Category Archives: Birds of Prey

How Does An Owl Hide?

Bird Behavior, Birds of Prey

Great Gray Owl Avoidance Behavior from Sparky Stensaas on Vimeo.

Great gray owls (Strix nebulosa) live in coniferous forests and taiga of the North.  Their year-round range extends into upper Minnesota where this one was filmed in March.

In the video you’ll see two clips of the owl avoiding detection by two other species: a bald eagle and a raven.

It’s hard to imagine a large owl being afraid of anything, but he’s actually 15% smaller than a great horned owl.  He appears large because of his fluffy feathers.

In March he has a special reason for remaining hidden.  His nest is probably nearby.

Watch how the owl “gets skinny” to avoid being seen.

(Click here for more information on this video by Sparky Stensaas, Photonaturalist>)

Winter Visitor

Birds of Prey

Autumn brings a change in bird distribution.

Broad-winged hawks, osprey and most of the turkey vultures leave for the south but we gain at least three resident raptors:

  • Northern goshawks hang out in Pennsylvania’s forests (in small numbers).
  • Merlins visit southwestern Pennsylvania and sometimes the City of Pittsburgh.
  • In the Pymatuning area you’re likely to find rough-legged hawks.

Don Weiss photographed this dark-morph rough-legged hawk at Miller’s pond in Crawford County last weekend.  In winter it’s a reliable place to find this typically northern bird.

(photo by Don Weiss)

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)
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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)