Where Are the Bald Eagles today? And Even More Mysterious, What Doesn't That Red-tailed Hawk Want Me To See? And Could That Possibly Be Mr. M?

Looking for Bald Eagles?

First stop-The Riverview, a food establishment which, you guessed it, has a dynamite view of the river near the dam in Indian Ford, WI.

Open water in winter. That's the ticket.

The Riverview is a place in which the cook, the waitress, or a local patron eating the Eggs Benedict at this very small cafe, will have the latest information about where the Bald Eagles are or might be today.

What a great excuse to have a dynamite breakfast and get the latest Eagle report at the same time.

Except since I was last here in the sleet and frozen mist white out, there has been milder weather and the river is completely open. No reason for the Eagles to be hanging reasonably close to the open water of the dam so you can easily spot them.

But as Jim the cook says, "You never know what you might find."

Instead of the hundred mallards of the other day, a pair glides by giving me the eye in case I stashed my breakfast toast in my pocket.

They were right. I did.

What is that?

A diving duck not the least interested in toast for one thing.

The other thing is, I didn't know what it was but photographer Francois Portmann did. http://www.fotoportmann.com/birds/

It's a Ring-necked Duck.

As I was as unfamiliar with this duck as I am with most water fowl I went googling. And one site I visited was the Cornell Lab's All About Birds website, in which I discovered a most peculiar thing. Notice anything odd about these two entries about the Ring-necked Duck below?

"The most common diving duck to be found on small ponds in migration, the Ring-necked Duck is more easily recognized by the bold white ring around its bill than the subtle purplish one around its neck."


"Both the common name and the scientific name "collaris" refer to one of the Ring-necked Duck's most inconspicuous field marks. Rarely visible in the field, the chestnut collar on the black neck is noticeable when the bird is in the hand. Such subtle characters would have been obvious to the people first describing the duck from dead specimens."

I sent them an email to help them avoid any further embarrassment unless of course the duck has two collars.

Particularly interesting as you can't see the color for yourself very well without shooting the duck or finding someone with a bird skin.

Right. So how about those Bald Eagles?

Do you see any?

I finally did find one way over there--far far away. If you look very very carefully you may see a speck of white that is the Eagle's head instead of a clump of snow on a branch.

Here she is looking down at a passing duck.

Then she just turns away and stays there until she takes to her wings.

Love those tail feathers.

No more joy at the dam but I'd heard that there had been an Eagle sighted flying over Lake Koshkonong on HWY 59 near Newville earlier in the day.

I'm off.

I'm making my way toward Newville when a Bald Eagle flies right across the highway in front of me. WHAT!!! I jerk the car over on the shoulder, grapple for my camera...

And LOOK! More tail feathers.

And guess which way she is going?

It's a couple of miles away but what's that to a Bald Eagle on a sunny winter's day? She could well be heading for the Indian Ford Dam to chat with Eagle friends. Maybe go for the fish fry at the Riverview?

Sigh.

No joy at the Newville Bridge or the Edgerton Pond or anywhere else. But just maybe I'll see a Red-tail, the raptor closest to my heart, on the way home. And if I'm careful maybe the hawk will sit there a bit so I can watch him hunt.

A few seconds ago there was a Red-tailed Hawk on that wire.

Look! I even drove over to another road in hope of not disturbing him but nope. He left the wire and is currently flying underneath it and back towards me.

Towards me?

See there he is! And he is definitely looking left which of course isn't where I am.

Why?

Eye contact with a mate?

Still looking left. Interesting. Also this is territory belonging to Mr. and Mrs. M whose nest in the oak tree in the middle of the field we watched a couple seasons back. Could this be Mr. M?

Then it's into the treeline as usual for a raptor who wishes to avoid too much notice but why choose to go this direction past me rather than up or down the road which would have put him out of my sight almost immediately?

It is interesting that though he was in the treeline he then cuts across beside me again in full view. Perhaps this is one of the Ms standard "Look At Me!" not my nest ploys?

Over the cypress..

Into the trees...

Now what?

He flies in full view so I have to turn my back completely away from the direction that he kept looking and in which there might be something to protect.

Then a curve away...

... and a curve back around to turn me even further away from his original focus point and then he's into trees and? He's completely disappeared in a blink..

Oh I do so love Red-tailed Hawks.

They don't always just show you their tail feathers and flee. They often give you something to think and wonder about for the rest of the day before they disappear.

Donegal Browne

Are There Three Eyasses at The Cathedral? Fordham is Active! The HawkCam is Back in Business!

I'd checked all the possible angles of the nest and couldn't seem to see a thing when it came to actually seeing Isolde. So I stood there waiting for something to happen.


Wait one second, from the ground it looked as if there might be a tail tip up there or was it...?

Yes, it is Isolde peering through the twigs. I decided to go further up the street which is further up an incline in hopes of seeing her actual head.

At first nothing and then there she was peering at me from the west side.

Then she watched me watch her head for awhile. Perhaps as it was me, Rob, and Winkie, all longtime watchers of this nest she didn't have a total need to completely hunker down out of sight. We'd pretty much decided that as sunset wasn't all that far off that perhaps that was it for the evening.

Then Isolde decided to stand up.

And it looked like she was watching her eyasses.

She'd stare at one spot.

And then stare at another.

And then stare north, looking for Norman perhaps? Or maybe hoping to be seen by Norman so he'd know that she and the family were up and about.

More staring.

Isolde is a very pretty Red-tail.

Back to eyass watching.

Then scoping north. According to Winkie, Norman hangs out up near 120th St. and the reason he isn't around the Cathedral is because he has increased he and Isolde's territory by a good number of blocks. I had noticed that there didn't seem to be the problems with Crows, and Kestrels, and Peregrines that seemed a several times weekly combat problem in some years past.

Well I'd been missing having a tiercel who stayed close and helped with the kids like Tristan did , but different birds have different styles and Stormin' Norman seems to be strong in the land acquisition and protection end of the game so I can't complain.

If you look closely at the spots that Isolde is looking at she does seem to be looking into the bowl at something in more than two spots and I know that eyasses this young aren't up off their haunches yet and toddling about. Of course she could be thinking a twig needs some work in a certain spot as well. One never knows.

Isolde once again looks north, where Norman purportedly tends to be doing sentry duty. And if she can see him, he can see her.

Then suddenly Isolde decides to keep a low profile again.

Time to go to sleep? We'd looked at the time and sunset was only a few minutes away. Well, guess that, is likely it. Drat, I wanted to see a switch, when...

...there was a swirl of feathered bodies up there. A SWITCH so fast it was virtually unseeable. I did see Isolde with limp prey in her beak swinging round and then there she was placing the prey and Norman was GONE.

She works on the likely rat for a few moments.

She leans down into the bowl with a crooked tail for balance.

Then she leans down even further. She feeds.

Surveys the area.

Looks into the bowl.

Switches to the other rim and feeds there for awhile.

More looking.

And a slightly different position for awhile and then she disappears into the nest.

This is how the world actually looked by the time she disappeared. I'd had the exposure assist jacked up for some time already for the nest photos. Since I've been back I have seen no pigeons in the immediate vicinity of the nest, though I'm sure there must be some in the larger area but perhaps wily or not particularly handy so maybe this season rats may the mainstay of this nest. We'll see.

BIG NEWS FROM LONG TIME HAWKWATCHER CHRIS LYONS AT FORDHAM

I got back to work a bit over a week ago (for those who hadn't heard, I suffered a fractured ankle on 12/31/09), and didn't have much time to check the nest until this week. Yesterday and today, I saw an adult Red-Tail on the Collins Hall nest. It was a male yesterday--presumably Vince, whose acquaintance I've had no chance to make--it clearly wasn't Rose. He looked quite a bit like Hawkeye, I thought from the brief glimpse I got when he flew off.

Today, I watched the nest for about half an hour, while I ate my lunch. It wasn't possible to tell there was a bird there, from my vantage point on the ground, until he or she got up and seemed to turn the eggs.

As I've noted in past years regarding this nest, there's no reason to question whether the eggs are going to hatch before late April/early May. The Fordham hawks don't follow the same exact schedule as all other NYC Red-tails. The first year Hawkeye and Rose nested at Fordham (at a different location on campus), I didn't see young until May 9th--and I was able to view that nest at nearly eye level. Since I was away from Fordham during the first few months of breeding activity this year, I can't say if incubation started at the usual time, but I'd tend to assume it did, since Rose would be the one setting the schedule, and she's nothing if not reliable.

Speculations about Vince's virility are premature, to say the very least, and will be for at least a few more weeks. There are long periods of inactivity on the nest, where the incubating adult is simply invisible from the ground, and young hawks are very hard to see until they're strong enough to move around.

There are very few people observing this nest, for very limited periods of time, and quite a lot is missed as a result. I just looked at a report I made about the Collins Hall nest back in 2006, where I made pretty much identical observations as I did today--on April 22nd--and of course there were young that year, as there have been every single year Rose has laid eggs--in four different nests over six consecutive breeding seasons--I doubt any other nesting female in the area has a more spotless record in this regard. Her new mate is unproven as a breeder, and it was a very hard winter. But the nest platform on Collins is substantially unchanged from three previous successful seasons. Everything up to this point seems to be proceeding as it has in the past.

All we can say for sure is that there are eggs, the adults are tending to them, and they probably haven't hatched yet. The rest remains to be seen.

Chris Lyons

AND FROM JEFF KOLLBRUNNER, THE HAWKCAM ON MAMA AND PAPA IS UP AND RUNNING AGAIN!

I have wonderful news to report. I've been fortunate to have successfully collaborated and implemented the relocation of the Queens, N.Y. Hawkcam (webcam) live video to observe the active 2010 Red-tailed Hawk nest of Mama and Papa. They have three eyasses in the nest that are now about ten days of age. Please watch as Mama and Papa raise their family for the next six plus weeks until the eyasses fledge their nest. The Hawkcam will be active 24 hours a day and can also be viewed after dark. We have a finite amount of concurrent connections to the Hawkcam, so please be patient if at first you don't connect due to a high volume of viewers. There is a session timer on the Hawkcam so everyone can have a fair chance of viewing the nest. If your session times out a browser refresh will start another video connection. You can view the Hawkcam live video at www.JKNatureGallery.com just click on the Hawkcam link. Please also take a few minutes to check out our New Offerings for 2010.

Please spread the word regarding the Hawkcam and our New Offerings for 2010 to other like-minded friends, family and colleagues. In 2007, the Hawkcam funded by NYC Audubon made its debut allowing us to observe Mama and Papa raise their two eyasses for eight weeks. We can once again enjoy this experience this season.

All the best, Jeff

WISCONSIN RED-TAIL UPDATE

Nature Watcher Jim Blank reports that he observed one of the Ms perched in the top of last years nest tree.

Donegal Browne