Category Archives: Birds of Prey

Taking Shelter

Birds of Prey, Mammals

As winter approaches our local wildlife looks for safe, dry places to take shelter from the cold.  Eastern screech-owls use hollow trees, dense foliage and holes in upright structures.

Last year Bill Powers of PixController set up an eastern screech-owl roosting study with five owl boxes in a dry wetland in Westmoreland County.  Each box is equipped with a small infrared video camera and small microphone wired back to a server that detects motion and streams video.

You can watch all five owl boxes at PixController’s Eastern Screech-Owl webcam page.

When it turned cold last weekend, Bill’s cameras detected motion as an owl checked out two of the boxes at dawn on Saturday.

Here’s the owl staring up at the infrared camera in Box #1 where he eventually roosted.  There’s no color because the light is infrared.

Knowing which box to watch, Bill put up a blind on Saturday and took the owl’s picture when he emerged at dusk.  He’s the handsome screech-owl in full color above.

 

Last night I tuned in at 9:00pm. There were no owls but I found a squirrel in Box #4, rearranging his tail and wrapping it around his body to cover his nose.

Won’t he be surprised if an owl shows up this morning!

 

Visit Bill’s PixController Screech Owl website to watch the cameras.  Click here for more information on the camera setup and a map of the cam locations.

(photos by Bill Powers and PixController, Inc.)

p.s.  If there are no owls when you take a look, come back when it’s colder.  Bill tells me the owls use the boxes more often when it’s 30oF.

Magic of the Snowy Owl

Beyond Bounds, Birds of Prey, Books & Events

Ten months ago thousands of young snowy owls came here for the winter.  That irruption was unusual, an atypical episode in a life spent in one of the harshest habitats on the planet.

Where did those young owls come from?  What were their lives like in the arctic?  How do they thrive in a place so foreign to our experience?

Next week we’ll find out how when PBS NATURE premieres Magic of the Snowy Owl.

The program begins in familiar territory, a farm in Wisconsin where two young snowies hunt the winter fields.  Meanwhile their parents are back home in perpetual darkness.  The show’s excellent footage of the arctic night gives a real taste of life in the dark.

In spring the camera crew searches for nesting owls, eventually finding a pair alone.  Their solitude might not be a good sign.  Will there be enough to eat?  Will their young survive to adulthood?

Peregrine nestcam fans will love watching close-ups of Mother Owl with her cute babies.  The saga of Father Owl’s hunt for food will sound familiar, but the dangers of polar bears and the plague of mosquitoes will not.

 

And there isn’t enough food.  Eventually the parents have to move their entire family to the coast even though the babies can’t fly yet.  The young have to walk and swim(!) to get there.

The family’s endurance is amazing.  The snowy owls are almost magical.

Don’t miss Magic of the Snowy Owl on Wednesday October 24 at 8:00pm on WQED.  Check local PBS listings if you’re outside WQED’s viewing area.

(photos of snowy owls in the arctic from PBS NATURE)

 

p.s. If you like to identify birds by ear, you’ll enjoy the soundtrack of the arctic summer.

Dish Hawk

Birds of Prey

Last evening as I left work I heard a scrabbling on the edge of this huge satellite dish behind WQED.  It sounded like claws scratching metal — almost as unpleasant as fingernails on a chalkboard.  The noise attracted the attention of everyone nearby.

The sound was made by a red-tailed hawk who had landed on the dish to hunt rabbits in the weeds below.  Not a good move!   He slid down to the seam and stood lopsided, one foot higher than the other, gripping the edge.

Since he didn’t care that I was watching I took his picture with my cellphone.  (He’s in the exact center of the photo.)

Fortunately it doesn’t matter if he hurts this dish as we haven’t used it for years.  Trees have grown up around it and mossy dirt stains the inside.  Like many defunct structures it’s too expensive to take down, so it’s slowly surrounded by urban wildlife.

And topped off by a dish hawk.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Triumph of Agility

Bird Behavior, Birds of Prey

Bald eagles are majestic but opportunistic.  Sometimes they use their power to steal from others.

I once saw an osprey plunge feet first into a bay, grasp a fish in his talons, and flap like crazy to pull up.  As soon as he gained some altitude he shook off the water, just like a dog, and arranged the fish head first for aerodynamic flight.  Then he was on his way…

… or so he thought.  A bald eagle was watching and decided to steal the fish.

Eagles are fast, powerful fliers on the straight-away and this one knew he had the advantage.  He gained on the osprey so quickly I was certain he’d hit him and take the fish.

But the osprey had experience with eagles.  He turned and ducked, backtracked and swerved.  Sometimes he flew up, sometimes down.  The eagle kept up with him but was slower to make the turns.  There were moments when the eagle was breathing down his neck but the osprey always escaped.

The osprey knew something I did not.  The eagle was getting tired.

Suddenly, to my surprise, the eagle turned and rapidly flew away from the osprey.  Through binoculars I could see the eagle’s beak was open.  He was panting!

The osprey’s agility won the day.

(photo of an osprey by Steve Gosser)

Beauty And The Beak

Birds of Prey

As you can see, the eagle video is gone …

… from http://vimeo.com/15184546.  The original website about this bird (at the link below) is also missing.  However, I’m keeping this post as a placeholder.  Here’s what it was about:

Libby Strizzi alerted me to a heart-warming video about a severely injured bald eagle who got a chance at a better life.

Beauty lost her upper beak when she was shot in the face by a poacher. This 2008 video shows the first of many steps in restoring her missing beak.

The video has been popular on the Internet this month, but current news of Beauty is hard to find because the original website at Birds of Prey Northwest has been inundated by recent web traffic.

Though we don’t know how Beauty’s doing today, the film is full of hope.

(2008 award-winning video by Keith Bubach, produced for Evening Magazine, KING-TV, Seattle)

No Matter How You Look At It

Beyond Bounds, Birds of Prey

Since they can’t move their eyes, owls have very flexible necks.

Here’s a video of a juvenile burrowing owl demonstrating his talent in Cape Coral, Florida.

“What is this?”  he says.  “No matter how I look at it, it doesn’t make sense.”

 

(video by heykayde on YouTube.  For more information about the video, click here or see Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife.)

p.s. Sorry about the ads, they come with the video.

Taking A Dip

Bird Behavior, Birds of Prey, Schenley Park
  • Immature Red-tailed Hawk, bathing at Schenley Park, August 2012 (by Gregg Diskin)

We’ve all seen robins splashing in water but how many of us have seen a hawk take a bath?

Last Saturday it was already hot when Gregg Diskin took a walk through Schenley Park with his camera.  Near Bartlett Playground he saw a hawk disappear under the bridge so he walked down the path to investigate.  There he found an immature red-tailed hawk taking a dip in the stream.

Bathing is a relatively vulnerable activity so we rarely see adult hawks doing it.  My hunch is that this bird was one of the two immature red-tails who starred in Monday’s blog.  He had almost no fear of people, felt right at home, and continued to bathe while Gregg snapped a series of pictures.

Click on the photo above for a slideshow of the red-tail’s bath.  At the end he has something to say to Gregg.

(photos by Gregg Diskin)

Whatcha Got There?

Birds of Prey, Schenley Park
Juvenile red-tailed hawks in Schenley Park, July 2012 (photo by Jim Funderburgh )

6 August 2012

This spring two red-tailed hawk babies fledged from the Panther Hollow Bridge in Schenley Park.  They’re already as big as their parents but they don’t act grown up.  They’re not wary of humans and they whine when they’re hungry.

At this stage they’re learning how to capture and kill prey with their feet.  They’ve been watching their parents for tips but they always hope their parents will deliver dinner.  Meanwhile the adults are waiting longer to feed them, hoping the kids will take the hint: “Feed yourself!”

The two juveniles are often found together because Little Brother, the younger of the two, follows his big sister at meal times in case she catches something.

In mid-July Jim Funderburgh found the two hawks exploring the park on their own. Little Brother whined but his sister had nothing to give him so he found a mouse-size object and practiced his prey techniques.

In the video he clutches to kill it … but it surprises him.  Yikes!

Whatcha got there, Little Brother?

A pinecone!

(photo and video by Jim Funderburgh)

Baby Falcon?

Birds of Prey, Peregrines

On Tuesday morning I got a phone call from University of Pittsburgh Facilities Management that made my heart fall to the floor.

Phil Hieber said that an injured baby falcon, possibly a peregrine, had been found at the Posvar Hall garage.  The people who found it had put it in a box and wanted to know what to do.

My first thought was, “Oh no!”  and then I remembered that people often mistake other birds of prey for young peregrines.  And I reminded myself that I’d seen all three juveniles high on the Cathedral of Learning only two hours earlier and they had not been lower than the 30th floor for days.

I couldn’t afford to leave work Tuesday morning but if this was one of our “juvies” I would drop everything and run to Pitt.  How could I tell it was a peregrine over the phone?

Was the bird banded?  Phil said it was not so I knew it wasn’t one of our peregrines.  (Whew!)

I urged them to call the ARL Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Verona, 412-793-6900, and drive the bird over there.  Then I emailed Jill Argall at the Wildlife Center to let her know an injured bird was on its way, and I asked her to let me know what it was.

Later that day Jill replied that it was a kestrel and it was doing fine.

Indeed it was a “baby” (small) falcon.

American kestrels are our smallest falcon so they do resemble peregrines.  I know they’re in Oakland because I’ve seen them on campus.  Last Saturday an adult male kestrel flew by the Cathedral of Learning and perched on the flagpole at Carnegie Museum.

I’m glad to know the kestrel is doing well.  Sighs of relief all around!

 

(photo of a kestrel on a flagpole (though not at Pitt) by Brian Herman)

p.s. If you are in the Pittsburgh area and find an injured animal or bird, call the ARL Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Verona, 412-793-6900.