A Hummingbird Foot, a Photograph Missed, a Mysterious Night Visitor, and Collusion Between Species

Though there is obviously something going on between the bee and the hummingbird, the star of this photograph for me, is the hummingbird's foot.

Why?

When is the last time you had a good look at a hummingbird foot? 

 Never, right?

When is  the last time you saw a hummingbird walk?  

Never again?  Yes?

That's because they don't walk.  According to report they can grip a perch and kind of hop sideways on a perch and that is about it.

Had you noticed?   

Exactly.

The prevailing thought as to why hummingbirds don't walk much is that they've traded really workable feet and legs for less weight and therefore better flight specs.

The above photograph has sat in my photo program tray for days.  I knew I was fascinated by that foot but it took time for the why of the fascination to reveal itself.

Yesterday I attempted to write a blog about the missed photographs, or inexplicable moments or mysterious whatevers  which tended to keep me from writing about a particular topic or animal behavior moment because I didn't have a photograph of the behavior to document it, or I had a photograph but didn't have the capper picture to explain what had gone on before.

I'd begun to find it a trap or at least limiting.  Besides many readers have their own experiences which might help illuminate mine.  

We are in this together after all.

Some weeks ago, I'd gone outside, turned in front of the garage and there was a female Robin at the bird bath.  She had a dense patch of mud on her breast about the size of a large chicken egg and was busily wetting a piece of grass.  But the most riveting part of this activity was that she looked happy and excited while she busied herself with the water and the grass. She cocked her head while she worked, her eyes glittered, she was building a nest and looked like she just might bust out in a laugh any second.

Okay, I know.  How does a Robin look happy and excited?  

That was the kicker that stopped me from publishing the observation.

I'd run for my camera but when I got back she was gone.  I watched for her as I went about my business all day.  Somehow I kept missing her because just as dusk was coming on I saw the below object where it had never been before.

 She'd been in the throes of nest building.   And the urge to do the activities it took to make a nest made her look...well the only word I had was happy.

I can trust you to visualize that right?

as

I'd been working in the yard when I suddenly realized that part of the flower bed had been completely squashed as if something had lain there for sometime.

It struck me that the particular spot being depressed to some extent with slightly higher foliage in front, and other foliage from a very large lilac on one side in particular that would block the street light, made it a good stealth hunting or hiding spot.  

The length was about two and a half feet. The depth slightly shorter.

A little later in the day a neighbor stopped by to talk to me in the back yard and she found a rabbit's foot by the fence.  Just the foot.  No blood or guts.  No entrails as one sees with a kill of a Great Horned Owl ordinarily.

Therefore a mammal larger than a house cat, if indeed the flower bed was used for hunting purposes, as I suspected.  A Bobcat perhaps?  A fox?

No tracks. 

I didn't put the two together right away.  In fact I may have found the depressed spot after the rabbits foot.  Not only do I not have a picture of whatever was there, I didn't even think to take a picture of the rabbit's foot before the woman pitched it away.

Therefore though  a mystery, somehow I didn't feel I had enough evidence even to talk about it.

Geez, words should do in a mystery if that is all you have.  But as some unkind bloggists have taken umbrage  with the tiniest detail of an unphotographed moment one can become over wary.  After all most of us do this for love and curiosity not for profit, fame, or a dissertation. 

Jealousy and pettiness can take ever so much joy out of things.

Best to ignore it, and ENJOY!

Then of course there are the moments when you know SOMETHING is going on between two animals but they don't let you know what it is.

An example...

Silver can make some very intense expressions while bathing.  But in this case, he's rather hot under the collar and I'm betting Squirrel did something he shouldn't have in Quicksilver's opinion.

I'll never know because a split second after the shutter clicked they both looked back at me with their innocent  "What?' faces on.

So get out there and keep your eyes open. 

And remember, you don't need a photograph to talk about it.

Happy Hawking...and other things as well.
Donegal Browne

John Blakeman on the Real Scoop Concerning Imprinting in Red-tails, and a Mystery Hummingbird in Wisconsin?

As I mentioned previously, I'd gone to a fund raising event at an all volunteer staffed bird observatory.

As I walked amongst the exhibits and vendors,  I stopped in at the live raptor display area which as usual for this sort of event, has raptors who for whatever reason, a physical problem or because of imprinting issues, are not able to survive in the wild on their own so they are brought by someone who has permits to keep these birds to help educate the public about them.

While I was standing there, a person behind the table told another patron, if I heard it all correctly, that a particular bird had been imprinted on humans who had raised it after finding it under a tree.  The educator went on to say that raptors will imprint on anything they see first,  including an object like a toaster.

WHAT?  Hawks imprint like geese do?  They're precocial?  How did I miss that all this time?  But they don't act like they're precocial.  They don't immediately or at least very soon after hatching trot around following their mother?  But they imprint as if they were precocial.  

A toaster???

This did not sound right at all.  Something is amiss.

Therefore just in case  I had missed something as large as classic precocial imprinting in raptors....  I mean what if an urban eyass hatched, looked up, and saw a human at a window?  Or looked down at the street and saw a human before she saw a parent?  This had never happened so I'm even more suspicious about the comments?  Raptor educators have to train, they have to take exams...

 This could not possibly be true of Red-tails!  Wait!  Perhaps it was just a helper speaking out of turn?  Or perhaps I heard it incorrectly?  Will an owl imprint on a toaster.  If that were true, perhaps that's how "toaster" entered the conversation then?

But when in doubt about Red-tail behavior no matter how sketchy we think what happened was, or how bad our ears might be, we have the wonderful luxury of sending off a missive to our Red-tailed Hawk expert, Mr. John Blakeman in Ohio, which is exactly what I did.  And as usual he sent back an immediate reply, which follows...
  
Donegal,

No, hawks do not imprint in the classic manner of geese or other waterfowl. That textbook behavior isn't how eyasses connect and identify with their parents. If it were, the eyasses would be flying behind the tails of the haggards all summer, in the manner of imprinted ducks swimming  behind the tails of the female parent.
 

Eyasses will, however, become "imprinted" to humans who take a hawk from a nest and then raise it. It's a long story with many details, but in essence the young hawk connects with and identifies the human as its source of food.

 The human can't fly or otherwise allow the progression of summer-learned normal hunting behaviors, so the young hawk becomes permanently mind-scarred, focused solely on the human.

 (An imprinted hawk can never be restored to normal psychology and independent behavior. In my book, I'll tell the story of "Goldie," an imprinted Red-tail I cared for for 13 years.)
 

But no, none of that happens when eyasses naturally connect with their parents in the nest. The imprinting that so occurs is rather weak and quickly terminated when the eyass fledges and has to learn to hunt and kill for itself in a few weeks of summer.

And no, a newly-hatched eyass seeing a big, lumbering human on the other side of a ledge-nest window is not going to "imprint" to that person. It's not whatever the hawk first sees that is moving; it's whatever first and continues to feed the hawk that it connects with.

--John Blakeman

Many thanks John, a splendid clarification as usual.   I thought perhaps I was loosing my mind.  How could I  possibly have missed that somehow Red-tails were precocial at least in imprinting and I never noticed??? 

Speaking of which, while investigating the matter,  I ran across the chart below. It breaks down Precocial and Altricial into finer categories.

As Red-tailed Hawk eyasses are hatched with down and have their eyes open they are considered Semi-altricial 1. 

 While owls are hatched with down but have their eyes closed when hatched, they are considered Semi-altricial 2.

Check out the chart.  I found it fascinating. 

(What is a Megapode?  It is any of 12 species of chickenlike birds (order Galliformes) that bury their eggs to hatch them. Most species use fermenting plants, kind of a compost approach to produce heat for incubation, but some use solar heat and others use the heat produced by volcanoes.)

Characteristics Of Nestlings
(modified from O'Connor, 1984)

TYPE OF DEVELOPMENT	DOWN PRESENT?	EYES OPEN?	MOBILE?.	FEED. SELVES?	PARENTS ABSENT?	EXAMPLES
Precocial 1	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Megapodes
Precocial 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes*	No	Ducks, Plovers
Precocial 3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Quail, Turkey
Precocial 4	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes/No	No	Grebes, Rails
Semi-precocial	Yes	Yes	Yes/No	No	No	Gulls, Terns
Semi-altricial 1	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Herons, Hawks
Semi-altricial 2	Yes	No	No	No	No	Owls
Altricial	No	No	No	No	No	Passerines

... t = Precocial 3 are shown food.
.....*= Precocial 2 follow parents but find own food. 

Many thanks to Stanford for the dandy chart, for more on the topic go to...
http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Precocial_and_Altricial.html

Then I had another rather mind expanding experience today.  I'd gone out the back door during the gloaming and saw one Hummingbird run another off the feeder.  Not unusual they love going after each other.  But then the winner sat on a small branch of the Magnolia near the feeder and just continued to sit.  Then he went back to the feeder.   Drank.  Then went back to a branch and sat. 

This hummingbird doesn't look like a Ruby-throat to me at all and that is the only species that is found in the Eastern United States normally and...wait just a minute! That hummingbird looks dark purple..

... I went for my camera. Took pictures, in the dusky light. These are going to be BAD.  Went back in, pulled the card, stuck it into the computer and I looked... fully expecting the bird to be a Ruby-throated Hummingbird after all, due to a trick of the light, but.....nope.

Okay, the camera says his back is dark green and his head is black.  Is there some shot which isn't of his back?

He's out of focus but blocks of color are evident.  I wonder if he is still resting, drinking, resting, drinking?  I grab my other camera and go out.

Nooooooo, I forgot to disable the flash on this camera. It isn't really as dark out as it looks, in actuality the same light as above, but the camera just adjusted the aperture as it knew it was going to flash even though I didn't.  

Sorry little guy. Thank goodness he is still going about his business.

 I go back in the house to let him drink, rest, drink, rest, until he goes into torpor.  He has very likely just come on a very long trip.

I grab Peterson's Field Guide to Eastern Birds.  Sure enough he is a vagrant.  He is a Black-chinned Hummingbird and ordinarily he wouldn't be any further east than Texas.

That is a whole lot of extra little hummingbird wing beats.  No wonder he's hungry and tired.  I'm certainly glad the feeder was up.  

Plus my fingers are crossed for him.


Donegal Browne