to be twins, but they’re definitely different hawks based on what we observed back in April.
It was interesting to get a slightly expanded sense of the hawk neighborhood. Watching the cams, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision, but the hawks live in a place full of raptor-friendly habitat. I’m sure they all have their invisible but well-defended “property lines” and the place will be full of young hawks learning to fly and hunt this summer.
Probably not everyone is excited about this!
Timmy Tiptoes, posing for me across the street from Red and Ezra’s nest
