Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are metaphorically looking up Octavia's skirts and having a rare glimpse of her brood patch. The bottom of the patch is quite obvious but scan right, over the side layer of white feathers which ordinarily mask the area from the side when she isn't using it to warm the eggs. The brood patch widens as it goes up and then comes back in again.
Why do hawks develop brood patches?
Feathers are really warm right?
Well yes they are warm for the wearer as they keep the heat in and the cold out. To brood though, heat must be allowed to get out and to the eggs or eyasses. Hence the bald patch.
Not only does a formel loose the down feathers in the brood patch area, but the area also becomes highly vascularized, filled with blood vessels..
And last but not least the patch becomes edematous. Fluid collects under the skin as well as having the naked spot and the increased blood flow.
Rather, I suppose like an internal hot water bottle on the wing.
Speaking of "on the wing" there are also other adaptations thought to be present to reduce reproductive weight. In almost all avian species the right ovary is permanently vestigial. (Why the right ovary, and not the left?) And the left ovary in the off season is small and only takes on heft during the reproductive season.
Plus of course the lightness advantage of laying eggs instead carrying around developing young inside is more aerodynamically friendly as well.
Tiercels also have modifications which we mammals don't have.
As we know sperm keels over and becomes ineffective if it gets too warm. Exactly the reason why male mammals carry their sperm for the most part outside their main trunk in a pouch.
(And why human males who wear tight underwear can have more trouble being fertile than guys who wear free and easy boxer shorts.)
But lets face it, hanging testicles just are not aerodynamic and they'd look pretty silly bobbling around in flight anyway.
Testicles in hawks lay tiny and dormant deep inside them in the off season.
Come reproductive season the hormones surge and their testicles can increase 200 t0 300 times their off season size.
In fact a sexually active duck's testes can comprise 10% of his weight. Good thing they are mostly on the inside.... walking could even become problematical.
Think of that ratio in a human. Say if a human guy weighed 200 pounds his testicles would weigh 20 pounds.
Now there's a mental image. Good grief.
Fine you say, but whatever size the bird testicle is, it is still inside therefore the sperm is still going to be too warm to do their jobs.
Not so.
Enter the swollen cloacal protuberance.
Many male birds develop a swelling around the opening of their cloacae. In some cases the shape of the swelling looks a bit like a teeny volcano. And the cloacal protuberance contains part of the vas deferens which stores mature sperm who must be a little cooler to remain viable while waiting to go into action.
Some avian species also have a circle of feathers around the cloacal opening which during copulation, (the cloacal "kiss") help the sperm get to the female's cloaca where they can do some good.
And last but not least in some cases in sexually monomorphic species during breeding season, one can identify the sex of the bird by looking for a cloacal protuberance. A brood patch can also be used but do remember in some species the guys get them too.
Photo by Francois Portmann http://fotoportmann.com/birds/2014/04/rth-nestcam-tsp-ii-nyc/
The Thompkins Square pair, Christo and Dora on the nest with three eggs!
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A photo by Murray Head of a Palm Warbler in Central Park courtesy of Marie Winn's Central Park Nature News http://mariewinnnaturenews.blogspot.com/
I love the expression on his face.
Though now that I've written the above material on swollen protuberant cloaci, I can't help looking between his legs.
Geez.... even if he had one I wouldn't be able to see it from here.
Happy Hawking
Donegal Browne
Photo courtesy of palemale.com/
This is one of a pair of Red-tailed Hawks that has built a nest in a tree by Central Park's Sheep Meadow.
The most prevalent common thought about this pair is that they are the hawks who previously attempted to nest in the neighborhood of Central Park South, which is the street that borders the southern end of Central Park
Which brings up two questions a number of people who have contacted me have asked:
Where is Sheep Meadow?
And how far is Sheep Meadow from Pale Male's Nest?
Time for a map of Central Park...
Starting at the bottom left (West) of the park, cruise up (North) and hit the 65th St Transverse Rd. Just above where those words are written on the map you'll see Sheep Meadow notated.
(Tidbit 1: Sheep Meadow originally included a flock of sheep and a shepherd from 1884 to 1934. During that time they were housed in a Victorian folly which in 1934 was turned into Tavern on the Green.)
Photograph courtesy of The Central Park Conservancy
Sheep Meadow, between 66th and 69th Streets, is open from mid-April through Mid-November.
Very soon the nesting hawks will have more company than they currently do. And the fact that during the summer, Sheep Meadow can be far more crowded than the above photograph reflects has some hawkwatchers concerned.
Though as Sheep Meadow pair are obviously urban hawks or they wouldn't be there in the first place and the newest research has found that young hawks have a tendency to return to their natal territory to nest, one at least of the Sheep Meadow Red-tails could well be progeny of Pale Male and Lola or as the southern territory was altogether open, Pale Male Jr. and Charlotte.
(Though if Jr. was Pale Male's son as suspected, still related.)
By the way, I never saw Pale Male and Lola have very hostile interactions with Pale Male Jr. and Charlotte, which may be a clue to a relationship.
And as Pale Male and Octavia are allowing the new pair to nest so closely to the Fifth Avenue nest it may be a clue to a relationship there as well.
Some years ago before the research came out about the tolerance of offspring coming back to natal territory at breeding age to nest, one day during nesting season with eyasses on the nest, Pale Male and Lola were both on the nest when a third Red-tail landed on the roof of 927 Fifth Avenue just above them and looked down at everyone. (This was not a menacing posture at all.) Pale Male was up there like a shot, but instead of screaming at the "interloper" and knocking him off the roof for trespassing all Pale did was land on the roof about a foot from him and make an angry body posture. The hawk stranger took on an OH, SORRY, kind of look and zipped off. Neither Pale Male or Lola screamed or chased him with blood lust in their eyes which is what happens if a stranger hawk even crosses the far borders of the territory ordinarily in natal season.
After Pale's trip up to the roof, I can remember long time hawkwatcher Stella Hamilton and I just looking at each other with that kind of, WOW, what just happened kind of look on our faces. At the time, we talked about the fact that the intruder hawk acted like he just wanted to look at the nest. No hostile body position, more like when Pale Male looks down from a tree at a person he knows and likes. The only thing we could come up with that might explain the behavior, far fetched as it seemed, was that the third hawk may have fledged from that nest.
Which some, no doubt, would have scolded us for anthropomorphizing, at the time. As it turns out perhaps we weren't necessarily all that far wrong.
If you happen to be in Sheep Meadow and want to see this nest, as tree nests are somewhat more vulnerable than building nests, and "which tree" is harder to explain than a building address, a tree nest's general location only, tends to be published, look for someone with binoculars and they will very likely be able to direct you to the correct tree.
Now onward Ladies and Gentlemen, move right (East) and up (North) and look for the ovoid blue shape on the map which is notated as the Conservatory Pond. Some older maps label it as the Conservatory Waters but most patrons of Central Park just call it the Model Boat Pond.
And that is what you should call it too if you ask for directions, as most patrons of the park don't know its name of record.
(Tidbit 2: The Central Park Conservatory was never built but periodically there will be regattas of beautiful little model sail boats, including a wee pirate ship with grog barrels, racing in the pond so you can see how the name morphed as it did.)
As we all know, Pale Male's nest is on Fifth Avenue, the right (East) border of Central Park and 74th Street. The street nearest to the center of the Model Boat Pond if it ran into the park that is, is 74th. Or if you would rather figure it for yourself, go down to the 65th St. Transverse and count up.
For those of you interested in computing distances the crosstown blocks or Big Blocks, as they are called, are four to a mile. The Little Blocks, uptown/downtown blocks, are twenty to a mile.
These nests are not all that far apart at all, now are they?
Tra La! Happy Hawking!
Donegal Browne
Photo courtesy of http://www.palemale.com/
A Blue Jay attempts to hassle Pale Male while he deals with dinner.
Word on the street is that nest tending, switches, and other behavior of this time in the hawk curve of behavior is going swimmingly at 927 Fifth Avenue. Soon we begin to watch for those looks into the bowl by the parents for the first signs of piping.
AND NOW TO ANOTHER MATTER ALL TOGETHER!
Okay I admit it. It really is all my fault.
For those of you who don't know parrots, their chewing habits are not like dogs. If you want a dog not to chew, say a shoe, you scold the dog for chewing shoes, right?
You can scold a parrot all you want about chewing "shoes" it won't make one bit of difference to their shoe chewing behavior.
Diversion Alert..Speaking of shoe chewing, infuriatingly Silver only chews one of a pair to smithereens, usually the left one...why? You'd have to ask him. He then chooses one of a different model.
Now back to the original chewing topic.
With parrots it is just the opposite, they have to get bored with chewing a particular category of object before they will stop. For example, I have a penchant for fanny packs.
Diversion Alert 2- Yes I know fanny packs are out of style but who wants to carry a purse in the field? And there are all those little things like pens and keys one doesn't want to have to dig around for...
Silver also had a penchant for fanny packs; he loved to chew the leather parts to bits. Therefore to keep him from chewing the ones I was using I would give him one that was worn out. He'd chew it and have a great time. And as he is a parrot, he eventually got bored with chewing fanny packs and therefore no longer chewed the ones I was using.
Great, right?
Well the theory was valid. But I forgot an important variable.
True he no longer chews my fanny pack. Ta da!
Now he just unzips the zipper and flings the contents out as rapidly as possible to make sure he will be choosing what he wants to chew most from the full selection inside.
Ordinarily I catch him before he gets too far, but the other day I came in and he was chewing a stick of Big Red chewing gum
in the middle of the bed.
I did learn something secondary though. He likes sticks of Big Red better than the mint kind that comes in the little plastic packets which were also part of the bed buffet.
That's the preamble to today's experiment. Silver LOVES to wait for someone to abandon a remote for an electronic device in an accessible spot and then leave the room. He immediately makes for it and begins popping the buttons off the "clicker". This is a giant drag as you might imagine. And you can't just pop them back on. In emergencies tape will work if you diddle with the connection height long enough. And it isn't always that easy to find a replacement clicker, to say nothing of the economics involved.
Therefore when I was at an auction the other day and a patron was throwing away a half dozen clickers from a miscellaneous box of stuff they'd bought for other contents that were in the box, I asked if I might have the clickers they were throwing away. "Sure, they're yours"!
I had a plan.
I went home took out the batteries and scrubbed the clickers with a brush, hot water, and detergent. Rinsed carefully and dried.
Okay, maybe, just maybe I can bore him out of button popping by a continuing supply of buttons to pop.
I'd just set up his second play stand but hadn't decided where to put it yet so it was sitting next to the first on which Silver was
sitting. I nonchalantly laid the clicker on the second play stand and went on my way.
I looked back. Silver was looking at the clicker as if it were an alien being. Oh dear. either he's wondering what the catch is or as it isn't absolutely identical to one I've had before he's going to have to get used to it before he gets to button popping.
I kept checking in on it periodically as it sits in a spot which one passes frequently while going through the house but after three days of no action I began to forget checking as frequently as I might so started setting a timer at thirty minute intervals....
Yes, Quicksilver dismantled the entire clicker, which he had never done before in less than 30 minutes and he's not the least bit sorry.
Look at his expression.
And as who knows what bad trace things might have been inside, good thing he has a dry mouth....the clicker experiment is a dead in the water failure and was immediately suspended.
Sigh.
Happy Hawking!
Donegal Browne
