Three Krideri in the Trees

Mid-afternoon, we've just seen the last of our second big snowstorm in a week and I am making my way between long term care facilities on a country road. I've not seen a mouse or a bunny or even many of the usually extremely fat, short bodied, legged, and eared, Midwestern squirrel in days. They are under the snow, hunkered down, or enjoying a stretch of winter pseudo-hibernation. Up ahead on the border between field and trees I see the familiar sight of a Red-tail in flight. Stay on the road, watch the hawk, beware the ice--wait, there are two of them. No three! By the time I get to the section of woods that meets the road, a very pale Red-tail, I mean very pale. I mean, parts of its head are paler than Pale Male's belly, crashes through the branches of an oak and flops onto a branch. Can't miss this, I pull over onto the narrow snow heaped side of the road.

Keeeer! Keeeeer! The screaming starts. A big female Red-tail swoops towards our friend who's crashed through the oak, she banks and I see it, her tail instead of the rich vibrant orange I'm used to seeing, looks like a Dreamsicle that's been licked down almost to the vanilla ice cream . She turns again and her belly is the color of snow with a few bits of leaf debris on it. She is exotic, a ghostly beauty and I realize she must be a krideri, and she's menaceing Mr. Sitting-on-a-branch who's a second, by zooming at him. Another Keeeeer, and her mate shows up and he takes the air space over the tree. He's a third and he blends marvelously with the snow and clouds. Their palemess makes perfect sense in this setting; they're models of evolution at work.

Mr. S.o.t.b. takes his chances and heads out of the tree. It's a Red-tail battle up there with those on Fifth Avenue only with no buildings. Therefore sometimes instead of going around the barrier, as must be done with buildings, there is some tricky flying between branches. These birds know their territory extremely well. There's a chase in open space, one bird one direction and another the other way.

By now I have the camera dug out of my bag and good grief, where did they go?

(Yes, we're the victims of a point and shoot camera folks.)

Find the Krider's Hawks.

I can't decide if there are one or two in that tree. But look closely and you'll see how much lighter the krideri, mid-right facing out, is compared with our eastern B.j. borealis.

And there's another, back turned, dark against the sky, up right.

Find the nest.

I've not been able to get back and check it out but unfortunately it may well belong to a squirrel.

The Hunting Ground

And there it is, just as The National Geographic Field Guide To The Birds of North America, describes it, "Habitat variable, woods with near-by open land...".

The Guide talks about the borealis, the harlani, and the krideri but somehow looking at the pictures and reading the dry text, well, it just isn't the same.

Donegal Browne.

BA bum, BA bum, In The Woods

I'd actually gone to see the wild turkeys, but the wild turkeys just weren't showing up. Can you believe it? There are a 100 plus turkeys who arrive everyday to feed on shelled field corn dispensed from the amazing turkey-feeding-machine and they just weren't arriving.

That's right, a wild turkey feeding machine? I've a number of cousins that are gizmo freaks. One thing they did in their youth, was to founder cannons for fun. Yes, in all sizes and they all worked. They shot ball and were powered by black powder. (My family once drove from Tennessee with an entire trunk load of black powder in the car, but that's another story.) They built everything from coffee table models to full scale replicas. Having out grown cannons, one of them, my cousin Roger built a barn on his 35 acres in the country. No, he isn't a farmer he just liked my Uncle Berlie's dairy barn so he built a replica of it...to store his antique tractor collection. That done he's now building a house with hypocausts in the floor.

What can I say? And people think that I'm over the top.

At any rate, he's the one that built the turkey chow dispensing machine. It stores three months worth of chow and spins the corn out on a timer that runs for 8 seconds a day. Hence the turkey horde that arrives daily. Pretty nifty that so many show up, considering that not so long ago Wild Turkeys had been extirpated from Wisconsin.

So starting at dawn I first watched out the window, no turkeys. I then watched the monitors in the barn's living room, the turkey cams. Still no turkeys. Then when the plumber showed up to install the plumbing for the hypocausts in the new house down the hill I figured the day was going to be turkey-less. The least I could do was take a walk and see some feathers. As the fox do see the turkeys and eat them. As do the coyotes and even the Timber Wolves if they can catch them

I head down one of the paths to search for feathers and I hear a "BA bum". I stop. What is that? An animal ? Or is it something man made. It's weirdly hollow and resonant. It starts again, "BA bum" "BA bum", pause, "BA bum". It's vaguely similar to the sound Prairie Chickens make during their spring courtship, but it isn't Spring and it's not boomy enough for a Prairie Chicken. I keep heading toward the sound trying to be as quiet as possible, tiptoeing in my clunky snow boots. There is a crash of branches. I nearly jump out of my skin...remember the Timber Wolves.? Then the whoosh of big wings and I see the tail. The Babumer is a Ruffed Grouse beating his wings on the ground in what I assume is an early attempt at finding a mate.

You just never know what you'll come across. No turkeys but the BA bum of a Ruffed Grouse isn't bad either.

Donegal Browne

Northwest Bucks and Midwest Red-tails

Big Buck and Little Buck coming near the house to glean for apples under the fruit trees in a night photo by Upton.

Remember Mark Upton, who identified the mystery plants for me? His backdoor opens onto a wildlife area in Washington State with an incredible menagerie of "critters", as he calls them. Many of which he and his family know personally as the animals come near to feed. The photo above is of two Black-tail deer that they've known since they were fawns. The critters out the back door include everything from bear to flying squirrels to Raccoons and Opossum. And, as he says, his mother feels that "No animal should be left behind" he lugs a good many 50 pound sacks of kibble for his mother so she can feed them. (Samantha just walked by and said, "Hmmm. His mother reminds me of someone.") The full report from him in a day or two.

And yes, I've been back in Wisconsin once again, sorry for the lag in the blog, and I finally saw some behavior that we see in Central Park but I'd not seen in country hawks before though I'd been keeping a close eye peeled. Remember how now and again we see Pale Male and Lola flying in big gentle circles accompanied by one or two other Red-tails? No one seems in the least perturbed. No one is running anyone else out of the territory. It all looks quite friendly and well, almost, familial. For lengthy periods of time they all just do gentle circles together in the sky. No herding, no diving, no calls, no nothing. During these interludes the question often arises as to whether the third and sometimes fourth hawk might just be young from previous years.

To visit my father in the VA Hospital, I drive two and half hours north of the rolling gentle hills of the part of Wisconsin where my parent's live, to where an area called The Dells begins. The Dells are one of those strange geographic phenomena, a sudden change of topography and therefore differences in flora and fauna abound. One notices that Birch trees have appeared first off. Then a tall giant outcropping of tower shaped rock suddenly appears in a field. Soon these striking formations become more prevalent until one reaches the river and that is all the topography consists of, outcroppings of stone. They're almost like groupings of small mesas atop an eruption of rock. Though there are trees available for hawk use these outcroppings in fields being much higher than the trees, look to have the possibility of some nifty Red-tail nesting sites. And the population of Red-tails seems even higher than the well populated farmland further south.

Near one of these initial isolated outcroppings seen from the freeway on my journey, I saw the now familiar sight of three Red-tails making lazy circles high above the earth. I pulled over and watched. There was no herding, no calls, no diving, or hostility of any kind. Just three beautiful Red-tail hawks riding the air on a warm winter's day, back lit by blue sky, cruising the currents, making lazy circles with each other. And there they continued in the same area, in what I'd dearly like to think of as a family dance, for the 20 minutes that I dared to stay.

And for those who need a little more brightness in order to see the Black-tail Deer from Washington state more clearly, here's a slightly brightened version of the Upton photo.