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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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June 21, 2012 — Walk
Least skipper moth 
Green frog 
Nosy woodchucks 
Damselfly (bluet?) laying eggs 
Baby pine forest 
Why couldn’t I get the focus right on this little showman? 
Lady Catbird 
Plumpkin Specklebreast — a juvie robin 
Daisy among the chokecherries -
Question mark butterfly
The two little white markings on the dead-leaf-like underside of the wing are what give this butterfly its name. It’s quite beautiful with its wings spread.
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Songbird Scepter
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Impromptu Lesson
My daughter and I went to a popular walking trail last night, looking for warblers. We saw a few interesting birds, and on the way in we also saw this painted turtle out in the open.
There are wetlands all around the trail, so we didn’t think much of it. We figured it was crossing the trail to find a spot lay eggs. But on the way back, a couple were seated on the grass beside the turtle, and they told us that she was laying eggs.
Indeed she was — or rather, preparing to. It was a neat experience to watch her laboriously digging the hole with her hind legs.
We’ve read that turtles lay eggs, but it was a very different experience to watch her in action for awhile. She would scrape deeply with one leg, shift, scrape deeply with the other, and then moisten the cavity periodically with her own fluids. She was intent on her work and completely undaunted by the four spectators she had accumulated.
We observed her for 10 minutes or so, then went on our way. This morning, I went running down at the same trail, and when I checked the spot it looked like this.
Why did she choose that spot — in mown grass along a paved trail, in not-particularly-moist ground? Presumably the eggs are below-ground, 5-10 cm according to what I read this morning. Sometimes painted turtles dig “false nests” before settling on the site where they actually lay their eggs, but without digging in myself I’ll never know. She certainly had done some serious excavation and turned up all those small stones.
Apparently the eggs will hatch in August or September, and the baby turtles may not come out, but may arrange themselves symmetrically in the nest and winter there. We won’t expect any juvenile turtle sightings anytime soon! But what good moment to have passed by.
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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
