Is Franklin Institute's T3 Related to Pale Male? White-tailed Deer Do Eat Placenta, and an Oklahoma Owl Cam!

Photo courtesy of http://www.palemale.com/

New York City Hawkwatchers report all is going well (and normally) at Pale Male and Octavia's Nest on 927 Fifth Avenue.

Photo courtesy of Kevin Vaughan

 Photo courtesy of Kevin Vaughan
 And over in Philadelphia, there is talk of Pale Male as well.  According to some hawkwatchers, T3 the new male who has bonded with Franklin Mom, definitely has a resemblance to the Monarch of Central Park.

The distance between New York City and Philadelphia is only about 95 miles.    


Next up, a thought concerning the Deer eating Deer innards issue.
My Eureka moment occurred in the shower and had nothing to do with water as opposed to  Archimedes original Eureka moment in the bath when he realized that the volume of an object could be figured using the amount of water it displaced.      
No I did not in the heat of the moment run down the street naked I was in such a rush to test my theory.

 Photo courtesy of animals.national geographic.com/

 Instead  I sat down at the computer to find out if what I was thinking, matched previous known White-tailed Deer behavior.

The question?  Do White-tailed does eat the placenta after they give birth?

And YES, they do.  But first the doe waits for the fawn or fawns to get up on their skinny little legs.  Then she leads them into hiding.  Fawns safely hidden, she then returns to the birthing site and eats the placenta.  

Indeed it is nutritious, but it is thought to be a survival strategy to avoid attracting predators to the area.

Is it not possible that the eating of hunter's leavings is now triggered by the same survival strategy impulse? 

 Yes, this behavior appears to be new.  

Is it possible that as hunters have gotten sloppier,  a deer whose genetics triggered the urge to eat the leavings, reduced the appearance of predators in their territory due to the leavings and therefore lived longer to reproduce? 

Whereas the deer that wasn't triggered to do so, was in an area to which predators were attracted  and therefore did not tend to live as long and therefore reproduced less?

Let me know what you think!

And from Jackie of Tulsa,  an Owl Cam trained on a window box of a house that has hosted an owl pair for three seasons.
(And has produced a tremendous amount of biophilia in the family daughter.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2eZTR2WPY0&feature=youtu.be

Tomorrow-  Its WAR!!  Crows vs Turkey Vultures

Krider's Hawks, John Blakeman on Urban Nest Materials, Where Did the Expression Dickey-Bird Come From, and the Franklin Institute Hawks...

Well, good readers, Blogger has done it again. It has decided not to load anymore photos and as Jane of Georgia has sent photos of the owls and their habitat and a descriptive email, I think I'll wait for the top half until blogger feels better.

Jane,

Remember I said I’d ask Red-tail expert John Blakeman about the songbird mobbing of brief duration outside your owl house just in case he’d run across the behavior before? He does have a broad and varied experience with birds so one never knows, Find his response which made me giggle below—

Donna,

I can't offer any perspectives on this mobbing behavior at an owl's residence. I just simply have no experience with nesting screech owls, other than having put my gloved hands into a bunch of screech owl boxes, pulling out winter-roosting screeches for banding.

The behavior of the dickey-birds is beyond my understanding.

--John Blakeman

It was the use of dickey-birds as being something beyond understanding that got me. Exactly where the expression dickey-bird comes from, I've yet to figure out. Though I’ve been waiting for the answer to manifest itself for years.

My first experience with the use of “dickey-bird” occurred decades ago when I was being teased, in a good natured way, about how anyone could possibly be interested in such an insignificant topic as songbirds and to add insult to injury, interested in their insignificant behavior besides. by Dr. Gross, who’s PhD had lead him to be an expert when it came to vernal ponds, and the insect life that such ponds nurture. Some might say he was interested in dickey-bugs, hence the humor.

The second usage of dickey-birds occurred when I was wearing my other hat and playing Mrs. Ogmore-Prichard, a character who spends her time berating her two dead husbands, in Welshman Dylan Thomas’ play, Under Milkwood. The reference was to a picture on the wall that featured dickey-birds. I delved but it was another dead end. References but no real definition.

Then several years ago, John Blakeman used it. Wow! But it turns out we both knew what it meant but had no idea where it had come from. An inside biology joke?

The earliest reference I’ve found was to a Mother Goose Song published in 1765. Why dickey-bird (or Dickie-bird)?

So after all of that, does anyone out there happen to know why a small and possibly “insignificant” bird is a dickey-bird? Happen to have an Oxford handy?

Screen capture courtesy of http://sunnydixie.blogspot.com/
The Franklin Institute Nest now has two cams, one above the nest and one on the shelf.

As to what is going into the bowl of this urban nest, paper, plastic and other urban detritus, here are hawk expert John Blakeman's thoughts--

Well, to us, it's street trash. Not to the hawks. It's all soft and easily carried to the nest, where it will be re-worked and tucked into the bottom of the nest to help seal the bowl.

Actually, here in Ohio in the more normal rural nests we seldom see this. Out here, the birds are picking up corn leaves and some tree leaves from the ground, which serve the same function. These larger, more bulking lining materials are brought to the nest in January and February. In March (generally) more fine-grained lining materials will be brought in.

Linings vary from pair to pair and geographically. The birds use whatever is available and works. Strays sheets of The Inquirer, paper bags, and even some wafting plastic bags are likely to turn up at the Institute nest in these months. It will be interesting to see what will be used as the more final, softer lining materials in March. Fist-fulls of grass are often brought in.

Don't be surprised if some of these larger lining materials just disappear. The birds will carry them off or dump them over the edge if they don't seem to work well into the nest bottom.

Now, the birds are getting near the end of big-sticks stage. They have a profound urge to bring things to the nest. Not all that they bring in really works, so a few things are hauled off or allowed to tumble away."

-- John Blakeman

Next up, Robin of Illinois, with her comment and a link--

"The news of Pale Male's death is greatly exaggerated."

(Pale Male is, of course, NOT dead. But some interesting research about Krider's Hawks the very pale subset of the Red-tailed Hawk family in the piece. By the way, so there is no confusion, though pale, neither Pale Male nor Pale Beauty is a Krider's Hawk
http://www.sunherald.com/2011/02/26/2896447/a-lighter-shade-of-pale-male.html

PALE MALE AND PALE BEAUTY TALONS DOWN AND IT'S NOT JUST THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE--URBAN HAWKS ABOUND IN PHILADELPHIA

Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Pale Male and Pale Beauty in a courtship flight.

Red-tail literature says that when a Red-tail pair have their talons hanging down that they will finish the flight with copulation. We have seen in Central Park that that is not necessarily the case but it does mean that copulation could happen any day or even any minute now.

Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Pale Male always a great bringer of twigs, heads for the nest with still another. I'm hoping that this year there will more twigs placed at the bottom of the bowl, instead of just fresh nest lining, just in case cold in the bowl has been a problem with the previous failed nests. Plus selfishly, if the bottom of the bowl is raised by multiple inches we will again be able to see the head of the hawk sitting on the eggs.

Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Now isn't this a demure, flirtatious but pointed look from Pale Beauty?

Photograph courtesy of philly.com
A juvenile Red-tail has a pigeon dinner atop a parked car in downtown Philadelphia.

I was particularly interested in the following article talking about urban hawk antics and their booming population in Philadelphia. Specifically in Center City, where I lived in the '80's.

Not only did I live in Center City, currently the haunt of hawks, but daily I went uptown to Temple University with it's expanses of big scattered trees and lawns, habit typically partial to hunting Red-tails, when I was in their graduate program- Not once did I see a hawk of any description. Nor did I see one when I crossed Rittenhouse Square every day for six months to act in a play in a theatre on the other side of the Square from where I lived. Peter O'Toole in evening dress, I saw in the Square, he gave me a little bow and a very charming smile, but not one bird of any species with talons

THINGS HAVE DEFINITELY CHANGED!

City's new pastime: Talon shows

Hawks' rebound = downtown dining.

By Inga Saffron

Inquirer Staff Writer

It was just another Center City killing, except it happened in broad daylight and a crowd gathered to watch. An adolescent red-tailed hawk landed on the roof of a black car near Eighth and Market, sank its talons into a pigeon, and proceeded to chow down.

Feathers and entrails flew. Video phones were deployed. Bystanders groaned. The bird, unfazed, kept eating.

Then, having finished its meal, the hawk flew to a nearby lamppost for a postprandial nap, leaving the returning motorist to deal with the bloody pulp and fluff scattered atop the car.

That close encounter with nature - red in tooth and claw, and vividly captured on a YouTube video - was certainly dramatic, but such hawk sightings are no longer rare in Philadelphia.

So many YouTube videos document hawk kills in the city that they practically constitute a genre. Besides recording the mayhem on Market Street, humans have filmed hawks in mid-bite in Rittenhouse Square, on the University of Pennsylvania campus, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's sculpture garden, and in the yards of Bella Vista rowhouses. One local bystander narrowly missed becoming collateral damage when a large redtail dived for a squirrel outside the museum. The squirrel got away.

One reason for the run-ins with redtails is that raptor populations have made a remarkable comeback in the last five years, and they've done so, ornithologists say, by moving into downtowns. Once a habitué of North America's grasslands, hawks have discovered that cities are safe places to raise a brood, and they offer a 24-hour smorgasbord of pigeons, rats, and squirrels.

"We have a pretty good view of Logan Square, and we see them hunting all the time," said Dan Thomas, who manages the bird collection for the Academy of Natural Sciences. Not long ago, he added, a colleague went to fetch the academy's van from the alley behind the museum only to discover a Cooper's hawk enjoying a pigeon on the roof.

There was a time when a person couldn't get within 10 yards of a hawk kill, said Kevin McGowan, a scientist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. That may still be the case in rural areas. But as hawks settle in cities, they've grown more accustomed to people.

The fact that a bird would even allow people to watch it eat, McGowan said, suggests...

For more, including comments in the article by our own hawk expert John Blakeman, click the link.

It was just another Center City killing, except it happened in broad daylight and a crowd gathered to watch. An adolescent red-tailed hawk landed on the roof of a black car near Eighth and Market, sank its talons into a pigeon, and proceeded to chow down.

Feathers and entrails flew. Video phones were deployed. Bystanders groaned. The bird, unfazed, kept eating.

Then, having finished its meal, the hawk flew to a nearby lamppost for a postprandial nap, leaving the returning motorist to deal with the bloody pulp and fluff scattered atop the car.

That close encounter with nature - red in tooth and claw, and vividly captured on a YouTube video - was certainly dramatic, but such hawk sightings are no longer rare in Philadelphia.

So many YouTube videos document hawk kills in the city that they practically constitute a genre. Besides recording the mayhem on Market Street, humans have filmed hawks in mid-bite in Rittenhouse Square, on the University of Pennsylvania campus, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's sculpture garden, and in the yards of Bella Vista rowhouses. One local bystander narrowly missed becoming collateral damage when a large redtail dived for a squirrel outside the museum. The squirrel got away.

One reason for the run-ins with redtails is that raptor populations have made a remarkable comeback in the last five years, and they've done so, ornithologists say, by moving into downtowns. Once a habitué of North America's grasslands, hawks have discovered that cities are safe places to raise a brood, and they offer a 24-hour smorgasbord of pigeons, rats, and squirrels.

"We have a pretty good view of Logan Square, and we see them hunting all the time," said Dan Thomas, who manages the bird collection for the Academy of Natural Sciences. Not long ago, he added, a colleague went to fetch the academy's van from the alley behind the museum only to discover a Cooper's hawk enjoying a pigeon on the roof.

There was a time when a person couldn't get within 10 yards of a hawk kill, said Kevin McGowan, a scientist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. That may still be the case in rural areas. But as hawks settle in cities, they've grown more accustomed to people.

The fact that a bird would even allow people to watch it eat, McGowan said, suggests...

For more, including comments in the article by our own hawk expert John Blakeman, click the link.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/116550778.html?cmpid=15585797

HAPPY HAWKING!
Donegal Browne