Red-tailed Hawk Tactics for Eluding Observers

The Mill Race, off the Sugar River, WI 4:51PM 

The sound of scolding Crows, an alert so often used by Central Park Hawk Watchers to locate Red-tailed Hawks, works in the country too.

The cawing was from crows perched in tree tops.  This was the first.

4:52pm  And the second, both looking toward the same spot, a copse of trees, across the highway bridge which traverses the Mill Race.

 4:54pm I head for the other side of the road across the Race. I'm momentarily distracted...What are THOSE? 

Any ideas?

 Back to the Red-tail chase on the Race.

4:55pm  This seems to be where the Crows are looking but I don't see Mr. RT.  I start walking a curve around this group of trees.

4:56:01pm  Ah ha!  Got him.  Do you see him?  He's just left of center looking left to the West.

 See him now?  

Look for the shape of a Red-tail with his back turned. Just right of the pale barked tree.

 In this case brighter leaves obscure his head.  Got him?  You can just see a touch of his pale side. And he's perched with an open flyway available for flight into the sun.  

A rural Red-tailed Hawk maneuver to ditch unwanted attention. 

4:57:21pm He has turned his head to look at me. His eye is just left of a small branch.  We look at each other. He knows I know he's there. It won't be long now.

4:57:56pm  And into the sun he goes!  I wait until I and the camera are not completely blinded and hit rapid fire.  The next three frames are all taken in the same second.

4:57:57 This guy is doing some flying.  He goes into a glide for  the tree line where he will be obscured by foliage when the light falls on him again.

4:58:01pm  Crikey!  He's  going to cross the road in the opposite direction  I've just come from and at this point I think, well that's it.  He's going to keep on flying and I'll never catch up.  

4:58:02pm Unlike the Central Park Hawks who would just be heading in that direction to go about their day to day business, likely paying no attention to me whatsoever, this hawk is ditching me on purpose.  And he'll just keep going until I'm ditched.  DRAT!

 5:58:02pm WAIT!  He hovers briefly above the pole.

4:58:02pm  He's turning and looks ready to perch on the electric pole.  My, my, my, that's rather human habituated for a rural Red-tail.  
 (Never under estimate a Red-tail, remember?)

4:58:03pm  She looks at me and then turns back to look down the Race.  Why didn't she keep flying away from me?  

Its the Crows!  Or that's my current bet at any rate.

They're still over there and she doesn't want to be mobbed again!

4:58:19pm  Yes, I realize I've suddenly changed pronouns.  I was thinking the bird was male but now there is a niggle that perhaps the hawk may be female as she looks bigger on the post than most males though the hawk may just be fluffed up against the cool weather.

She also appears to have quite a light belly band which according to the hawk savvy John Blakeman, barring she is just a pale Red-tail, may mean she is an older experienced hawk.

 4:58:21pm  We hold, looking at each other.  She's monitoring  my eyes.  Which I know but...

4:58:35pm
...when a truck comes rumbling down the road, which with her eyesight, hearing, and vantage point she knew about far before I did,  my eye automatically flicks down at it and she's off with speed.  

4:58:36pm
Had I been a partial of a second slower I might well have lost her in the trees.  See what I mean?

(This is the reason hawking with a partner or a group can be very helpful even for the most experienced hawkwatchers.)

4:58:36pm  Normally she'd have zoomed straight off into the far tree line and I may not have seen her go.  But for whatever reason, I'm hypothesizing the Crows, she doesn't go that way.  She's heading East which exposes her against the sky.

4:58:36pm  She sticks to the cover she has, the power lines and the bare tree in the distance.

4:58:36pm  Still sticking to the wires.

4:58:36pm  Going for some altitude.

4:58:37pm And still higher.  Note that the previous 5 frames, before this one, encompass 1 second of time. 

4:58:37pm

4:58:39pm  In the last two seconds she has begun to gain more altitude and to circle round more toward my side of the road. 

4:58:40pm  She begins a soar.

4:58:40pm

4:58:41pm  About now is when I realize that she is going to use the tree to which I'm adjacent for her own purposes as she is about to disappear behind it.

4:58:41pm  I decide to duck around to the other side of my tree
which isn't as quick as it might be due to the understory.

4:58:46pm (She hasn't suddenly gotten this close, I've just cropped the photo for a closer look.)  5 seconds later, when I regain my view, she is in a bank.  

And it is a much brighter view of her due to her angle on the sun, the fact that she is crossing the road so she isn't in timber shade plus the exposure of her pale underside.  She limited that exposure to me by making her move when I had to go round the tree in order to keep my eye on her.

4:58:46pm  It took her only 1 second of obvious exposure to cross the road.

4:58:47pm  Then she is out of the bright light and nearly to the power lines on my side of the throughfare.  It doesn't appear that she has  taken the option of going East and into town. 

4:58:47pm Take a good look at where she is in relation to the power line.

4:58:48pm  She whips down and goes below the upper arm of the left electric pole.

4:58:49 And heads for the trees.

4:58:49pm This is a crop of the previous picture. Look at her focus.  And her wings are in a similar position to a downbeat of  wings while flying but she is holding that pose.  She doesn't bring them up.

4:58:49pm  She's into the tree and now the wings look bowed.

4:58:49pm  And a crop for clarity.

4:58:49pm  Her wings are now almost completely up.  Still hustling through the tree.

 4:58:49pm  Can you see where she is?

 4:58:49 pm  Crop.  Can you see her now?   I take the brown patch beneath the branch to be her left wing.  Up and right there are feather tips.  Her tail?

4:58:50 And she's out in the golden light.  Traversing through the tree took her less than a second as well.

      She appears to be looking down.

4:58:51pm She begins to bank right and down.

4:58:52pm And suddenly she is in the tree,  makes a quick turn, apparently goes out the back and well...she's gone.  
 

From the time she originally turned, looked down at me from her perch near the Mill Race, and I looked back up at her, 4:57:21 pm,  and 4:48:52pm when she just ditched me by zipping out the other side of a tree,  was all of 1 minute 31 seconds.  

She completely blew me off in less than 2 minutes. 



Look back at all the tactics she used against me in that 1 minute and 31 seconds.  This bird is savvy.   In fact she's rather a jewel.  

Hmmm.


Well... being that back in the day,  the Sugar River and the Mill Race had so many mollusks living in them (they still do), that there was a thriving industry in the making of mother of pearl buttons, perhaps we'll just call the hawk, Pearl.




And if Pearl turns out to be a tiercel, which he may, I just looked at his skull shape in the "looking at each other" photo, we'll still call him Pearl.


Happy Hawking!

Donegal Browne

P.S.  Quicksilver the African Grey Parrot appears to have given up a small amount of his attachment for the chest of drawers and has taken a liking to the old dance, "The Bunny Hop". He's begun whistling it and bobbing his head in time.

Why?  So far he isn't saying. 

The Crows are Modifying Food in the Bird Bath Again! Does That Constitute Cooking in the Modern Sense...Just Add Water?

This is a Crow with a very large mouthful of stiff cheese.  She has now noticed that I've noticed her.

There is a back story here.  

A week or so ago, I made a toasted cheese sandwich, looked at the clock and realized, I didn't have time to eat it before having to rush off.  I quickly wrapped it up, jammed it into my coat pocket and thought, " I'll eat it on the way".    Then promptly forgot all about it.  

Fast forward.    

 Last night, I found the aforementioned, still wrapped thank goodness, in my pocket.  Needless to say,  it was one very dry breaded, tough cheesed, sandwich.  I put it on the Goodie Stump.  

Then about an hour before the above Crow was caught with a completely full mouth of stiff cheese, she or one of her cohorts, there was a three member Crow foraging party in the yard, saw me and  attempted to pick up the sandwich.  Either it was too heavy or decidedly not aerodynamic enough to fly with as it was abandoned and they all took off.  

And back to this post's starting point, the sandwich has moved to just the other side of the sparrow pile, and the Crow has a load of stiff  cheese stuffed in her mouth and partially down her throat by the looks of it.

Crow works beak.  Note the peanut gallery of sparrows waiting to fall upon the sandwich at the first opportunity.

Stretching her neck and tipping her head a bit to the side isn't helping much either. 

 Then he turned, gave me this look and I knew she was going to brazen it out and do something.

 She disappears behind the sparrow pile.  The sparrows shift.  We all wait.

She comes striding out.  Pause.  Look.

She marches toward the bowl.  Why isn't she flying?

                                    Up she goes. 

                                      Legs at the ready.

 

            Knees lock.  Feet grip.  Cheese still in place.

1:56:03 PM  I'm not sure exactly what happened here.  Her head went forward and down.  I don't know if it was just a motion to expel cheese?  She dipped her beak in the water?  She actually swallowed water?

 Look carefully and you will see only one small fragment of cheese back mid-beak, beyond those readily obvious  pieces which she is expelling.

1:56:04PM Now look at the contents of her beak one second later.  She is regurgitating more cheese into the water.  

1:56:06PM  She stretches her neck out and 2 seconds later her beak is again full.  This time there appears to be something lighter colored included.  Either another food stuff, bread perhaps, or cheese that has changed in some way by being "stored" in her body for a short time?

 1:56:07PM She deposits that beak full into the water.

 1:56:10PM  Then she stands and looks into the bowl.  Watching the rehydration process?  

Waiting for dinner to be ready?

But why rehydrate the cheese?  She obviously was able to swallow it as she regurgitated it.

I surmised that when the Crows placed dried out pasta in the bowl, waited, and then ate it, that it was easier to eat that way.

Now I hypothesize that she is doing it because it tastes better that way.   

(I suppose she might think it will aid her digestion but that may be going a bit far.)

Yes, according to the latest, not only are many bird's olfactory sense better than was suspected but they also have a full set of taste buds.  The existence of which had been denied for ages.  The issue?  They aren't located in the same places as ours are nor are they identical in structure to ours.  

Duh. 

 A gross example would be the fact that we have arms and they have wings. Can't deny that one, it's too obvious. 

Yes, we're structurally different to a point. That doesn't mean we don't have a possibly similar sets of basic senses even if they aren't identically processed.  The basic senses have proved to be evolutionarily advantageous in most cases,  after all. 

 1:56:18PM  10 seconds from the last cheese deposit. 

At first I thought the light color between the two portions of her beak was cheese.  Now I think we are actually seeing the side of the bowl.  Perhaps she is touching the cheese with the very sensory rich tip of her beak to see if it is "done"?

1:56:19PM  Notice that the cheese no longer has the hard orange color and texture.  Ever get cheese wet, it lightens in color and as birds tend to be drier mouthed than humans, moistening food likely releases the flavor to their receptors just as it does for ours.  

Remember how Silver, the parrot,  always wants people to suck a hard candy first before they give it to him?  I've always surmised that the reason for that is, he can then taste it, as he's no saliva to liquify the sugar on his own.  

(Correct.  He only gets that sort of thing very infrequently.)

Silver isn't interested in say a tidbit of soft caramel being moistened for him.

1:56:21PM  Pause, slightly open beak in bowl.

 1:56:22PM  No tidbit.  Closed beak.  She appears to scrutinize something.

1:56:28PM  (6 seconds later) She waited and now see the dark something inside her beak.  That is the tip of her tongue.  And there is a tiny yellow morsel of cheese in the very tip of her beak.  After all this trouble she is she going to taste that cheese instead of just swallowing it straight away?

1:56:29PM Beak into water.

  1:56:30PM  No bite just a dripping beak.

1:56:33PM  She appears to be touching and possibly moving cheese.

1:56:42PM  9 seconds elapse. She stands and looks around then stares at something on the ground I can't see.  But take a look at her right leg.  Your left.  Is that a band? 

Perhaps not.  A wrinkle in the skin?

 1:56:43PM Look back.

1:56:44PM  Ta Da!  And a tidbit which meets her standards is pulled out of the water.  The focus in the eyes and the curve of her beak makes it very easy to anthropomorphize a smile if one isn't careful.

1:56:46PM  More tending?  That wrinkle looks like a band again.

 1:56:49PM Unclear as to whether that is a food bit on the beak or more water.

  1:57:00PM  Suddenly she turns, alert, nictitating eyelids flash.

1:57:02PM Beak drops down again.

1:57:03PM  I get a BIG look.  

(Upon hindsight this look makes me wonder if she was just putting me on the whole time.)

 1:57:05 She turns to the side.  Is that a tidbit in her beak or is it only slightly open and there is a leaf showing through?  No there is just a trace of cheese visible in her beak in the preceding photo as well

1:57:06PM  She's off!

1:57:06PM

 1:57:07PM

 1:57:07PM   

 1:57:07PM 

 1:57:07PM  

 1:57:09PM  And off she went across the field.

I don't know when she or whoever came back and ate the "prepared" cheese in the bird bath, but when I went out to clean the bowl and put in fresh water several hours later there wasn't a speck of cheese left. 

Donegal Browne
P.S.  There was a previous post in the last 12 hours so if you've not seen it, keep scrolling down.