Colorado Raptors of Winter: An Interview With Anne Price

You guys have heard of Anne Price from the Raptor Education Foundation (REF) before: she's the one who brings all of the awesome birds of prey to the raptor shows at the Best Western Denver Southwest dinosaur hotel!  Eager to learn more about some of the raptors that live here in Colorado during the winter, and how the change in weather affects the birds behavior!  She was nice enough to oblige, and the answers were definitely very interesting!  So after you check out the REF website HERE and like their Facebook page HERE, please join me in welcoming Anne Price, Curator of Raptors at the Raptor Education Foundation!

Anne Price with a prairie falcon at the Best Western Denver Southwest!

1. What raptors are you likely to see if you live along the Front Range here in Colorado?

The big four hawks are: red-tailed hawk (year round), Swainson’s hawk (April through early October), rough-legged hawk (October through March), and Ferruginous hawk (year round, but rare on front range in summer months).  Turkey vultures in spring, bald eagles in winter, golden eagles, Cooper’s hawks and American kestrels year-round, turkey vultures and osprey from March through October.  There are more species around but these are the most likely to be seen by the average birder.

A red-tailed hawk at another one of the raptor shows at the Best Western!

2. What raptors have migrated away that you would be able to see along the Front Range during the summer?

Turkey vultures and Swainson’s hawks.

Anne Price holding a turkey vulture!

3. What special behavior, such as courtship rituals or other behaviors like that, can you observe in raptors during December and January along the Front Range?

You may see red-tailed hawks and bald eagles start to sit next to each other in trees or along telephone poles. The big excitement comes from great-horned owls, which will begin courtship calling (hooting back and forth) in the middle of the night, starting around Christmas Day.

Anne holding a great-horned owl!

4. Do the raptors at the REF change their behavior at all during the winter? If so, how do they change?

Our birds eat more, so we feed them more to put on just a bit more fat for the cold weather. Our two Swainson’s hawks get feisty and start stealing food because their metabolism is telling them that they need to bulk up for a long migration ahead. I always let them gain 1-3 oz during this transition so they are ready for the cold, which came early this year and was REALLY cold. Our female golden eagle will also start gaining weight and developing a brood patch as she gets ready to lay her eggs in early March. She has gained 9 oz just in the last 2 weeks!

A golden eagle takes flight in Dinosaur National Monument!

5.  Finally, I remember you mentioning the black streaks under the eyes of the prairie falcon as a glare reducing adaptation. What can you tell me about that?

It’s called the “malar stripe” or “malar mark.” It’s meant to reduce glare by having the sun strike or be concentrated in the area beneath the eye, leaving the area above in proper contrast. These are black or dark lines under the eyes of cheetahs, most falcons (gyrfalcons and merlins being notable exceptions).  Even flickers have malar stripes, though in these birds they serve as signals for courtship, not for better visibility of prey species!

Which is why the Rockies and the Broncos do the same thing…….

A REF prairie falcon at the Best Western!

Thank you so much Anne for taking the time out of your schedule to answer some of our questions!  I know I will definitely be on the lookout for these birds in the upcoming weeks, and hopefully everyone else will be, too!  Make sure to check out the REF Facebook page HERE, as well as their website HERE.  You can also come visit all the REF birds on Saturday, April 12 from 11am to 2pm! Admission is free and there will be giveaways and refreshments.  RSVPs are kindly requested; please visit http://www.usaref.org/OpenHouse.htm.  Thanks again, and keep an eye out for a follow-up post regarding those fascinating malar marks!

The New World Vultures: Top Ten Vultures (Part 2)

On Thursday, I published the first of our two-parter "Top Ten Vultures" posts, all in honor of International Vulture Awareness Day!  (Learn more HERE.)  In the last post, we looked at only the Old World Vultures, a group of birds that are native to Asia, Africa, and Europe.  Today, we will be looking at the New World Vultures who, despite their name, are not actually very closely related to the Old World Vultures at all!  Instead, the similarities in body design between the two different groups is a result of one of my favorite topics of all time, convergent evolution!  So let's do it: the last five of the top ten!  Meet my favorite five New World Vultures!  (For the previous post in the Top Ten Vultures duology, click HERE.)

5.  Number five on the list is the turkey vulture, a classic vulture for us Coloradans!  The only vulture alive today in Colorado (I suppose the occasional black vulture may wander in from the south), the turkey vulture is what many people think of when they hear the word "vulture."  I have noticed a lot (thirty or more) of turkey vultures circling this one place on the CU Boulder campus, so I am planning a little excursion to figure out what it is that is drawing them to that particular spot in such large numbers!  Recently, the folks at the Raptor Education Foundation brought a turkey vulture in to the Best Western Denver Southwest, a fun hotel that is currently undergoing renovations to become a functioning natural history museum!  (REF website HERE, BWDS website HERE.)  So here are some awesome pictures from that event!  If you guys ever get a chance to check out one of the presentations given by the folks at the Raptor Education Foundation, you definitely should go, it is a REAL treat!  In the pictures below, you can see the curator of the foundation, Anne Price, holding the turkey vulture, while the director, Peter Reshetniak (background), tells us a great deal about the bird!

4.  With nearly a ten foot wingspan, the California condor is the largest flying bird in North America!  (If you're having trouble visualizing ten feet, either go purchase ten one-foot long rulers and lay them end to end or, more simply, go find a good-sized California condor and stretch out its wings.  That's probably the best visual right there.)  The California condor is unfortunately labeled "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN, and it has experienced a pretty good comeback, and hopefully will continue to do so well into the future!  According to the IUCN website, the last six remaining wild individuals were brought into captivity for captive breeding purposes, making the species "Extinct in the Wild."  However, due to intense involvement from scientists, the species is on the rise, with around 213 individuals in the wild!

3.  Meet the only fossil vulture on our Top Ten list, Phasmagyps!  Some paleontologists are unsure whether Phasmagyps is actually a vulture, and this uncertainty is definitely understandable, as Phasmagyps is known from but a single bone!  If it is a vulture, then Phasmagyps might be the oldest known New World vulture!  Discovered in a Colorado quarry containing a number of fossils belonging to a 35 million year old rhinoceros called Trigonias, this single bone is now housed in the collections facility of the University of Colorado Boulder!  I'm not really sure what I'm doing yet, but I've tried to input a request to check out the bone, we'll see how that goes!

2.  Meet the Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds alive today, with more than a ten foot wingspan!  With an incredible lifespan of over 75 years in captivity, the Andean condor, much like most animals that live for a very long time, does not reproduce very quickly: and therein lies its vulnerability.  If, say, half of the population of Andean condors was shot in one year by humans, then it would take much longer for the population density to regain its former glory.  By contrast, if you destroy half of the population of, say, rats, then they would almost certainly regain their former numbers very quickly, as they reproduce at an alarmingly fast rate.  (The same principle applies to the California condor, who we talked about above.)  Fortunately, the Andean condor is nowhere near as vulnerable to extinction as its close relative, the California condor.

1.  At last, we come to my most favorite vulture of all time: the king vulture!  This guy is absolutely ridiculous looking, resembling a cross between a vulture, a turkey, and who knows what else!  It also has a very fun scientific name: Sarcoramphus papa!  Don't exactly know what it means, but I like to think it has something to do with being the Vulture Daddy.  I found on some sources online that the blood and feathers of the king vulture were used by the ancient Mayans to help cure disease, but I couldn't find any more information on that: all I found was the exact same sentence copied over and over again: "The bird's blood and feathers were also used to cure diseases."  An enigmatic sentence for a very engimatic looking bird.  But let's face it: it just looks awesome.

Thanks again for joining us today!  I do hope I have made you more aware of vultures of an international level!  But seriously, check out their page: http://www.vultureday.org/2013/index.php

Birds of Prey on Marshall Road

Today, my friend Mona Kamath and I went out to find some birds of prey along a little side road off of Marshall Road between Boulder and Superior in Colorado.  We saw an abundance of them on this trip, perhaps more than on any other trip.  The only other trips that I can remember that could rival this one were one where I saw red-tailed hawks, kestrels, and turkey vultures, and another one where I saw red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, and a golden eagle.

Today, we were rewarded with not one, but two golden eagles!  Below are some pictures taken by both me and Mona.

 

 

 

 

We also saw a number of turkey vultures circling overhead, and a pair of them perched on a fence nearby.  However, by far the most exciting vulture spot of the day was when a juvenile turkey vulture landed right behind us!  I stopped the car and Mona was able to snap a few pics.  Not quite as exciting as the time a few weeks ago when I was on this road, and saw a pair of turkey vultures and a bunch of magpies fighting over the remains of a small carcasses, maybe thirty feet from my car!  Note how similar the juvenile turkey vulture looks compared to black vulture adults.

 

I also saw a bird of prey perched upon a lamp post in the middle of Superior.  I don't know what kind it is, so if anyone can help me out with that, that would be awesome!  Anyways, here are a few pics of it:

 

 

One of my most favorite bird of prey moments on this road was perhaps a month or two ago when I saw a pair of hawks flying along calmly next to each other, and then they suddenly locked talons.  I'm not positive, but I believe that it might have been a courtship display!

Boulder on Dwellable