Got Hooked On Birds!

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Why would a 19” Red-tailed Hawk perch in a residential Sonoran Desert community where streets are paved and the primary vegetation is palm trees?

Not far from my small community, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks have nested on a platform over open fields for a number of years. I’ve enjoyed watching them perch on utility poles along Route 60 (huddling together on cold mornings) and soaring over fields not yet developed.

RED-TAILED HAWK with prey

Just the other day this Red-tailed Hawk, while perched on a light standard close to my house, was feverishly plucking feathers from its prey. Feathers rained down on the street below. Eventually, the prey was ready to eat. (The hawk needed to clean its bill of feathers before digging into breakfast; it flew off to do that.) Can you identify the prey in the photo above?  Its rounded belly and long pointed tail indicate Mourning Dove.

Found more commonly in our residential area are Cooper’s (16-17”) and Sharp-shinned (11”) Hawk. So, I began thinking about this larger hawk arriving here to hunt for food.

Although the Red-tailed Hawk is one of the most common Buteo (type of hawk) in North America and beyond and is not endangered, it struck me as odd that it was hunting in our small tight residential area. Mourning Doves are plentiful here but do we have enough to feed Cooper’s, Sharp-shinned AND Red-tailed hawks?  Now, if it develops a taste for our increasing number of Rock Doves, it can come hunting anytime!

Getting hooked on birds and the “sport”of counting species in 2011, I have recently  moved away from the competitive feature of counting to going out to just enjoy the birds in their various habitats. 

When the world’s most abundant bird, the Passenger Pigeon went extinct, no one saw it coming. Now, with Christmas Bird Counts, Big Day counts, specific counts of endangered species and the online program eBird for reporting bird sightings anywhere at anytime around the world, scientists have much more data from these and other scientific sources to inform them about the world’s 10,000 bird species. 

After Rachel Carson published Silent Spring about the dangers of DDT and other pesticides on bird reproduction (preventing egg shells from hardening) I was living in Virginia where Dr. Mitchell Byrd, Biology Professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, introduced a program to recover soft-shelled eggs from Bald Eagle and Osprey nests along Virginia’s rivers, to incubate artificially at the College and then return the hatchlings to the nest. Graduate students must have loved the challenge!  They should all be proud - it worked!

I had done a Christmas Bird Count or two with Virginia’s Byrd Man when I knew very little about the various species. To see a grown man get so excited over a Black Rail at my favorite wilderness marsh was a sight to behold! Sharing with me what he had seen meant nothing to me so I really couldn’t celebrate his emotion back then.

Now I get it; the only Black Rail I’ve counted in Arizona (Yuma) are extremely stealthy. I didn't see any of them but heard its call quite well. The closest I came to seeing it was watching reeds move, not by details of this very small (6”) round chicken-like bird.

Individual species of birds that have been brought back from threatened extinction include: Peregrine Falcon, Trumpeter Swan, California Condor.

Quoting from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Annual Report Issue of Living Bird, using data from many sources including migrating birds on radar:

In just the past 50 years (1970 on) more than 1 in 4 birds have disappeared across North America.

Having data to indicate declines and “saves”, scientists say it is possible to bring birds back but it must be an international effort. While many birds fly to remote areas in northern Canada and the Arctic to breed, they fly south in the spring with their young. Where will they go if their forest has been cut or burned to the ground to raise coffee or cattle?  

That’s why we hear about shade-grown coffee.  Coffee can grow in the shade of trees that will continue to provide homes for birds. Ask your vendor if they sell shade-grown coffee. Only by asking for it will it happen. It may cost a bit more at first than the easily farmed fields of coffee but you will be helping provide more and more habitat for birds if you purchase not only coffee but other products that respect birding habitat. Only with habitat that sustains the birds will we continue to be able to enjoy their songs and behaviors in our back yards. Loss of bird song would indeed bring a silent spring.

I suspect loss of habitat for the presence of the Red-tailed Hawk in my neighborhood recently. After ranchers sell to developers, the planned communities pave over former open fields used to provide voles, crickets, grasshoppers, other insects and worms for many species of birds.

For resident and migrant birds in your own back yard, native trees, shrubs and flowers can provide a much needed boost of energy and hiding spaces for migrating or locally nesting birds with young. That’s one way we - around the world - can reduce greater loss of bird species and save them for future generations.

Breakfast coming up!

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