Idaho Hawk

I was in central Idaho helping out with a wolf tracking class this summer. We were walking a trail into the area that the local pack had denned earlier in the year when we came into a small meadow and spooked up this hawk. The meadow was covered in vole and gopher runs, good food for the hawk!

As best I can tell, it is an immature red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).

The Birds in My Neighborhood: Sam

The last week or two I have been hanging out on my balcony for a little while almost every day. Mostly I will drink some tea and do a bit of stretching while I listen and watch the birds. I thought it might be fun to start posting about some of the birds I encounter.

This one is Sam the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia). He is a little shy, but most of the time I can see him hanging out on the ivy hedge bordering the yard next to ours. He is the only bird so far that I recognize as an individual (not that I could pick him out of a line up, but based on his consistent location and behavior). Fairly often he will get a bit sneaky and come over to the bird feeder in our yard. He likes to fly under the porch next to the feeder first, then hop out to where the food is.

Sam has been singing from his perch since before I started doing these sits. Recently I started to wonder if he would get a girlfriend soon. This morning when I started photographing him I noticed another song sparrow on the hedge a foot or two away. She would sit there quietly while Sam sang, or sometimes would hop down to feed on the ground while Sam perched on a shrub nearby.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on them as the season progresses.

Nature Quiz of the Week 28

This is a little late in coming. I've been busy getting my dandelion wine going. Hopefully I will get the next part for the answer to last week's question up soon too.

Setting: Around my neighborhood in Kirkland last week.

A multi-kingdom set this week:

1. What species of bird?

This is a spotted towhee (Pipilo maculatus) - a bird that likes to hang out under brush. Its song is a fast trill and often makes a call (around here anyway) that reminds me of a squeaky door.

As in the comments, the tree it is sitting in is a douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)

2. When in bloom, this plant is one of the showier natives of the Pacific Northwest. What species is it?

This is fireweed. I learned its scientific name as (Epilobium angustifolium). Apparently its currently accepted scientific name is (Chamerion angustifolium) though (thanks Kitty).

It has a pretty spike of pink flowers at the top when blooming. At this young stage, the leaves have a bit of a mustardy flavor when nibbled raw. The leaves can be made into a mild tea and the flowers are sometimes used for honey. After working on dandelion wine this past week I am interested in seeing how a fireweed wine might turn out. Hopefully I will remember to try when they start to bloom.

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Barred Owl

I wanted to make note (mostly for myself) that I heard a barred owl calling in the neighborhood tonight. I'd heard them quite regularly in the fall, but I think this is the first time I heard one near the house in a few months (though I heard one in the near by park during the day last week).

From what I found on the Internet, it appears they are year round residents, so I guess maybe they were just quieter in the winter (or shifted their territory a bit?) It also seems likely that they are around courtship/breeding time now.

Birds in Arbutus

It snowed in Seattle a couple of days ago and the weather has actually been cold enough for it to stay around. So yesterday afternoon I went for a walk to enjoy the snow and see what tracks were out.

I didn't end up seeing many wild tracks, but as I walked down the road there was a cacophony of birds coming from every pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii) I passed. I'm not sure if it is because they need extra energy because of the cold, or if the cold made the fruit more delicious, but they were gorging on the small red fruits of the tree.

Spotted Owl

I went to Northwest Trek a couple of months ago. It is a zoo focused on animals native to the region.



While there I happened by while one of the zoo people was giving a presentation with this spotted owl (Strix occidentalis). According to the presenter owls have small brains but their eyes are proportionally as if we had eyes the size of oranges.

Great Horned Owl

(Bubo virginianus)

While tracking on the east side of the mountains a couple weekends ago I came upon this owl. I heard it shifting around in a tree in front of me, but had trouble seeing it until it flew off. On my way back I found it perched on a rock and shortly after it flew up into the tree in the picture. I didn't find any owl pellets.

I was a little surprised to find it like that - where it is pictured is the kind of place I imagine owls like to hang out during the day, but the outer branch it was in at the first tree and then the rock both seem exposed for an owl during the day. I didn't see or hear any birds mobbing it while I was there though.

American Dipper

My timing on this one was impeccable. On my way back from my camping trip I stopped to look for tracks under the bridge. I was listening to a podcast about dippers and the speaker was just talking about finding a dipper's nest. Then, under the bridge I noticed a dipper chirping at me, then all of the sudden it flew up to the bridge rafters and was greeted by a chorus of little chirps.



After feeding the young it would fly down into the water and dive under, presumably catching something edible, but would then fly over to the shore and do a bit more hunting.



After it got enough food, it flew to a log in the water and bopped up and down for awhile (where it gets its name) before flying up to the nest.

I saw a bat under the bridge too. There was a big pile of scat and they appeared to be made up of insects. The location and contents made me suspect bats, I looked up and noticed that there was a large gap (a couple of inches across) in the concrete above. I looked for bats, but didn't see any (it was pretty dark and far away) until I heard a noise coming from up there and after several seconds of looking I noticed it crawling further back into the crevice. It was almost as though it noticed me looking up there and decided it was too exposed and needed to hide better, but its hiding actually made it more noticeable.

Camping Trip

Last night I went "camping" at a sandbar I like to go tracking. I was going pretty minimalist, using just wool blanket to keep me warm at night and a few snacks to eat in the morning. In retrospect, it might have been nice to at least have brought a hat as well. I was warm enough to get to sleep, but woke up several times feeling a bit chilly. This worked out pretty well though, as it made it easy to get up when it got light out. After spending most of the past week staying up till two or three am, this morning I was up and moving at five.

I was hoping to see some large mammals (coyote, bobcat or maybe deer). I think I heard some animals in the night, but didn't see any. The birds were quite active though. Lots of robins, I think there were a bunch of juveniles and I noticed some male aggression - perhaps they are starting a new round of nesting.

I still feel a little frustrated with bird language at times. It was pretty clear to me when the robins were reacting to me, but sometimes I would hear a robin or two alarming while another robin (and other birds) carried on singing in the same area.

It was a lot nicer walking around in the cool peacefulness of the morning then after it heats up around mid-morning. I think I will continue to make a practice of it (though probably not on a regular basis).

The white crowned sparrow (Zonotricha leucophrys) above was quite vocal most of the morning. Often from the same perch where I took this picture. I ended up getting a little too close and he flew off. I waited around for awhile and though he didn't return, several other birds did come by, some of which I will probably post about later.

Afternoon Walk

I haven't been getting out on walks much lately. I have been outside a bit, but recently that has been more for spending time gardening or harvesting wild edibles.

But it is sunny this afternoon so I decided to (slightly) extend my walk to the post office. The post office itself is actually the site of some interactions I've been following.

There has been a pair of pigeons that have been trying to nest in the rafters just in front of the entrance since much earlier in the spring. Somebody at the post office appears to not appreciate it as every once in a while I would find the nest scattered on the ground below - a couple of times with broken egg. I don't really blame them as the pigeons create a bit of a mess on the sidewalk right where people walk through. I did wonder though, why they didn't put up a deterent to keep the pigeons from nesting there at all instead of periodically dashing the pigeons' hopes. At some point in the last couple of weeks they finally did that, putting up those little spikey strips on top of the rafter beams. It seems to have worked - sort of. Actually it seems to have created more diverse habitat. There are now house sparrows nesting where the pigeon had been, building there nest around the spikey projections. The pigeons have moved just to the outside of the crosspiece on the same beam and have begun a nest there. But they are no longer over the cement and the house sparrows don't seem to leave as much of a mess. I'll be interested to see if the post office leaves it at that.

After checking the mail I went down along the river and under the bridge. I have gone there pretty often, though this was the first time in a few weeks. The river was pretty high - I guess because it has been raining the last couple of days and perhaps the snow is melting more now. There were quite a few interesting tracks in the sand, though most of them were not photo-worthy. Lots of different birds, rat, frog, raccoon and the largest possum tracks I have ever seen. The first possum tracks I've seen there in quite a while.

Dead Eagle

My brother tells me it was a hard winter for bald eagles in Sitka. While walking one of the beaches on the tracking field day Scott found this eagle floating in the water near the shore. He was pretty excited because it was the beach where he has been doing dead bird surveys and it sounds like he hadn't found too many dead birds there yet.



I am impressed with the talons. After the body had mostly decomposed and who knows how long it had been bobbing in the water, the talons still seem almost synthetic in their smoothness.