If you haven’t seen this photo that Steve Gosser posted on his Facebook page, here’s an “Awwwwww” moment.
This is a pair of great-horned owl chicks that Steve, Cris Hamilton and Bobby Greene saw in Harrison Hills on Saturday.
Great horned owls nest earlier than any other bird in western Pennsylvania. As a result, the young can walk away from the nest by the first of May. They can’t fly yet. They’re in the “branching” phase, similar to ledge-walking in young peregrines.
Cute as these two look, don’t mess with them. Their parents are nearby, watching, and will attack if you threaten their young.
Last Thursday at lunchtime a bird of prey caused quite a stir in downtown Pittsburgh when it perched on a light fixture and very publicly ate a pigeon.
Katie Cunningham sent me photographs of the bird and asked, “Is this a falcon or a hawk?” She guessed it was a hawk and she was right (it’s an immature red-tailed hawk). How could she be sure it’s not a peregrine?
Telling the difference between a falcon and a hawk is a common identification problem, so common that people often ask me for help.
Today I’ll tell you how to identify the birds yourself.
Right off the bat I’m going to narrow the scope. In western Pennsylvania you can see up to nine hawk and three falcon species depending on time of year and habitat. To make this manageable I’ll address the most common identification question faced by city folks: Is this bird a peregrine falcon or a red-tailed hawk?
First, ask yourself several key questions.
Is it a bird of prey? Birds of prey eat meat so they have hooked beaks (see the tip of the beak) and talons (big claws). If the bird does not have these features it’s neither a falcon nor a hawk and you can stop right there.
What time of year is it? Peregrines and red-tails live in western Pennsylvania year round so the time of year doesn’t eliminate either bird due to migration. However identification is more challenging in June and early July when the juvenile peregrines are flying around town. It’s easiest at any other time of year.
Where is the bird? In what habitat? Is it in the city on a building? (Could be either a peregrine or a red-tail) In the suburbs? (likely a red-tailed hawk) On a bridge? (either bird) On a light pole over the highway? (likely a red-tail) In a tree? (likely a red-tail) Standing on your picnic table? (likely a red-tail) Standing on the ground? (likely a red-tail) …But in June a juvenile peregrine might be found in some of the “red-tail” places.
Is the bird in the human zone? Is the bird perched close to humans and doesn’t even care about them? If so, it’s probably a red-tailed hawk …but is it June?
What does it look like?
Red-tailed hawks are bigger than crows, white on their chests and brown on their heads, faces, wings and backs. Their faces are brown all the way to their shoulders (no malar stripe). They have brown hash marks on their bellies called a “belly band” with white above and below. Only adult red-tailed hawks have rusty red tails. Juveniles have brown tails with horizontal stripes.
Peregrine falcons are about the size of crows, smaller than red-tailed hawks. Adults are charcoal gray and white. Their backs, wings and heads are charcoal gray, their chests are white and their bellies and legs are heavily striped (horizontally) with dark gray. Their cheeks are white behind dark gray sideburns called malar stripes.
Peregrines have malar stripes. Red-tailed hawks do not.
Here are several photo comparisons of the two: red-tailed hawk on left, peregrine on right.
Adult red-tailed hawk versus adult peregrine falcon (photos by Steve Gosser, Lauri Shaffer)
Let’s look at two key features. Red-tailed hawks have brown cheeks. Peregrines have white cheeks behind the malar stripes. Red-tailed hawks have a brown belly band with white below. Peregrines are striped all the way down.
2 key clues red-tailed hawk vs peregrine: cheeks and lower belly
What’s this thing about June? Immature birds! In June in Pittsburgh juvenile peregrines leave the nest and learn to fly. Immature peregrines are brown and cream-colored instead of gray and white like the adults. They have no white on their chests and the stripes on their bellies are vertical (immature) instead of horizontal (on adults).
Newly fledged juvenile peregrines may do almost anything, including perch in the human zone. Because they’re brown you can’t use color cues but the two key clues still apply: Red-tails have brown cheeks versus peregrines’ light cheeks. Red-tails have white lower bellies versus peregrines’ striped all the way down.
Here are photo comparisons of immature red-tailed hawks (left) and immature peregrines (right). Notice their cheeks and bellies.
Immature red-tailed hawk vs immature peregrine (photos by Katie Cunningham, Kim Steininger)
Immature red-tailed hawk vs. immature peregrines (photos by Steve Gosser, Chad+Chris Saladin)
In flight, does the bird have “fingers”? Hawks (and eagles and vultures) have “fingers” on their wingtips. Falcons have pointy wings.
Silhouette of Buteo (hawk), Accipiter(hawk) and Falcon (from NPS.gov. I have added labels)
What is the likelihood of seeing either bird? Red-tailed hawks are the most common hawk in North America. Peregrines are rare. If you say it’s a red-tailed hawk, you’re usually right. You’re unlikely to see a peregrine near ground level in Pittsburgh. That’s why we get excited about peregrines.
(Red-tailed hawk photos by Katie Cunningham and Steve Gosser, Peregrine photos by Kim Steininger and Chad+Chris Saladin. Cooper’s hawk photos below by Cris Hamilton and Marcy Cunkelman)
Another hawk that resembles a peregrine: the Cooper’s hawk
Many readers have asked for help identifying a brown-and-beige-colored bird of prey in their backyards. It has vertical chest stripes like a juvenile peregrine. If you have a similar bird in your backyard confirm that it …
does not have a pronounced malar stripe on its face
is hunting for birds
moves so fast that it seems high strung
jumps on the birds in the bushes and chases them through the trees
has “fingers” on its wing tips (Accipiter silhouette above)
If so, it’s a Coopers hawk, a bird-eating bird of prey (Accipiters) that specializes in woodland habitat and hunt in tight spaces.
Adult Coopers Hawk (photo by Cris Hamilton)
Immature Cooper’s hawks show up during winter in Pittsburgh. They’re the same color as immature peregrines but have much longer tails.
At the end of last week the pair of red-tailed hawks who live near WQED started to build a new nest.
Most red-tails nest in trees but the female who lives near my office always chooses to nest on a building, usually in a gutter. She nested in the gutter of Central Catholic High School’s roof in 2008 and in the gutter of CMU’s Fine Arts Building in 2009 and 2010. I recognize her because her face is unusually pale.
She chose neither of those places for her first nest this spring but I’m sure she had one because I saw her mating in early March. By now she should have eggs to incubate. Instead she was carrying nesting material.
Why is she building a nest now?
Because the first one probably failed. I can guess why.
Last Tuesday it rained and rained. The rain caused flooding of streams and rivers and even flooded WQED’s Studio A, so I’m sure it flooded the gutter where this female hawk had placed her nest.
Hawk eggshells are not waterproof so when the eggs get too wet they “drown.” By Wednesday the old nest was a failure. By Thursday mother hawk had picked a new nest site and was starting to build.
You’ll be happy to know that she didn’t pick a gutter this time. Her new site is certainly well drained, perhaps a little too steep and well-drained. She chose the very highest possible spot on one of St. Paul’s Cathedral steeples.
I don’t hold out much hope that this will work but she’s making the attempt anyway.
Michelle Keinholz passed along this news from The New York Times.
City Room: Hawk Cam | Watching Bobby and Violet
By ANDY NEWMAN and EMILY S. RUEB
Boy hawk meets girl hawk on N.Y.U. rooftop. They set up house on window ledge. First come the eggs. Then the Web cam. Due date: April 22.
I’ve seen peregrine, eagle, owl and bluebird webcams. Now the red-tails have one, too.
For at least a week an immature red-tailed hawk has been causing a sensation on Pitt’s campus — so much so that he made it into the Pitt News on Thursday, misidentified as a falcon.
The reason he’s become famous is that he operates in the human zone. He perches at eye level, eats on the ground, and flies over sidewalks at chest height. This may be normal in the wild but he’s doing this on the Cathedral lawn and around Clapp Hall while hundreds of people walk by. When he changes locations he flies through the crowd and startles pedestrians.
No wonder he was in the Pitt News. Here’s a hawk that’s much less afraid of people than your average robin, nearly as unafraid as the campus squirrels. And that’s one clue to his actions.
Red-tailed hawks go where the food is and there’s lots of it on campus (squirrels and pigeons). A normal red-tail would perch at tree height and fly high above, but the peregrines are nesting at the Cathedral of Learning and attack any raptor who dares to come above the trees. That’s why this red-tail stays low. He’s more afraid of peregrines than people.
And he gets a lot to eat. His prey stays near us because we’re a food source and provide protection. Usually their enemies are afraid of us so the squirrels and pigeons think they are safe. But this hawk breaks the rules and they’re caught by surprise.
Sometimes.
Tony Bledsoe saw a squirrel play Cat-and-Mouse with this hawk last Thursday. The squirrel browsed the grass below the red-tail who was perched on a fence only seven feet high. People stopped to watch.
The squirrel knew the hawk was there and as long as the red-tail didn’t move the squirrel puttered on the grass. As soon as the hawk so much as blinked, the squirrel ducked under a parked car. “Ha ha ha! Fooled you, Mr. Red-tail.” When the hawk settled back, the squirrel came out and did it again.
This, too, caused a sensation.
(photo of an immature red-tailed hawk at Allegheny Cemetery by Neil Gerjuoy)
.
p.s. Click here for a cellphone photo by Dan Normolle showing what the Pitt hawk does when he’s not on campus. (Yes, he’s on the roof of a car!)
In Tampa Bay, Florida a male osprey began building a nest to attract a mate but he chose a railroad signal tower as his ideal location. It looked good to him, but it was a big problem for the railroad.
Fortunately volunteers from the Audubon Society of Clearwater Florida had a better idea. Watch the video to see how they worked with CSX to move the osprey’s nest.
Would the osprey accept the new location? You bet! Moving Day was a success. Here he is perched at his new home.
Now all he has to do is unpack the sticks.
Thanks to Bob O’Malley for sending me this happy news.
I have been mesmerized by this photo since the moment I first saw it.
I’m drawn in by the bird’s ghostly white color, by the warning look on its face, by its intense, red eye.
This is a white-tailed kite, a hawk that hunts rodents in open scrubland by hovering kite-like in the air. As scary as this bird looks to us, it rarely eats birds so most flocks ignore it.
The majority of white-tailed kites live in Central and South America but their range extends into western California, western Oregon, southeastern Texas and southern Florida. They are not plentiful in North America but they can travel widely.
Cris Hamilton photographed this one at Bosque del Apache, New Mexico last November.
About the size of a red-tailed hawk, gyrfalcons are the largest falcon on earth.
They live in the Arctic around the globe in Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Even in darkest winter adult gyrfalcons stay up north, though individual juveniles may winter as far south as the Chesapeake.
Gyrfalcons eat many things but ptarmigan are their favorite prey. Studies have shown that their breeding success is tied to the abundance of ptarmigan in their home territory and that their population fluctuates in synch with the ptarmigan’s 10-year population cycle.
How closely are gyrfalcons tied to ptarmigan? This dramatic video shows a gyrfalcon hunting for ptarmigan, something it’s especially skilled to do. (Don’t watch if you don’t like to see birds hunting birds. The gyr catches a ptarmigan.)
Now the Arctic’s climate is changing. The ice is melting. Ptarmigan peak populations do not rebound as high as before and gyrfalcon breeding success has declined.
What will happen to gyrfalcons and ptarmigan as the arctic warms?
Convened by The Peregrine Fund, Boise State University and the US Geological Survey, the conference will explore the future of an arctic keystone species — the ptarmigan — and an indicator species — the gyrfalcon. When the conference ends, the Peregrine Fund and their partners will develop a strategy for monitoring the gyrfalcon and, if need be, acting to save it.
I hope that saving it won’t be necessary.
Click here for information on the papers to be presented at the conference. Click here to read about The Peregrine Fund and view the excellent video on their home page.
To us a winter field looks empty but there’s food under the snow if you can hear it.
This snowy owl is standing on prey in Kingston, Ontario, caught in the act by Kim Steininger.
Kingston is known for the large number of snowy owls who spend the winter there — but not this year. Kim and Paul found only one.
As Kim writes, “Paul and I went up there hoping to photograph Snowy Owls but we were only able to find one and we weren’t able to find her every day so we didn’t get many shots. One day she was hanging out on the ground about a football field away from us. After a couple hours of waiting for her to do something she flew about 40 feet away from us and caught a vole!!! We were floored!”
Waiting for a great shot like this has got to be an incredibly cold endeavor. I’m in awe of photographers and birders who can do it.
But it’s all a matter of preparation. Snowy owls are well equipped to hunt under harsh conditions with their downy insulation and excellent hearing (they can hear voles moving under the snow!). If I want to see snowy owls doing exciting things, I have to be well equipped too.
Or to put it another way…
“There is no such thing as bad weather; it’s inappropriate gear.” — words of wisdom from a Tlingit woman in Seward Bay, Alaska, thanks to Dick Martin.
Great horned owl nesting on Merritt Island (photo by Chuck Tague)
10 January 2011
Believe it or not, spring is on its way. Chuck Tague found a great horned owl nesting last week (in January 2011) at Merritt Island, Florida.
You’re probably thinking, “Of course owls nest in Florida in January. It’s warm there.” But these birds are more versatile than you think.
Great horned owls are the first native(*) birds to nest in Pennsylvania each year. They start courting in late fall and become really intense in December when you often hear them hooting in the woods and suburbs. By January or February they’ve chosen a nest site and the female lays her eggs.
Choosing a site is no problem when you’re the top predator. In Pennsylvania great horned owls sometimes nest in the tops of broken-off hollow trees but they really like big stick nests, though they never build their own. Instead they claim an old red-tailed hawk nest or, in Florida, an osprey nest. No contest. The original owners aren’t back yet and even if they were present they won’t tangle with this lady!
And yes, that’s the female’s telltale “horns” sticking up. She does all the incubation.
Their secret to winter nesting success is that the female keeps the eggs at a constant 98.6oF even when it’s -27oF outside. She closely incubates the eggs for 30-37 days while her mate does all the hunting. He brings her food at night.
So keep your eyes and ears open for great horned owl activity this month. You might find where they’re nest, but don’t get too close. You don’t want to tangle with Mama!
