WANT TO PROTECT PALE MALE AND LOLA AND ALL URBAN HAWKS? PROTECT THEIR PREY BASE, VOTE YES!..NOW

I just moments ago, received an Alert from the New York City Bird Club

PALE MALE AND LOLA ON THEIR FIFTH AVENUE NEST-
THE CITY PIGEON CONSTITUTES THE BULK OF THEIR DIET, OVER 80%.
NO PIGEONS? LIKELY NO PALE MALE AND LOLA


2008- THE RIVERSIDE DAD BRINGS A PIGEON TO FEED HIS THREE TINY EYASSES
One day when there wasn't a pigeon available for the young to eat, he brought them a rat that he had caught. It is thought that the rat had eaten rat poison so inadvertently the three beautiful eyasses were poisoned as well and died in the nest.

As many of you know, I find the urban feral pigeon to be a beautiful hardy non-competing-with-native-bird exotic (research backs me up) that is falsely maligned and well worth giving a helping hand. But even if you don't like pigeons without them there will be no urban hawks. Without pigeons, urban hawks likely won't have enough to eat! Or enough daytime prey to feed their young.

Up until not long ago, the feral pigeon did have the protection of the Migratory Treaty Act. Since the pigeon has been removed from it's protection and many ill-informed city politicians have begun plans to eradicate them.

In New York City, and I don't doubt most if not all other urban Red-tailed Hawk territories, the major prey base, in fact well over 80% of urban hawk food in NYC , is the urban Pigeon. As cities continue and promote programs to eradicate the urban pigeon, they also jeopardize the urban Hawks. Rats will not be a substitute. Even as an additional food to the hawk diet, too many Red-tails are poisoned. The three eyasses of the Riverside Nest in NYC are just a single example.


A vote for the pigeons is a vote for the lives of urban hawks. Do it as you love the hawks and do it now as this is time sensitive.

And open up your email address book and spread the word!

FROM THE NEW YORK CITY BIRD CLUB

To view the thread go to:
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/luciedove/vpost?id=3180325

Subject: Change the Legal Status of the Feral Pigeon to Protected
I wanted to see if I could get your quick help. I'm not sure if you've heard, but there's a movement of citizens inspired by the presidential campaign who are now submitting ideas for how they think the Obama Administration should change America. It's called "Ideas for Change in America."

I've submitted an idea and wanted to see if you could quickly vote for it. The title is: Change the Legal Status of the Feral Pigeon. You can read and vote for the idea by clicking on the following link:

(Once you click and get to change.org....In the box "Search Ideas", type in-protect the feral pigeon. Then two boxes will come up. They will say "Search Ideas" Protect the feral pigeon and the second box is "Within Cause"-Type in-Environmental Conservation. D.B.)
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/change_the_legal_status_of_the_feral_pigeon


The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.

Thanks for the support,
Anna Dove

This idea is currently in 129th Place in Environmental Conservation and needs 487 more votes to make it into the second round.

D.B. When I looked a moment ago, it was in 58th place with 12 votes. The number of ideas has increased exponentially. This idea still needs 400 plus votes to make the second round. We can do it.

Red-tail Hawk Update--The Thompkins Square Brown-tails

Photograph by Francois Portmann www.fotoportmann.com/

Photographer and Hawkwatcher Francois Portmann, managed to find and photograph both the Thompkins Square Park Brown-tails.


Photograph by Francois Portmann

Francois believes the hawk with the heavy belly band, above and in the next three photographs is a female.
Photograph by Francois Portmann

He reports that she's larger than the other bird. On a previous sighting this bird was perched in the park while the other, who seems fond of pigeon hunting, flew over. She called to him.

Photograph by Francois Portmann


She looks to be quite a dark bird, rather like Charlotte or Norman. Who, where many hawks are cream or white, these birds are more beige.


Photograph by Francois Portmann

Though as she's caught a rat, perhaps part of the dark effect may have to do with the time of day.

Photograph by Francois Portmann


This bird, Francois reports, is smaller than the first and likely a tiercel.


Photograph by Francois Portmann


True to his penchant for flushing pigeons, he does it again.


Photograph by Francois Portmann


To the railing he goes, with something in his crop already. He stares up, perhaps deciding how best to get one of those pigeons.


Photograph by Francois Portmann

I love this photograph. His posture makes him look like he is levitating in the way Rudolph Nuryev did during a leap. Though this guy does it as easily as breathing. Note the size of his toes and "ankle". Compare them with the Formel's in the photo of her that is fourth from the top.


I hope to see much more of these two.





RED-TAIL HUNTING IN THE SNOW





James Blank who has contributed Turkey and Hawk photographs to the blog, unfortunately saw an interesting Red-tail incident the other day when he didn't have his camera with him. (Let that be a lesson to all of us.)





After the latest snowstorm save one, Mr. Blank saw a mature Red-tail sitting in a tree overlooking an open area quite near where a crew was taking a jackhammer to frozen ground, looking for some cable or other. Red-tails being very patient when they feel they have the prospect of a good thing, sat there for some time. Then suddenly the hawk swooped out of the tree and toward the ground to make a grab. Her talons went down, there was a great puff of snow, the talons came up empty, she then did a three or four contact hopping motion and finally came up with a good sized rodent for her lunch. Which she flew away with to eat in peace.



An experienced hawk, she no doubt knew that excavation equipment tends to send rodents out of their burrows and was waiting for that to happen. But on that day, there was quite a number of inches of snow on the ground so did the rodent appear above the snow so the hawk could see it and then catch it? Or can hawks as owls do, listen for prey under snow and then make sightless grabs through that snow?

I'll ask John Blakeman.

Donegal Browne

P.S. Mr. Portmann wrote that he did see a downtown hawk collect a London Plane fruit. The fruits of the London Plane are about half the size of a Sycamore fruit but also have the fluff inside them. No more details on this as yet but I've asked.

What is THAT doing in Kay and Jay's Nest? Crow at the Bath? And Scat and Tracks.

Screen capture courtesy of Jackie of Tulsa and KJRH TV
Jay, I think, stands in the Tulsa nest next to two Sycamore fruits. (Many thanks to Jackie for the fruit ID.)
Now just what are those doing there?

Screen capture courtesy of Jackie of Tulsa nd KJRH TV

These fruits are about the size of golf balls.

It isn't as if Red-tails don't sometimes bring some curious things to their nests. In the NYC nests we've seen newspaper, plastic bags, foam rubber noodles, bits of rubber, insulation, for instance beyond the usual twigs, strips of bark, dried grasses and bits of other foliage.

But might there be a specific method to this madness. A sycamore fruit is really many many nutlettes, each connected to a bit of fiber or fluff that floats the seeds hither and yon to possible new growing spots.

I don't know how many Sycamores we have near Red-tail nesting sites in NYC but we certainly have many many London Planes which produce a smaller version of the Sycamores fruit. Though I've never seen any taken to the nests. Which doesn't mean it hasn't happened you understand. We don't see everything from the ground. Though when I did get a look into Pale Male's nest, I saw no fluff.

Is there a thought on the Tulsa Hawk Pair's minds that the fluff might make good nest lining?

Lola has a tendency to choose her nest lining very carefully. She pulls strips of bark off trees. I've also seen Charlotte with tree bark strips. There is also a good bit of dried grass gathered and that I did see in Pale Male and Lola's nest.

Fluff does seem like something nice to sit on and likely it would be a good insulator as well.

Was fluff used in past Tulsa seasons and the hawks know where it comes from and so the fruits were brought to the nest in preparation for use?

That would be long range planning as the fruit has to reach the next stage of maturation and break open in order to have fluff visible.

In many parts of the country the Sycamore nutlettes tend to float about in February and March.

I can't wait to see what happens!

I don't know that I've ever seen the Crows tarry at the bath for anything except pasta prep so today was unusual. Can you figure out what is going on?

It took me forever to figure out what the Crow was doing. Why I'm not sure as it is a common activity. Perhaps because with Crow behavior it is often somewhat convoluted. But if I have sussed it out correctly, the Crow was warming her feet.

Friend sits on the wire waiting for the squirrels and I to leave.

And he is beginning to loose patience.

It is after civil twilight but the birds are eating when normally they would have gone to roost long ago. The storm is going to be bad and they know it.

Coming across these rabbit prints I was reminded how tracks change depending on the medium they are left in or in this case the depth of the medium.

In deeper snow, the exclamation points of bunny tracks can turn into a print of the back feet and a drag for the front. Or the rabbit just sinks into the snow, so that sometimes the prints can be at the bottom of the body depression or just a wallow of a depression. See all types in the photo above.

This is a very low res photo but it was the only one I got of three of the rabbits in the same frame, before they bounded off in three different directions. This is what always happens with a group of rabbits who are flushed. I suspect it is wired in as this course would force the predator to make a decision as to whom to chase. And a split second of decision making time might make the escape successful for all.

I ran across a 1950's field guide of animal tracks in the library which also included painstaking drawings of scat. This made me remember that when I found scat I should share the knowledge. For those who don't know what scat is. It's feces. Or in common parlance--animal poop. This particular scat/poop is quite common and most will no doubt recognize it. Yes, it is the scat of the Cottontail Rabbit.

Here is a macro shot. In life these examples were about three quarters the size of Cocoa Puffs.

COMING UP NEXT-- FRANCOIS PORTMANN FINDS THE MALE AND THE FEMALE THOMPKINS SQUARE JUVENILES.