Want to Live With Pale Male? And What are all Those Gulls Doing Now?

11/04/2006, Four years ago to the drizzling day a damp Pale Male, surveys his kingdom from the 927 Fifth Ave. nest.

So maybe he'll be doing it again tomorrow. Now wouldn't it be fun to live with Pale Male? Well not so much live on the nest exactly, but how about an apartment in 927?

If you happen to have a spare 26 million laying around, one of those sets of ringside windows can be yours.

(Boy would you have a lot of new friends who'd just die to come over for tea, or what?)

From Robin of Illinois from the NY Times Real Estate Section--

Wasserstein Estate Selling Co-op in Building Where Hawks Raised Hullabaloo
By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: October 29, 2010

The 12-unit co-op at 927 Fifth Avenue has been home in recent years to some rather famous people, including Mary Tyler Moore, the shoe designer Kenneth Cole and the CNN news anchor Paula Zahn. The list also includes celebrities of another species: two red-tailed hawks named Pale Male and Lola, whose nest on the 12th-floor cornice caused a hullabaloo on the co-op board, with city and federal officials stepping into the fray.
More: Click on the link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/realestate/29wasserstein.html?src=twrhp

Yes, the gulls are obviously migrating through. Today as I drove down a country road, I looked over and, WOW, conceivably thousands of gulls were wheeling over a field and a thousand or more were just sitting around in the dirt.

What's going on?

I pull over, and scan the area.

Ah ha! There is a tractor that likely is disc-ing the field, doing a turn around with the discs lifted. Gulls obviously having the proceedings down. Discs up, no goodies.

Discs down and the feast continues. Some of the gulls may be either full, or doing sentinel duty as they just stand there as the tractor and the hordes pass by. See the single gull standing on the left behind the machinery?

She's still standing there.


She's turned but still there and looks to be getting company in the standing around section.

If you look further over in the field, you'll see a scattered group of gulls waiting for the next pass by the tractor. Perhaps the pickings are so good, one can take a little time to digest, before going for it once again.


Actually, I think there is a system to all the madness, as there was when the very large flock of gulls took turns foraging for earth worms in the park behind my house some years ago.

Look to to the far right of the photograph. Those birds aren't eating, they're just mostly standing around.

It appears that they are going in stages. As one group goes from the end of the line to the front, the tractor discs a new portion of ground as they arrive. Looks crazy but if you watch carefully, it is rather orderly about giving everyone a chance to eat.

Okay, now the tractor has turned and is heading toward the back of the line who are still standing around. But look, birds are coming from the right, flying over the tractor and taking on the new ground that's just been exposed. The others wait until they're the end of the line and can go forward and be the front of the line on the newly turned ground themselves.


What do you think?


Now we're getting to the end, of the end of the line, of this tractir pass with only a few birds waiting to make the cross.

There they go.

By the way, the farmer and the gulls are an example of a grand symbiotic relationship, i.e. both parties benefit from the other.

Farmers these days, try to avoid disturbing the soil anymore than they have too. Turning over the dirt brings all sorts of pesky weed seeds to the surface as well as all sorts of insects. But our buddies the gulls, being omnivores, just gobble up whatever is turned up. Plus depositing some of the best fertilizer known to man into the soil.

Speaking of avian droppings, many a church in the middle ages kept pigeons not only for pigeon pie, roasted squab, and omelets but for their extremely valuable droppings. The droppings were collected and were so precious that in some areas, it was one of the few ways that a hard money poor church, could buy those extras only to be had by spending coin.

Just think of all that city pigeon created fertilizer (and ready cash) going to waste, because it isn't collected. It's an invisible ready made cash crop.

Donegal Browne

The Woodman's Feather Mystery and a Strange Duck

Photo Donna Browne
Remember back in early October, I discovered a great many feathers surrounding the Woodman Supermarket in Janesville, WI?

There were feathers in the gravel, under the bushes, and sticking to the grass in the lawn. At first I thought they were all pigeon feathers but on closer examination I realized there were a good many gull feathers there as well.

Looking around I didn't see a single member of either species. What was going on? Well...

Photo by Donna Browne
Upon leaving the store the other day, I looked up to see a kettle of birds circling above a small strip mall kitty corner from Woodman's.


Photo by Donna Browne
On closer examination they looked like gulls.



Photo by Donna Browne
I hit the brakes and abruptly took a right, almost hitting a couple pigeons that had flushed suddenly from the ground. (Glad to miss the pigeons. But sorry, I missed the shot. They hot winged it out of there.) Then I looked to see where they'd come from.


Photo Donna Browne
Just as a flock of sparrows came out of the bushes and repositioned themselves under a---WHAT? A bird feeder! Look up at the stores in the photo of the mall above. There is a Wild Birds Unlimited and they have a number of feeders in the small green space between the road and their parking lot. Now look in the upper right hand corner of this photograph. See the beige building with the orange roof trim? That is Woodman's, where all the feathers are laying everywhere.

Thinking back I've seen Red-tailed Hawk circling about an 1/8 of a mile from this point several months ago. And three years ago I watched a Cooper's flying at car roof level from small tree to small tree in the Woodman's parking lot.

Mystery solved. Obviously the bird feeder is the draw for the seed eaters, (plus there are the wind currents around the little mall creating a place for birds to kettle up) and that nice flat roof of Woodman's is the dining hall for any raptors who happen to be taking their dinner from the birds availing themselves of their dinner at the feeders.

I always feel much better when I've figured it out. Whatever "it" is at any given moment.

Photo by Pat Gonzalez

Pat Gonzalez has a new video camera and has also discovered another strange duck in the New York Botanic Garden.

Donna,

I was at the NYBG earlier today trying out my new toy. The mystery duck there seems to have attracted a friend. Here's some video I shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuZvq36OP9A
I've attached a photo. Is this another farm duck?

Pat,

It looks like a hybridized individual to me. One that is at least partially a "farm duck".

D. B.

The Mysterious Massacre at Woodman's or Where Did All Those Feathers Come From?

This Week's Red-tailed Hawk Mystery-- I'd gone to a grocery store named Woodman's, a box store, flat roof, in Janesville, a nearby reasonably sized town, a few days ago.


When going round the back to get to my car, having come out the wrong door, I discovered hundreds of feathers lying on the ground. Pigeon? The light was bad, so trust me, there were far more feathers than one can see from the photograph.

It looked to me that the roof had to be a long term favorite Red-tail dining area and the feathers just wafted off in the breeze...


and collected in the grass, in the lee of the wall,

under the bushes, behind the gas meter...I mean everywhere.


This feather looks like one from a Blue Bar Pigeon,

but some of these might possibly be from a gull.

This is the view on the other side of the building from the parking lot area where I found the feathers. A view from height with open green space could be had from the roof. And if you look far back to the left of the STOP sign there is a tall antenna of some description.

The issues.

1. Where did all the pigeons (possibly also gulls?) come from? There are very very few pigeons in this area of Wisconsin. Though gulls do frequent parking lots at certain times of year.

2. Where's the Red-tail?

Well today, while going down the main drag into Janesville, (About a quarter mile from Woodman's Grocery) suddenly three cars ahead of me, a mature Red-tail came across the six lanes of traffic, just barely above their roofs and then curved up steeply to perch on a traffic light. (And NO, I didn't get a photo. I had to keep driving or get run over. Drat!) That low flight with the last minute ascension is just the kind of move an RTH will make when hoping that prey in a spot that’s been hunted before, won't notice that they've arrived.

Well I madly went up to the next turn, the Red-tail's road being One Way, and of course the wrong way that I needed it to be, zoomed through the Kmart parking lot and got back to the intersection-- no Red-tail. Sigh. And as it was almost dark, little hope of finding her today. But this coming week? I'm hoping not only to find her but also where ever it is that the mysterious Flight of pigeons or Colony of gulls are hiding out.

(Note the terms of venery, I haven't forgotten.)

Come to think of it, I’ve seen diddly for Red-tails for a couple of weeks now. I wonder why? Another question that’s answer needs to me looked into.

Donegal Browne