A month or so ago, I came across a documentary on YouTube about a family of Red-Shouldered Hawks made by a man named Wes Deyton. I also saw a number of really cool pictures that he took of the birds, and thought it might be interesting to see if he'd be willing to do a guest post! Kindly, he was happy to oblige! First, a bit about Mr. Deyton:
My name is Wes Deyton and I recently graduated from Western
Carolina University with a Bachelors Degree in Communications and Broadcasting.
I live in Fuquay Varina North Carolina, which is
near Raleigh. I enjoy taking pictures
and making videos of wildlife as well as scenic nature.
Anyways, let's all give Mr. Deyton a warm welcome! I hope you enjoy these pictures and the video, all of which were taken by Mr. Deyton, as much as I did!
The Red Shouldered Hawks in the video (below) were filmed in the
woods behind my house. I have been following them for about the whole
Summer. I did not get any footage of the
hawks in the nest when they were really young, because I was still at WCU. I
have not been able to find them lately because I think the young Hawks have
gone on to find their own territory.
The Red Shouldered Hawk is a medium sized hawk, it primarily
lives in woodland areas and it can be found all over the eastern woodlands as
well as California and Northern Mexico. These birds generally live in woodland
and swamp areas and build their
nests high up in trees, close to sources of water such as lakes, streams and
swamps. The nesting period of these
birds is about 45-60 days.
The female hawk spends most of her time getting food to bring back to the nest for her young. The diet of these birds consist mostly of small mammals, reptiles (including snakes), and
amphibians. There is no sharing in a hawks
nest when it comes to food: when the mother brings food to the nest, the chicks have to fight for food.
Sometimes, the female hawk will feed the smaller hawk to make sure it gets enough nourishment to grow and develop
healthily.
Hawks get bored in the nest
and dream about life on the outside. They dream about flying high like their
parents. This is very evident by seeing them jump back and forth and flap their
wings in the nest before they are fully developed to fly. The young hawks
climb from branch to branch to develop their balance and then fly short distances until they build up their confidence to fly away
from the nest.
The hawk is at the top of the food chain and strikes fear in
smaller birds when they are around.
Aren't those pictures brilliant! Thank you very much Mr. Deyton for sharing these pictures and the video with us, we hope to hear more from you again in the future! Thanks again! -Zack Neher
This coming Saturday is International Vulture Awareness Day, and in honor of the event, we are going to be taking a "Top Ten" look at the vultures! Before we dive right in, I must make an important distinction. Despite the fact that both the Cape Griffon vulture (native to Africa) and the turkey vulture (native to North America) are called vultures, they don't all belong to the same group! Despite the often startling similarities possessed by these two different avian families, these similarities are not the result of a common ancestor, but the result of convergent evolution! The Old World Vultures (native to Asia, Africa, and Europe) are in the same group of birds as the hawks and eagles do. Meanwhile, the New World Vultures (native to the Americas) are just kinda out there, not too closely related to the Old World Vultures, but still birds of prey. In order to keep this post from rapidly getting out of control (as has been known to happen to my blog posts), I have decided to break this Top Ten list into two parts. The first part focuses on five awesome Old World Vultures, while the second post lists the last five vultures on the Top Ten list, all five of whom are New World Vultures! Happy International Vulture Awareness Day, everybody!
10. We'll start off with the lammergeier! I remembered this one from a David Attenborough special that I saw several years ago! This particular Old World Vulture was featured in a brief segment of "The Living Planet," and it was smashing good fun! (That was a pun. Unless you display a higher than average familiarity with your Old World Vultures, you probably won't get it. But you will). The lammergeier enjoys a nice meal of animal bones, especially the marrow on the insides, but oftentimes these bones are simply too tough for the bird to crack. To successfully reach the innards, the lammergeier launches itself into the air, bone in hand, and flies upwards. Once it has reached a satisfying height, the lammergeier will release the bone and, if all goes well, the bone will crack open upon impact with the hard rock below! To see a video of this fantastic bird in action, make sure to click the link HERE!
2. The smallest of the Old World Vultures, the palm-nut vulture is definitely quite distinctive, and, at least to my eye, looks a lot like an eagle! (Not so much in the picture below, though, there it just looks like a bat!) The palm-nut vulture, unlike most birds of prey, regularly consumes vegetable matter, with the primary component of its diet being the fruit of the oil-palm! The palm-nut vulture does eat other foods as well, though, including crabs, fish, small mammals, reptiles, and birds. Unlike most other vultures, rarely will a palm-nut vulture be spotted at a large carcass.
3. The Egyptian vulture, much like the palm-nut vulture, also has a very varied diet. This particular vulture also has ties to the lammergeier in the ways it gets to its food! As is typical of vultures, the Egyptian will scavenge large carcasses, and this carrion is the primary component of its diet. Just like the palm-nut, the Egyptian vulture will also consume rotting vegetables and fruits and, even grosser, it will eat poop! (Although it may be gross, it is thought by many scientists today that part of the reason that so many people have allergies is because we don't eat poop! Well....kind of. Just read the post HERE.) The Egyptian vulture also loves to eat eggs, but to get at the soft interior, the bird employs the use of tools, throwing rocks at the eggs to break them open! To see a video of this, check out the YouTube link below! But honestly, you might want to mute the video, the guy's voice is SOOOO annoying....
4. Although this guy doesn't look quite as funky as some of the other vultures that we have already looked at, I really like the Cape griffon vulture (oftentimes simply called the Cape vulture, not to be confused with the griffon vulture) because I get to see them in the giraffe exhibit at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo most times we go down! I was unable to figure out what the scientific name of the Cape griffon vulture, Gyps coprotheres, means. I found that the genus name, Gyps, means "Condor" in Greek, and I am thinking that the species name, coprotheres, might have something to do with poop, given the fact that the Greek root "copros" means dung or excrement (i.e. coprolites are fossil poop). However, I couldn't find anything on the Internet that would either confirm or deny my assumptions, so instead of hearing about some fascinating aspect of the Cape griffon vulture's feces, you instead can view some pictures and a video that myself and Grace Albers took at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!
The video is indeed the link below, I didn't just accidentally upload two of the same picture!
5. Finally: number 5, the last Old World Vulture on our Top Ten list! Meet the white-headed vulture, aptly named due to the fact that it has a white head and it is a vulture. The white-headed vulture is an early riser, often the first vulture to arrive at a carcass. Because of this, it would have been funnier for me to put the white-headed vulture at the very top of this list, but I'm too lazy to change it so you will have to get by with me just telling you about how funny it is. Often considered to be an "aloof" vulture (meaning that it generally sticks to the outskirts of a group of feeding vultures), the white-headed vulture can be very aggressive, rushing into the midst of a large group of vultures to grab a scrap of food, and then rushing right back out!
This concludes the first half of our "Top Ten Vulture" posts. Check back soon for the second half, the New World Vultures half of the posts!
Today I went walking with Grace and her black lab puppy Kenosha! We saw lots of cool things, and here are some pictures of some of them!
We also saw this ADORABLE and GIGANTICdog sitting on her owners lap!!
First off, we saw some more damsel fly nymphs! A few weeks ago when I was walking Kenosha, I saw one in a little ditch, and brought it home with me as a pet! Here are some pictures of it then!
I talked to a local aquatic insect expert who came to talk to our Outdoor Ed class about fishing and aquatic insects named Wallace Westfeldt, and he told me that they were blue damsel nymphs! Here are some more pictures of the blue damsel nymphs that we saw today!
And here is a picture of what these nymphs will grow in to! They look a lot like the closely related dragonflys, but they aren't quite!
A dead crayfish in the same pond!
We also saw this hawk or falcon, I'm not quite sure which, land right in front of us on a fence! [MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE: Hello, this is Zack Neher speaking to you from 12/21/2014. As you will one day learn from Anne Price, the Curator of Raptors at the Raptor Education Foundation in Colorado, this is an adult female Cooper's hawk. Thank you for your patience.]
Here's a few pictures of a blue jay!
We also saw this random bird that was flitting around in groups of about thirty or so! Neither Grace or I knew what kind of bird it was, so we took a picture and sent it to my dad, but without even looking at the picture he knew that it was a nighthawk when I called him just by telling him that it looked kind of like a swallow and that it was in a large group eating insects in the air!
Here's a close up picture of a nighthawk!
Finally, here is a picture of another cute dog that we saw!
As I mentioned in a post just a few days ago about the Harris hawk (which you can read by clicking HERE), the fantastic dinosaur-themed remodel at the Best Western Denver Southwest is well underway, and the folks over there are making the hotel even more fantastic by having weekly raptor (bird of prey) shows on Saturdays! Each Saturday, Anne Price, one of the folks over at the Raptor Education Foundation, brings over four birds of prey to show to the audience! Last week, they brought over a Harris hawk (which, like I already mentioned, I talked about in a previous post), a prairie falcon, a red-tailed hawk, and a great-horned owl! I have so much information I wanted to share with you...but how! How could I POSSIBLY share all of this information in a non-story like, brain-dumpy fashion? AH-HAH! Another 23-Fact Tuesday is upon us! But before you enjoy, make sure you check out the website for the Raptor Education Foundation by clicking HERE, and checking out the Facebook page for the Best Western Denver Southwest by clicking HERE!
1. This particular prairie falcon actually used to fly down at the Air Force Academy, where many of the cadets have the option of training a falcon!
2. The great-horned owl used to be the only member of the genus Bubo (what a fun name, right?), but around ten years ago, scientists reclassified the snowy owl to be the second member of the genus.
5. In response to this behavior on the part of the falcons, some prey species of bird have developed very tough feathers on their back and such to defend themselves against such attacks.
6. In nocturnal owls, like the great horned owl, the eyes are surrounded by a sort of sensory dish full of hyper-sensitive feathers that can actually detect sound, funneling it into the “dish.”
7. Diurnal owls, such as the burrowing owls, do not have this dish, or at least it is not as pronounced as other owls that are more active at night. The burrowing owl is actually most active at dawn and dusk, although it can function perfectly well at night.
8. Red-tailed hawks apparently love to nest in cottonwood trees. I think I might have actually found a red-tailed hawk nest in a cottonwood tree: hopefully, there will be more information on that in a later post!
A red-tailed hawk nest in what might or might not be a cottonwood tree....Photo Credit: gaiagarden.blogspot.com
9. The great-horned owl that Anne brought in for the presentation is DEFINITELY a survivor: he has survived being shot, hit by a car, West Nile Virus, and being attacked by another owl!
10. Here's the scoop: this particular great-horned owl first came to the sanctuary because it was hit by a car which, in the long run, probably saved its life. The reason why it hit the car in the first place was that it was flying drunkenly about due to the fact that it had West Nile Virus, which had caused its brain to go a little loopy. The owl received the medical treatment that it needed, and it wasn’t until a few years later, when it accidentally broke its leg, that a full X-Ray was ordered, and it was revealed that the owl had a few pellets lodged in its back. The skin had grown around it and completely healed, but yeah. Still. What a trooper!
11. You might have noticed on some of these great-horned owl pictures that the pupil of the left eye is MUCH more dilated than the pupil on the right eye. This is because this great-horned owl is blind is his left eye, due to the brush with West Nile Virus we were just talking about.
12. Later on, there was an enclosure that contained three great horned owls: two males that could fly and an older, grumpier female that couldn’t really fly that well. The two males could EASILY avoid the female by remaining up in the top of the enclosure, where the female simply could not reach them. However, one time, the people walked into the enclosure to find this particular male great horned owl perched next to the grumpy female. The female didn’t seem to be displaying any hostility towards him, so they left them together. After a few weeks, I believe, the female had decided that she had had enough, and attacked the male, and I believe broke his wing. He can fly today, but not terribly well, and not very far.
13. Not all red-tailed hawks have a red tail. There is a wide variety of coloric differences across its vast range, and sometimes even melanistic forms are seen. This DEFINITELY messes with birders!
A melanistic red-tailed hawk! Melanistic, FYI, would be just like a melanistic jaguar, where the coat of the animal is very, very dark, much darker than noraml, due to a pigment issue in its genes! Photo Credit: thenatureniche.com
14. As a matter of fact, none of them have red-tails their first year! At that point in their life, their tails are a darkish gray-brown: muddy and dull with darker brown stripes.
15. The juveniles don’t actually get their red tails until they molt, which, at the time this post is being written (early July) is happening now, in the spring and summer. Here, we have a video featuring the red-tailed hawk, as well as a brief appearance by a pooping Harris hawk (which unfortunately happens off screen)!
16. Besides the owls, only one other type of raptor is able to swivel one of it's toes to face backwards, so that it has two toes pointing forwards and two toes pointing backwards: the osprey! The osprey does this to allow for a more secure grip when catching fish, and the owls undoubtedly do it for much the same purpose when it comes to holding on to their prey.
An osprey, where you have a clear shot of its feet! Photo Credit: www.flickr.com
17. This particular prairie falcon has also survived a brush with West Nile Virus, just like the great horned owl! Anne was telling us that no one really but her would know it, but he far right tail feather on this bird has grown in weirdly ever since the birds dangerous brush with the virus. Here, we have a brief video where Anne talks a bit about this particular falcon's feather!
18. Just like dogs, birds don't sweat. Also just like dogs, birds will sometimes pant to help keep cool! Below, we have a video of the great-horned owl thermoregulating via something we like to call "gular fluttering!"
19. As you can see in this video below, the prairie falcon is being assisted in its thermoregulation by the presenter Anne, who is misting him with some water!
21. The two brown streaks under its eyes help keep some of the light from reflecting into its eyes, just like the black paint worn under the eyes by football and baseball players. Another fascinating example of convergent evolution at its finest!
22. A lot of the time when people think a hawk has gotten in and killed their chickens, its actually an owl.
A fox in the henhouse! I couldn't find a picture of a hawk in a henhouse, and besides, I really liked this picture. Photo Credit: www.hyscience.com
23. For reasons that Anne couldn’t fully explain, other than maybe panic or opportunity, often when an owl finds itself in a pigeon loft, the owl will only pull out and eat one or two of the pigeons, but it will pull off the heads of almost all of them, and leave them there. An interesting and gruesome way to end yet another fun-filled and fascinating 23-Fact Tuesday!
Make sure you check out the website for the Raptor Education Foundation by clicking HERE, and checking out the Facebook page for the Best Western Denver Southwest by clicking HERE!
