Lesser Black-backed Gull - November 2018

On November 26, 2018 I visited the sandbar at in mouth of Vernon Creek where it empties into Okanagan Lake at Okanagan Landing. This spot is one of the best sites in interior B.C. for viewing different species of gulls. Herring, California, and Ring-billed Gulls are almost always present except in a complete freeze-over or in the height of summer when human beach goers abound. Beginning in October a few Glaucous-winged Gulls can usually be found as well. On November 26, a stranger stood out among the usual species. It was a Lesser Black-backed Gull, not the North Okanagan's first by any means, but rare enough so that it got my heart pumping.

Figure 1 - The first image I got of the Lesser Black-backed Gull was with my iPhone held up to my Kowa scope. I had my usual camera with me but had accidentally left the photo card at home.

Depending upon the species, gulls take 1-4 years to attain mature plumage. For each year of immaturity, the gull will have a distinctive plumage, quite different from its adult feathers. The Lesser Black-backed Gull is a three year gull. Its first-year plumage is quite obscure, but its second year plumage is pretty distinctive. Look for the pale head and chest contrasting with the grey-brown back and wing coverts.

I returned after lunch with my regular camera, this time with a card in it, and took several images of the bird when it re-appeared around 2 p.m. Unfortunately it stubbornly remained in one spot near the tip of the sandbar and all of my images for that session look like this:

Figure 2. Lesser Black-backed Gull - second year plumage. American Herring Gull in the background.

The Lesser Black-backed Gull has unusually long primaries, which is to say the flight feathers visible as black in Figure 2. They extend well beyond the tip of the tail.

During my initial sighting of the gull, it had taken flight and chased another gull quite aggressively. I had been quite impressed with its black tail and white rump, so two days later, when I re-sighted the gull on the sandbar, I made a special effort to stick around until the gull flew. The flight shots reveal the dramatic contrast between the upper wings and the pale body. 

Figure 3. A slightly over-exposed shot of the Lesser Black-backed Gull in flight.

Figure 5. The white rump had a strong tendency to throw off the meter of my camera, over exposing the shot. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get better exposed images.

Figure 6. Note the long white axillary ('wing pit") feathers. 

Figure 7

Figure 8. In sunlight the mantle or saddle is quite grey, and the coverts are shades of brown. Note the white tipped tertials. 

Figure 9 

Figure 10. Note that there are a scattering of bars down the centre of the rump.

I left the gull as it returned time after to to a small dead fish that a California Gull had initially dragged onto the edge of the bar. The Lesser Black-back once again displayed an aggression that enabled him to reclaim the fish from other smaller scavenging gulls.

Lesser Black-backed Gulls are interesting in that the species is not known to breed in North America, aside from a small colony in Greenland (Dunne and Carlson 2019). The species normally breeds along the coasts of northwestern Europe and Iceland. Beginning in the 1940s the species began to expand its range north and westward. The first occurrence in North America came in 1934 (Olsen and Larsson 2003) and in Canada in 1968 (Godfrey 1986). The first B.C. record was made by the late Doug Powell of an adult at Revelstoke from October 26 to November 10 1989 (Weber and Cannings 1990).  The second record occurred at Burton, south of Nakusp from 26 September to 18 October 1993.  Beginning about 2002, the species has become almost annual  in the Okanagan Valley, with one bird occurring most winters somewhere between Vernon and Osoyoos. Most records have been of adults. For a more complete status report on this species in British Columbia see Rick Toochin, Don Cecile, and Jamie Fenneman's efauna document.

References

Dunne, P. and K. Karlson. 2019. Gulls Simplified.

Godfrey, W.E. 1986. The Birds of Canada 2nd edition.

Olsen, K.M. and H. Larsson. 2004. Gulls of North America, Europe, and Asia.

Toochin, R., D. Cecile and J. Fenneman. date? Status and Occurrence of Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus) in B.C. ibis.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/efauna/documents/Lesser_Black-backed_Gull-RT.DC.pdf.

Weber, W. C. and R. J. Cannings. 1990. Fall season: August 1 – November 30, 1989- British Columbia and Yukon Region. American Birds 44: 144-149

Acknowledgement: Thanks to birding veteran Gary Davidson of Nakusp for improving the accuracy of the Lesser Black-back Gull's provincial status.

Hawk Owl by Chris Siddle

Guiguet the Great

If you are in your sixties, you may remember when the only detailed information about the owls of the province was to be found in the British Columbia Provincial Museum’s Handbook No. 18 Birds of British Columbia (7) Owls written by C.J. Guiguet. This sixty-seven page booklet, first printed in 1960, reflected the current state of knowledge about most of the owls of North America since B.C. is blessed with 15 of the 18 species that occur regularly north of the Mexican border. At that time there wasn’t much known about many owls, especially northern species like Great Gray Owls, Boreal Owls, and Northern Hawk Owls, not only within British Columbia, but throughout North America. So Mr. Guiguet had to borrow liberally from that preeminent source of information, A.C. Bents’ Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey (Smithsonian Institution U.S. National Museum Bulletin 170 1938). I was twelve when I wrote to Mr. Guiguet, who replied with a kind letter and copies of all the Birds of British Columbia Handbooks published at the time. This was very generous of him.  The tone he adopted in this letter and in a second one sent a year later, was as one birder to another. He took my pre-adolescent bird yearnings seriously, and without criticism. His letters were supportive and phrased as if to a peer and not to a child. How I relished those letters! Guiguet’s gentle enthusiasm help set me on my life’s course, the birding part of it any way.

My First Owls 

I read and re-read the B.C. handbooks as only an obsessive pre-teen can. Not long after reading The Owls for the first time, I lucked into my first wild owl. On a hot August evening my parents and I were slowly driving along a gravel road towards Norris Creek to cool off in the stream’s icy water. I glanced out the side window to see (oh, heart, be still!) a Great Horned Owl glaring at me just before it flew from the alders along the edge of a dark Fraser Valley forest.  Its yellow glare is branded in my mind’s eye even today, the mental image more a part of me than any photo could be. Such wild, dismissive, seemingly angry eyes! 

Great Horned Owl - Not angry-eyed like my first, best Great Horned Owl. Photo by C Siddle. 

 My second owl wasn’t quite as dramatic but provided me with a thrill as I realized that the small shape on the utility wire that stretched over a neighbour’s hillside driveway really was an owl, an owl that allowed me to get close enough to recognize it a Western Screech-owl, an unexpected reward as I walked home at dusk from school. To be shown an owl is good; to find one on your own, along a route as familiar as the one you had walked to and from school, was great. Again, the mental image I formed of this bird is somehow far richer and more meaningful than any photo I could possess. 

By the time I graduated from high school I had been birding about six years and had seen most the other usual owls of southwestern B.C.: Barn, Short-eared, Snowy (during the great invasion of 1967), Northern Saw-whet, and Northern Pygmy-Owl. 

My parents didn’t like travelling, perhaps because as an airman and a WAF they had been moved around a great deal during the Second World. Once settled in Mission they were quite happy to stay home. However, they were unusually supportive of my birdwatching, spending much of their rare spare time taking me on short day trips to birdy places like Pitt Polder, Birch Bay, and Deroche Slough. However, this indulgence did not extend past the Fraser Canyon. So I was excited to escape the Fraser Valley and explore the Interior  when I accepted my first teaching job in Fort St. John. 

Northern Hawk Owls  

On 1 Nov. 1975, two months into teaching, I glimpsed my first Northern Hawk Owl along the Alaska Highway where it curves down the hills on the north side of the little community of Taylor, B.C. Hills like these are locally known as breaks and are prime habitat for Northern Hawk Owls in migration and winter. The breaks line the north and western sides of the Peace and its tributaries like the Halfway and the Beatton rivers. They are also an obvious feature of Highway 29 which runs across the tops of the breaks from Charlie Lake to Hudson Hope.  The breaks are remnant prairie grasslands, much more exposed to the warming sun and the drying prevailing southwest winds than the sheltered, shady and cooler south and east banks which are forested.  In the moist draws between the grassy hill tops are open stands of slim Trembling Aspens, their growth limited by the height of the draw which shields them from desiccating southwest winds. 

On the breaks the snow cover is at its thinnest and the view of the river valley is good. It’s a good place for a hungry Northern Hawk Owl looking for mice, voles, grouse and small birds. The hawk owl is active by day and often unusually tame, allowing the observer a close approach.  As exciting as my “life” sighting was, I couldn’t tarry more than a minute or two near the owl because I was a passenger in a car full of non-birding teachers who had received their first full pay cheques the afternoon before and were headed to Dawson Creek for a Saturday of wining and dining. 

My second hawk owl appeared twenty-two days later along Highway 29 on the breaks above the confluence of the Halfway and Peace rivers. With this bird I was able to take a little more time thanks to a patient driver. This bird was perched in a roadside aspen and allowed me to get within 4 metres without appearing disturbed. It never stopped scanning the snowy grasses. As a test, I had the driver blow the car’s horn. The hawk owl didn’t even flinch, just kept scanning. We left him as the early winter dusk came on and a snow flurry began.

I didn’t see another hawk owl for the next two years. I was too wrapped up in learning to be a school teacher to look for one.  I had a hard time disengaging from work as an English teacher. There was always marking because I believed the only way kids learned to write was to write, and a “good” teacher read over all their work and made suggestions for improvement and left encouraging little comments in the margins. A good teacher also planned. Oh, Lord, did I plan. Every 15 minutes of a lesson was planned if not partially scripted.  In truth I was deeply insecure about my ability as a teacher and I overcompensated my way through my first several Fort St. John winters. 

Between 1975 and 1981 everything I learned about Northern Hawk Owls from field experience could be summarized in a couple of sentences. In the southern half of the North Peace the species appeared most often in March – May and again in November. It often, but not always, favoured, edge habitat such as the breaks. When one discovered a hawk owl, one usually didn’t see much hawk owl behavior other than the bird perched high atop a tree or pole, waiting for prey (voles in late spring and summer; voles and birds the rest of the year) to make its whereabouts known. 

After six years teaching in a junior high school, I had transferred to North Peace Senior Secondary School. Instead of 13-15 years old, I was teaching 16 -18 year olds, teenagers who for the most part were pretty serious about doing well in school. At first even the “town” kids had only two TV channels, and many of the country kids had no TV at all. Many of the students read books, and many had had excellent English teachers in the past, so my job became easier almost overnight. Also, since the senior high school was the only one in the district, my students came from a huge area, including the Alaska Highway from the Peace River north to about Mile 142, west to the Halfway River and east to the Alberta border. By now many people knew that I was the local “birdman” with the result that students and their parents often reported unusual birds to me. In late 1982 a Grade 11 student told me that there were a lot of owls around his parents’ ranch between Fort St. John and Hudson Hope. I followed up the tip and found it quite accurate. 

Northern Hawk Owl - photo taken by Gary Davidson, a thoughtful photographer who makes it a point never to needlessly disturb or harass wildlife just for the sake of an image. 

 Misguided Attempts at Owl Photography

On 11 Dec. my friend Joan, and I found 6 Northern Hawk Owls along less than 30 kilometres of road on the plateau between Cache Creek (not Cache Creek near Kamloops) and the Halfway River. The habitat was ranchland with plenty of large fields, young aspen forest, a beaver swamp, and several patches of Black Spruce muskeg. 

I wondered if any birder had ever seen SIX hawk owls in one day before in British Columbia, but my pondering was short lived, because on 16 January 1983 not only did Joan and I re-locate the original six owls along our original route, but also spotted an additional four closer to Hudson Hope.  It was the most memorable day in my hawk owl experience. Ten hawk owls in one day. 

16 January was also the day we tried an experiment that could only be described as ham handed, and wrong minded. (I was much older than Joan, and should have known better. I take full responsibility for the following stunt). 

 Joan had a wind-up plastic mouse that ran on two wheels instead of back legs. When we discovered that the mouse tended to spin its wheels on the frozen snow, we cut notches along the edges of its wheels to give them grip. Now that the mouse had snow tires, we had to soften its unattractive plastic appearance. A liberal application of white carpenter’s glue over the mouse, followed by a heavy sprinkling of deer hair gave the toy an feral quality, producing a fake mouse that combined, to my mind, the anarchic with the gormless, like Sid Vicious meets Mr. Mole. 

Hawk Owl Number Four was our first test subject. He happened to be a one-eyed individual although that’s not why we picked him. He was perched close to the hard snow on the road’s edge, a good location on which to run our punk rodent. 

About 11 AM Joan wound up the mouse, which we now optimistically called the lure, and let it run along the snow. At once the owl swooped from its aspen perch but perhaps sensing all was not quite right, hovered over the lure without taking it. Hovering is a foraging habit the hawk owl is well known for. The second time we ran the toy mouse, the hawk owl swooped, seized the mouse in one feathery foot and perched with it on the tip of a 15 m White Spruce. For a full minute it perched gripping the mouse but didn’t reach down to attempt to eat the “prey”. Finally it flew with the mouse still its grasp to a snowbank at the edge of the forest and with its back to us mantled over the lure, then flew off, leaving the toy mouse in a depression in the snow.

We tried the lure on three more hawk owls. Bird 5 ignored the mouse entirely.  Bird 6 responded to the lure once we dragged it through the snow attached to fishing line. The owl hovered over the moving prey but didn’t strike and couldn’t be coaxed to leave its perch again. The last bird we pestered was Hawk Owl 2 which flew in from an impressive distance (well over 100 metres), hovered, and then left. 

This was our only day using the toy mouse. We discussed how our meddling was causing the hawk owls to waste precious calories in useless pursuit.  Thereafter that winter we used a dead mouse tied to fishing line as a lure hauled across fresh snow with a rod and reel. and we would let the hawk owl have a mouse at the end of the brief period of attracting. Our objective, beside the dubious but always strong desire to get closer to a creature we admired, was to photograph the hawk owls in action. However, photography at -15 to -25 Celsius proved to be a miserable flop. Film froze and shattered when we advanced it, or was scarred by static in the dry winter air. Our mid-price range 1980s cameras and lenses weren’t up to the task of capturing a crisp hunting hawk owl photo. After a few experiments we gave up.

Learning to Identify with the Owl

With our failure came a lesson learned. We put ourselves in the place of the owl. If as owls we lived on the edge of survival in the harsh Peace River winter, would we have found photographers’ efforts intrusive? Of course.  We could no longer rationalize that we were just two photographers taking up a few minutes of one hawk owl’s day. 

The next time that you see a wild owl, try to remember the situation I described in the paragraphs above. Resist the urge to make a photoshoot out of the situation. Leave the owl alone. Move on. And don’t tell anyone where the owl is, because there’s are always people who won’t/can’t make the effort to imagine themselves in the place of the owl. There are always people who will say to themselves, ‘What could one or two pictures hurt?’ 

If you live in the Lower Mainland or Southern Vancouver Island maybe you have seen the so-called “owl paparazzi” pestering owls. Except it goes way beyond pestering. Some would-be wildlife photographers flush owls repeatedly, checking the backs of their digital cameras each time, always hopeful that the next image will be sharper. People push with their little One Shots,and zoom Canons and Nikons into thickets looking for a better angle and use flash for better detail, and squeak and gibber to get the owl’s attention. They trespass into barns. They carry their long lenses like weapons of war across the salt grass, having ignored signs that tell them how far some owls have migrated just to hunt the foreshore. Photographers always want to get closer.

The cumulative effects of human disturbance on roosting and hunting owls can be massive on a local scale. People will tell you that a photographer is photographing the owl for only a few minutes of its life, but never mention that an owl’s life span is much shorter than a human’s. And where there are many humans and few owls, someone is always waiting in line to photograph the owl when the first guy has finished. 

Bird Migration around Vernon; What Are Those Little Birds with Black and White Heads?

It's the later half of April or early May and suddenly your bird feeder is surrounded by ten or fifteen little brown and gray birds with strikingly obvious black and white stripes on their heads. They look a bit like mice as they jink around on the ground eating seeds. They move so that each bird has an individual space around it, occasionally invaded by a contender, but fights between birds are brief and unspectacular. What are these little birds? Why are so many in my yard when last week there were none?

These birds are White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) and they are re-fueling during their migration through the lowlands of the Okanagan Valley. In a few days they will have moved on to their breeding grounds across northern and central British Columbia. A few will migrate up into our local mountains to breed in the brushy edges between the clumps of subalpine forest. A very few might remain in the Valley to nest, but lowland nesting for this group is a rare event.

What you are witnessing is the spring migration of White-crowned Sparrows through the Okanagan Valley. In their classic study of the birds of the area*, the Cannings brothers point out that obvious migration events are rare in the Okanagan, but the relatively compressed spring migration of White-crowns is a classic example of such a movement. The majority of the 300 species of birds that annually visit the Okanagan Valley are migrants too, but migrate in quiet, less obvious ways, many of them songbirds that pass largely unseen by all but the most dedicated birdwatchers as they (the migrants) move through the fields and forests on their way to nesting areas. Many of our waterfowl that spend the winter on our lakes are also migrants, but unless you go out of your way to survey ducks and geese on local water bodies, the migratory arrivals and departures are not as obvious as the sudden arrival of the White-crowned crowds to your yard.

White-crowned Sparrow at a BX feeder in April 2016. Photos by Chris Siddle

Enjoy "your" White-crowned Sparrows while you can, for they will not tarry long on their way north. Consider putting out a little extra seed for these weary travellers, and certainly some pans of fresh water so that they can drink and bathe. Make an extra effort to shoo away the neighbours' cats to keep these sparrows as safe as you can, for each sparrow is driven by migratory forces that scientists, let alone the rest of us, are only beginning to understand.

Other examples of spring migration to look for in the Okanagan Valley:

1. the arrival and movement of Yellow-rumped Warblers through the lowlands. These beautiful "butterfly birds, named for their many colours and restless foraging, are most obvious when cool, wet weather forces them out of the forests to look for food in low bushes, grassland edges, and marshes.

Yellow-rumped Warbler in bushes along Deep Creek, Larkin Cross Rd., April 2018.

2. the visitation of swans to the Deep Creek floodplain between Armstrong and Head of the Lake. Lately the corn field at O'Keefe Ranch has been a very productive spot for over a hundred Trumpeter Swans to gather to feed in March and the first half of April. Among them will be a few Tundra Swans as well. By mid April, depending upon the weather, both species will have continued their migration to the north, the Tundra Swans breeding on the tundra of the Canadian arctic.

Trumpeter Swans flying towards corn field at O'keefe  Ranch, March, 2017

3. the sudden appearances and very short visits of the dark hooded little Bonaparte's Gulls at Okanagan Landing-Okanagan Lake, Swan Lake, and Otter Lake.

There are many other examples of migratory birds coming and going through the North Okanagan. And, of course, there are birds like American Robins, which flock together in winter, overwinter in roving groups looking for food sources, and disperse into neighbourhoods with the first good weather in early spring. Then there are the birds that winter here from elsewhere. Our huge flocks of Bohemian Waxwings originate as pairs and their young leave their isolated Boreal Forest muskegs to gather in huge flocks to travel to the Okanagan, arriving in late November or December and visiting our local fruit-producing bushes, shrubs, and trees, especially the Mountain Ash trees, stripping the fruit and befouling the ground beneath as each bird rapidly digests the frozen fruit. By the end of March, most years, the Bohemians vanish once again, back into their forests and muskegs, changing their party life-style to become, for the spring and summer, responsible monogamous parents.

Bohemian Waxwings stripping a bush of berries, Highland Rd., s. of Vernon, Dec. 2016

*For more about movements, migratory and otherwise, see Birds of the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia by Robert A. , Richard J. and Sydney G Cannings. 1987. Royal British Columbia Museum, available in public libraries and possibly second hand bookstores. Pages 352-3 specifically cover White-crowned Sparrows, while pages 53-6 contain an invaluable summery of bird migrations and other activities through the calendar year. 

Close Encounters: Cooper's Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk

There is a life and death drama being played out in my yard. From my kitchen and living room windows I have the best seat in the house.

Meet the killers. The first is an adult Cooper’s Hawk, which I have judged to be a male by his size. He has been visiting my yard at the base of Silver Star Mountain, Vernon, since mid November. He favours the neighbours’ big maple tree because a perch halfway up gives him a commanding view of my yard where I maintain a bird feeder.

Fig. 1 - The Cooper's Hawk in my yard 31 Jan. 2017

Actually, bird feeding station is more accurate than calling where I put seed a “bird feeder". Every dawn I scatter about a dozen cups of mixed bird seed on and around a big round piece of an old Siberian Elm that was felled and cut up a few years ago. The pseudo stump sits at the base of a little patch of lilacs growing next to a sprawling ancient apricot tree. Lilac and apricot are growing more or less directly below the maple.

Fig. 2 - The feeder area. The plastic dish is used for a bird bath in the mild months.

Meet the second killer. He’s a Sharp-shinned Hawk, also an adult and also a male. He visits the yard as well, but rarely on the same days as the Cooper’s and never, to my knowledge, at the same time.

Fig. 3 - Sharp-shinned Hawk in my yard. Note how its expression differs from that of the much larger Cooper's Hawk . 

Attending my feeding station are Black-capped and Mountain chickadees, a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches, one female Downy Woodpecker, and up to three Northern Flickers. These birds have no part to play in my story because so far they have been ignored by the killers or have evaded them so successfully that it’s unlikely they will be caught.

Also faithful to the feeding area are California Quails (up to 40), Eurasian Collared Doves (up to 5), Mourning Doves (up to 37), Dark-eyed Juncos (30), Song Sparrows (4), House Finches (8), American Goldfinches (5), and House Sparrows (20). The quail and the doves are of much interest to the Cooper’s Hawk and the sparrows, juncos, and finches clearly fascinate the Sharp-shinned Hawk.

On 15 Dec. 2016 the Cooper’s Hawk appeared in the maple early. It was a gloomy morning, valley fog over the North Okanagan, and the hawk blended well into the shadowless murk. With his gray back to the line of California Quail that were slowly infiltrating the lilac hedge off to the hawk’s right, he must have been harder than usual to see. Whatever the reason, the quail seemed not as wary as usual.  At 10:51 the hawk suddenly leaned right, propelled himself off his perch and with two or three power flap peeled around the end of the hedge and struck a female quail on the back. His momentum carried him on top of her, and though she struggled he kept at least one large foot clamping her body to the snow.

Fig. 4 - Cooper's Hawk has taken the California Quail into the skimpy shelter of the lilac hedge.

Fig. 5 - Halfway through his meal.

Fig. 6 - Almost finished.

Fig. 7 - 52 minutes from the time of capture, the hawk takes his first break from plucking and eating.

Once on his prey he looked around intently probably to make sure that he was safe from attack or interruption. Keeping the quail gripped with one foot, he peg-legged his way into base of the lilacs and began plucking his prey. Fortunately the hedge was thin enough so that I could see the hawk and his prey quite clearly from a living room window. He began plucking the quail only about 3-4 minutes after seizing her. In Figure 4 the quail is on its belly, its head buried in the snow as the hawk grips it on the lower back beneath the wing.

Plucking and eating the quail took about 50 minutes. At which point the quail died I do not know. I hope it expired almost immediately, but some tell tale shifting of the hawk upon its prey suggests that the quail may have struggled a few minutes even while in the hawk’s grasp.  This led me to the question, how does a Cooper’s Hawk or other accipiter actually kill? I found an answer in Leslie Brown’s classic text Birds of Prey. Referring to high speed photographic studies of striking raptors studies carried out by the ironically named G.E. Goslow, Brown describes the strike of the Cooper’s Hawk and that of a Northern Goshawk:

                  Both accipiters attacked in essentially the same way. They first gained speed by vigorous flapping, [then] ceased flapping, the Cooper’s Hawk at 3.5 to 4.5 metres and the Goshawk at 7.5 to 9 metres. Still closer the hawks swung the body upwards to bring the pelvis beneath the head, spreading the tail to brake, and at the same time threw the feet forward hard. At the actual instant of strike, the feet were traveling towards the prey at almost or more than twice the speed of the head. In the Cooper’s Hawk, the relative velocities were 4.8 metres per second for the head and 11.4 for the feet…by thrusting the pelvis and feet forward, the striking accipiter delivers a violent blow at the prey and does not just grab it with outspread feet…To kill their prey these accipiters used a kneading action of the talons, something like that of a contented cat on a lap. Pp 123-124.

Although his final simile strikes me as not quite appropriate, I think you understand a little more clearly now how a Cooper’s Hawk strikes and kills.

From about 10:55 to 11:47 the Cooper’s Hawk plucked, tore apart, and swallowed the quail bit by bit. The area immediately around the hawk became feather-strewn. He paused only once to watch the neighbours leave in their vehicle and twice to scrape particularly bothersome feathers from his beak. His first real break from eating came at 11:47 when he sat for 3 minutes in the centre of the feathery circle, presumably fairly replete. (Fig. 7). 

A nosey Black-billed Magpie approached the hawk within 2-3 metres. The hawk peg-legged out onto our lawn (for a clear runway) and flew with the tattered remnants of the quail still in his grip to the maple and a few seconds later into a dense Douglas-fir hedge. The magpie lost interest and flew off. About three minutes later at 12:06 the Cooper’s Hawk returned without the quail skin to the maple, where he perched, crop bulging, for an hour and a half before flying off for the day.

Figure 8 - The Cooper's Hawk resumes his perch in the maple and begins to digest his meal. Note the bulge in his crop. 

The Birds of North America revised account of the Cooper’s Hawk describes three  methods of attack. Cooper’s Hawk sometimes stoops from high flight, like a Peregrine might do. This has to be a fairly rare hunting technique. I say that because I don’t know of anyone who has seen such an aerial attack. In the second method, a Cooper’s Hawk puts on a sudden burst of speed as it leaves its perch. This describes the kill that I had witnessed. Finally a Cooper’s Hawk can hunt on foot, entering even thick shrubbery after birds, an approach toward securing prey also employed by the Cooper’s smaller cousin, the Sharp-shinned Hawk.

My Sharp-shinned Hawk showed up in the yard on 6 January. For his first few visits, I saw him only as he briefly passed through the yard, but finally on 13 January he stuck around to try some hunting. In my ebird entry for that day I called his hunting technique “drop and hop”.

Like the Cooper’s Hawk, at first the Sharpie perched in the maple, but there the similarities between hunting styles ended. When he spotted potential prey, usually among the juncos, finches or House Sparrows, he did not push off in power flight, but simply appeared to drop the few metres down to the lilac growing beside the feeding area. Invariably some of the songbirds bolted into the many stemmed lilac around which the Sharpie now fluttered. He would perch on slender ends of branches then fly in a tight circuit around the bush, wingtips almost brushing the twigs. Frequently he dropped to the snow and half hopped half flapped around the base of the bush, reaching between stems trying to snag one of the small birds sheltering within the bush’s base.  If small songbirds dream, their nightmares might feature a surprisingly long slender leg ending in a long-toed foot armed with wicked talons able to reach through even the tightest cage of stems and grab at them.

Fig. 9 - Sharpie, eyes on the prize,  just about to drop and hop. 

The Sharp-shinned Hawk made far more hunting sallies per day than did the Cooper’s Hawk. While the Cooper’s Hawk waited sometimes hours before attempting a hit, the Sharp-shinned Hawk was willing to try his luck whenever small birds gathered at the feeder. However, his success rate was nil at least while I was watching. All of half dozen or so attempts that I witnessed over the next few days failed until 8:59 AM, 15 January 2017 when he dropped, hopped, and plunged through the twigs to pin to the snow a White-throated Sparrow that was just too slow to avoid him. Through a kitchen window I was able to snap one picture of this capture before the hawk flew away with his prize in his talons.

My attitude towards raptors was tested very briefly. Normally as when the Cooper’s Hawk caught the California Quail, I thought that I remained objective, neither pro-hawk nor pro-prey. I dressed my supposed neutrality in reasoning that death by hawk was Nature’s way. That’s why there were so many quails and so few Cooper’s Hawks. In the grand scheme, quails were hawk chow. However, when the Sharp-shinned Hawk snatched the only White-throated Sparrow ever to attempt to overwinter in my yard, my single thought was, ‘What! You nailed the White-throated Sparrow! You couldn’t grab one of the common species? Come on, Sharpie. That’s not fair!’

Fig. 10 - The White-throated Sparrow was just too slow trying to get away from the base of the lilac bush. 

My indignation didn’t last long though. The thought intruded that far from being neutral about the life and death struggles in my yard, I had been pro-raptor all along. After all, there was nothing natural about my feeding station. It was an artificial concentration of seed, attracting a concentration of quails, doves and other species unlikely to occur in such high numbers without human intervention. Lots of avian activity attracts accipiters according to scientists E.L. Dunn and D. Tessaglia. 

However, their study of Project Feeder Watch also expressed the idea that successful kills are quite rare. And, for me, truth be told, the sight of a hunting accipiter, buteo, harrier, eagle or falcon quickens my pulse as no quail or sparrow ever can. Let me be clear: I am not feeding birds just to feed raptors. I like having ALL species around the yard, but if I am going to continue feeding birds I might as well be honest about my feelings.  Raptors, whether they are Cooper’s Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawks, or Pygmy Owls, kill birds coming to my feeder so rarely that I don’t think I am upsetting anything in any major way. But each of us who feeds birds must make up his own mind about the effects of feeding birds in the backyard, a backyard that can become the setting for a life and death drama.

References:

Bildstein, Keith L. and Kenneth D. Meyer. 2000. Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), The Birds of North America (P.G. Rodewald, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America. https://birds.org/species-Account/bna/species/shshaw. DOI 10.2173/bna. 482

Brown, Leslie. 1976. Birds of Prey: Their Biology and Ecology. The Hamlyn Publishing Group, Middlesex, England.

Curtis, Odette E., R.N. Rosebfield and J. Bielefeidt. 2006. Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii), The Birds of North America (P.G. Rodewald, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America; https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/coohaw DOI: 10.2173/bna.75

Dunn, Erica L. and  Diane L. Tessaglia. 1994. “Predation of Birds at Feeders in Winter.” Journal of Field Ornithology 65 (1) 8-16. 

Get Up Really Early - And I Mean Early.

The compulsion to rise before dawn...

Somewhere many years ago I read that birdwatching, as it was commonly called prior to the mid-1970s, was the compulsion to rise before dawn to sit in a bog. Although I may not have remembered the wording exactly, I still like the ideas expressed very much. In this blog I will stress the necessity of rising very, very early to maximise your potential for connecting with nature in a non-consumptive way.

My idea is an old one. The early bird, or in this case, birder, catches the worm. It was already a proverb, and probably an old one, when the great English naturalist John Ray included it in his "A Collection of English Proverbs" in 1670. Today, if you google the expression you will find, among much else, nine reasons why the early risers among us are more efficient at life. You may also find a rant against early risers making noise and disturbing the sleep of normal people. I will restrict my thesis to the pre-dawn practises of naturalists and birders. The early birder catches unexpected and sometimes wonderful experiences by being out as night ends and the fresh day is about to begin. This is the "prairie chicken" hour (1) when most non-naturalists are elsewhere, mostly home asleep, people are very few and far between, and you are fresh and completely receptive to the strange and fascinating world at the end of night and the beginning of day, a period First World humanity has largely shunned lately, a world where nature is free to reveal itself on its own terms.

What Time Are You Getting Up? 

A few days ago my wife and I were staying overnight at her sister's condo in White Rock, B.C. British Columbia readers will probably know that White Rock is about as close to a truly temperate winter climate as we have in our province. This lovely seaside town is  located about a kilometre north of the 49th Parallel on a shallow bay in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. It is ringed with stunning but distant mountains and protected from the open Pacific by both the Olympic Peninsula to the southwest and Vancouver Island to the northwest. Thus it's situated within the weak rain shadows of both the Olympics and the mountain ranges of southern Vancouver Island, depending upon which way the wind carries storms. It is far enough south that it even misses some of the nastiness blowing west out of the Fraser Valley during periods of winter high pressure. Thus while White Rock does occasionally get temperatures cold enough for the puddles to freeze and for a skim of snow to fall, true Canadian winter weather is not the norm, even in these crazy times of unstable seasons.

So there I was having finished supper with relatives just before Christmas when the lady of the house asked what time I was going out in the morning. Those at table were used to me having a schedule often separate from everyone else.

Without thinking I replied, "About seven."

Later as I climbed into bed, I thought wait a minute. It's late December. It won't be light when I leave. And since I was driving only a few kilometres to Blackie Spit, north of White Rock, it won't be light when I arrive. Oh, well, I'm an early riser and I don't want to stooge around the apartment waiting for dawn. I would just get in everyone's way, everyone getting up at a more "sensible" hour.

The Spit Before Dawn 

When I left the Crescent Beach side street and crunched and cracked my car through the virgin ice on the parking lot puddles, I realised that I was the first person on Blackie Spit this morning, or I would be in about 30 minutes when morning arrived. There was no one here. Not even any dog walkers. You know you're ahead of the wave when you've beaten the ubiquitous canine perambulators.

It was just beginning to think about getting light as I walked through the gate onto the spit. The tide was in full. The waters were calm, but the air was chilly, and a winter wind cut through my coat. Fifty or so American Wigeon hardly lifted their bills from their grazing on grass above the beach, the white crowns of the adult males the most visible mark in the darkness. Among them there had to be one or two Eurasian Wigeons. There always are. Blackie Spit is a great spot to find this uncommon species which usually breeds in far eastern Siberia. A few hundred Euros split from the species' main Old World migration paths to cross the Bering Sea and follow flocks of their North American relatives down the West Coast. In the pre-dawn murk the light-gathering abilities of my binoculars were severely tested as I could just make out the distinguishing colours of no fewer than 17 Eurasian Wigeons among the strung out flock. Among the wigeons were a few Green-winged Teals, each identifiable by its small size and the vivid short white line at the top of the flank.

Even in the semidarkness, the solid chestnut of a Eurasian Wigeon's head is easily distinguished from an American Wigeon's green mask and pale cheek. Photo - Chris Siddle. 

Low over the lightening bay a tightly packed flock of small birds flashed on and off, off when they simultaneously showed their dark backs and on when they all suddenly turned to show white underparts. Even in the dull light their flocking behaviour identified them as Dunlin, the most abundant wintering shorebird in southwest BC.  The flock divided and landed in two parties seconds apart. In the pre-dawn they had landed close to me, covering their few feet of the beach black with packed birds. Most tucked their bills into the feathers on their backs and apparently went to sleep, or at least assume sleeping positions. As much as I wanted to stalk the flock for better look, I desisted knowing that in a few minutes times walkers and joggers oblivious to Dunlins would be accidentally disturbing them from the beach despite the sign at the entrance to the spit that warns people to give wildlife plenty of personal space.

On a beach log at the tip of the spit perched a dark coastal-type Merlin that had also noticed the arrival of the Dunlins. I hung back, content to watch this small, swift falcon that was very likely looking for his first meal of the day, a meal that was Dunlin-grey and Dunlin-warm. Like all falcons, the Merlin has large highly efficient eyes that take in lots of light to help it hunt under dim conditions. If he came in low and fast out of any direction but the south-east his prey would find him very hard to see against the low contrast of the clouds and sea. The sandpiper flock would flush, but any sandpiper slightly slow off the beach would be among his potential targets. Instantly he would make his choice and fly the Dunlin down.

But the Merlin didn't have a chance to hunt. The first jogger of the day run up behind me, swerved around me and did an arc around the tip of the spit. In his oblivious self-absorption he didn't even notice the little falcon spook into the approaching dawn.

The Merlin has big eyes compared to many other diurnal raptors, enabling it to spot prey even under low light levels.
Photo by Chris Siddle

After Other People Start To Arrive

Clearly it was now time to get off the spit and explore the bay's little inlets on the east side of Blackie Spit. Dawn was forcing me away from the routes most popular with runners and the soon to arrive walkers. I took to less popular trails to catch wildlife before it retired into the shrubs and blackberries for the day. Sparrows and towhees began to appear on the paths. Like sparrows, the shyer thrushes like Varied Thrush and Hermit Thrush also take advantage of twilight conditions to forage in more open locations than usual and are easier to spot at these times than at any other. However, this dawn was thrushless except for an American Robin stationed in a poplar.

Black-capped Chickadees explored the shrubbery right beside to path's edge. A quick pish on my part brought out Sooty Fox Sparrows and more Spotted Towhees of the largely unspotted coastal subspecies. Grouped on an isolated muddy fringe where neither joggers nor birders could disturb them were forty-five Greater Yellowlegs, two Long-billed Curlews, and two Marbled Godwits, most of them roosting with their bills, no matter how long, tucked into their back feathers. Dabbling ducks in numbers lined the quiet estuarine inlets and if I walked by them quietly enough without stopping, many did not flush.

Long-billed Curlew - Blackie Spit is probably the best single site in the Greater Vancouver area to find this species which is a rare spring and fall migrant and a casual winter resident to coastal Southwest B.C. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

By now other vehicles were arriving at the parking lot. The fenced dog park was filling up with excited mutts and their dotting owners. Joggers were now passing me every five minutes. The busyness of the day was here. It was clearly time for me to go.

However, though I had used up my time, the thought remained with me that by arriving at the Spit before dawn I had managed to squeeze over an hour of solitary time with nature all on my own, even here on the edge of a large city, amidst fairly dense human settlement. Getting up ridiculously early had paid off handsomely. My message: beat the crowds and even other early risers, meet nature as early as you can. You won't be disappointed.

Notes 

(1) Prairie Chicken Hour - A few years ago I was lucky enough to be invited along on an Avocet Tour of Colorado where the main objective was to view the early spring "dancing" of courting prairie grouse including Greater and Lesser prairie chickens, Gunnison's and Greater sage grouse and Sharp-tailed Grouse. In the first four species' cases we had to be in place on the prairie before dawn. From the dark grasslands the first signal that our quest was successful would be the weird popping, gurgling, and booming vocalizations of the grouse. As dawn seeped into the world, gradually we would discern the shapes of the males as they stood their ground on the lek, waiting for females to approach from the surrounding sage brush. Many thanks to owner/guide Chris Charlesworth for the trip.