BEST FIELD TRIP EVER

Sunday May 27 2018

I knew we'd be getting to help band young ferruginous hawks on our field trip (a repeat of the one I did a couple of years ago), but little did I know we'd get to help with juvenile RAVENS also!

It's a local outreach program between the Boise BLM and the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area and Raptor Research Center that gives raptor (and RAVEN) enthusiasts like me a chance to go on a field trip with biologists to assist them in banding birds of prey (and RAVENS!!!).

Our first stop was a platform nest with 5 juvenile ferruginous hawks. As the adults circled in consternation high above (they are generally not aggressive), one by one the babies were plucked from their nest, and handed off to the arms of us eager hawk holders, each bird awaiting their turn to be measured and banded.

These babies, averaging about 30 days of age, are just about as big as they'll get, but their flight feathers have not fully developed, nor the muscling needed to flap those (one day) powerful wings yet. Nor are they aware of the strength of their toes yet nor the razor sharpness of their talons. In your arms, a ferruginous hawk baby will pretty much do exactly what he does when sitting on the nest: just sit there unafraid and seemingly unworried, not trying to escape. Two of them were even set down on the ground under the truck in the shade to await their banding, and they just sat there and waited patiently.

These birds are currently plentiful in the Snake River Birds of Prey Conservation Area, on the flats north of and above the Snake River canyon. Their primary prey is ground squirrels (of which this year there are approximately a billion) and jackrabbits, though they'll also eat insects, lizards and snakes. I told the little one I held that maybe one day he'd be flying above my place in a year or two.

Our plans had been to go to band a second nestful of ferruginous babies, but due to propitious unanticipated circumstances, we instead went to a RAVEN NEST to band 4 juvenile Raven babies!

Oh, my stars. I have held a Raven before, an adult that we crick neighbors rescued from a dog injury, and nursed back to health (and it was probably Hoss, the same crick Raven that Linda raised from a baby when his nest blew down years earlier), but it's still a thrill to hold a RAVEN, any time, anywhere.

This nest of 4 was conveniently ensconced in the crook of a weather station on the flats (not far from another ferruginous platform nest), and these babies were cranky and nervous and LOUD (and so were the parents shrieking at us flying above) and they *did* know how to use their beaks and very healthy vocal cords and their feet, on the ends of which were some rather sharp talons (though not as dangerous as the hawks'). They could flap their big wings just fine, too, and were probably within a week of fledging, and would then have been uncatchable.

The first Raven I held was a bit smaller and settled down well enough while I held him/her in the shade awaiting his banding.

The second Raven I held was handed to me after banding, and he/she was bigger and really perturbed and insulted and cranky and NOISY, and gripped strongly with his claws and wanted to flap away towards his nest. I named him BRUISER, but I held him firmly in the shade and told him, too, that one day maybe he'd be flying over my place and I'd say hi and he'd remember me.

While Ravens eat primarily carrion, they'll really eat just about anything. They'll eat other birds' nestlings and eggs, reptiles, insects, seeds, fruit, garbage. They're great opportunists. They're also  known for collecting shiny pretty things. They're very smart. And I LOVE RAVENS, if that needs telling.

The opportunity to do something like this really makes you think about the birds. They aren't always just a speck in the sky or a sentence in a news report. They lead a precarious life growing up on a nest in the wild, where it truly is survival of the fittest, from weather, predators, humans.

Conservation efforts you support or don't support can effect their future, for the better or the worse. If you've made the effort to go out and see a wild bird up close and *particularly* if you get to hold it in your arms and feel its heart beat, what happens to them might really matter to you. 

And, anyway, it's just a thrill if you love birds. If you've never closely visited or held a wild bird before, I highly recommend it!

Owyhee Feathered Hooligans

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Oh-Dark Stupid

Saturday July 6 2013

In the darkness before dawn, the forest wakes in layers. Aside from the occasional hoot of a great horned owl or barred owl and the creaking and cracking from something… large… cruising through the brush, there is a bank of silence between the night creatures and the day creatures.

The robins and Swainson's thrushes wake first, the chirping and the spiraling twitters reaching over the hills and spinning out above the canopy. When the winter wrens start up, they jump right in, all feet and feathers first, enthusiastically, a non-stop loud chatter that drowns out everything else within earshot. Others follow in time as dawn creeps up, slowly painting the blackness discernible shades of green: varied thrushes, chickadees, and a myriad of other LBJ's (Little Brown Jobs) I don't know.

This time of darkness, this Oh-Dark Stupid, is a no-man's land-time. It's way too late to still be awake and way too early to be up.

But I'm out here, listening to the waking forest.


To get here, one dark morning I follow fresh bear tracks from the previous day; another morning I tunnel through close and claustrophobic brush; another I wade through a stream and slip and slide up the slick bank. Devil's clubs bite me when I grab wildly for something for balance. Blackberry bushes grab my legs and try to trip me. I hope I'm avoiding poison ivy but the dark ground cover looks all the same in my narrow headlamp beam piercing a tiny hole in the blackness. Moss-covered fallen trees are a slippery bridge over black holes.


On all mornings, mosquitoes, also early risers, threaten to suck me dry of blood. On all mornings, despite being half asleep, my senses are on full-blown alert, particularly in close brush, and most particularly when I hear big cracks and snaps in the darkness.


Nesting marbled murrelet by Tom Hamer
All this to search for a cryptic, chunky robin-sized bird in the forest: the endangered, mysterious marbled murrelet, who lives on the sea and nests in the forest.

They don't make it easy on themselves. Built for life on the ocean, they choose to nest inland in primarily old growth forests - up to 40 miles inland. Not every year, the female lays a single egg on a platform with a slight depression (usually, a thick moss-covered branch) in an old growth tree, up to 200 feet above the ground - not a nest; the male and female take turns sitting on, and turning the egg up to 11 times a day (no nest cup to keep it from rolling off the branch!), and once it hatches, the parents fly back and forth to the ocean, fetching the single chick a single fish each time. When and if the chick fledges at about 35 days of age, the parents stop visiting with food, and the chick eventually makes its way, under cover of darkness, to the ocean - or not.

Adults are eaten by hawks and owls; eggs and nestlings are predated by crows and Ravens, jays, and flying squirrels. Some murrelets are caught in gill-nets and drown; it is thought that murrelet food (fish) may be adversely affected by trending warmer ocean currents.

These birds don't make it easy for observers: the marbled murrelet can fly up to 100 mph with very rapid wingbeats (think: 'flying raisin'), and it may approach its nest in the forest stealthily, so if you're looking for one, and you blink at the wrong time, or if it decides not to call, your chances are not great for seeing or hearing it.

But we try.

Love Me Some Snowy Owl!

Saturday December 31 2011

Guilty: I love birds. I'm rather rabid about the RAVENS, as many of you know, and I'm close to that state with owls, but I don't know that I'd call myself a 'birder' as I'm not particularly good at identifying species. Most little brown birds to me are lumped into the LBJ category - Little Brown Jobs. I know most about Ravens, and a bit about owls. I'd like to know much more about hawks than I do, and I'm learning more about eagles as I get to follow retired bird biologist Karen S around monitoring golden eagle nests.

Some birders travel around trying to fulfill their Life Bird List. I don't have a Life List, but if I did, today I saw my last bird that would be on that list - a Snowy Owl!!!! And I didn't have to journey to the Tundra to see one; there's a pair of Snowy Owls hanging out in Nampa Idaho, 50 minutes from home! 

This momentous event is the result of a 'Snowy Owl Irruption', where, approximately every 3-5 years, Snowy Owls have left their home range, and have been sighted much further south. This winter so far, they've been seen around the Great Lakes, the West Coast, the East Cost, Seattle (one was sighted on a church roof in Ballard  this week), Pennsylvania, Indiana, etc. 

Often, a shortage of food causes birds to travel outside their home range, but this year a possible reason for the Snowy Owl irruption is an overabundance of lemmings, their main prey. One report says that there were so many lemmings this year in the North that a greater number of juvenile Snowy Owls survived their first year, which didn't leave enough lemmings to go around for all the adults and juveniles. Hence, a number of Snowy Owls have irrupted further south in search of food. The last irruption was in 2007.

Despite these 2 Snowies being rather harassed by zealous birders, and by non-birders (people have been trying to walk right up to them and chasing them away, and kids and dogs have been running around scaring them), they have been in Nampa for around 3 weeks in the same couple of fields. It is important to leave the birds alone, because juveniles are still learning the ropes of hunting (the Nampa male snowy is a juvenile), and by causing them stress and causing them to flee, it uses up precious energy they need for hunting, staying warm, and surviving the winter.

Fortunately today - after being harassed in the morning and driven from their usual field, the two Snowy Owls flew to another nearby muddy field, where they were far enough in the middle of it, that people were discouraged from approaching too close, and they were left alone to semi-snooze in the sun.

This is the juvenile male.  

This is the female. She was sitting on an irrigation bank 200 feet away from the male.

Females are larger than males, and have more barring. Juvenile males have more barring, which disappears as the owl matures; some males can be almost pure white. 

The Snowy Owls are the largest owls in North America. Unlike the Great Horned Owls, Long-eared Owls, and Screech Owls that are common around here, the Snowy Owl is primarily diurnal (active during the day). Their regular habitat is the Arctic Tundra. They primarily nest on the ground and hunt over open fields and grasslands.

A steady stream of people drove up and parked, and walked up to the fence with binoculars and spotting scopes and cameras. There were up to 20 of us at one time. You could see the birds as white spots in the field with the naked eye, but we shared with those who had brought nothing.

Looking through binos and the scopes, people were heard to say, "Oh my God!" (That was me.) "They're so beautiful!" (That was me.) "I want to pet one!" (Well, that was me also.) One woman flew to Nampa from Arizona, just to see these two birds! It was convenient that her daughter lived in Nampa, but the lady truly came just for the birds. She'd been to Alaska earlier this year to see a Snowy Owl, but didn't see any there.

What better way to celebrate the New Year with the sighting of this gorgeous bird! Now I don't even need to start a Life List!

This is the male scratching his head.