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Birding is hard. That is, identifying birds in the wild is difficult. Over the past month or so Jean and I have had several sightings which we are just not sure as to species (or even genus for that matter). So it was very presumptuous of us to attempt to identify one individual out of a possible population of 200 Red-tailed Hawks. Though we did say, “Could she be last year’s young bird?”
These challenges of identifying bird from a species population come up occasionally, especially on surveys and Christmas Bird Counts. One year on the South Fork CBC, Bob Barnes asked if that was the same American Dipper? We answered that it was not, it had no tail! Often we had to judge the amount of red on the heads of Western Tanager males to be sure we were not recording a bird twice while surveying Western Tanager nesting.
Last week I thought of Tony Hillerman’s (the only “mystery” writer I read) The First Eagle. I pulled it off the shelf, dusted it off, and re-read the critical parts. In it, the key to proving the innocence of a Hopi eagle poacher charged with murder is a specific eagle. While searching for evidence, Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police noted an eagle, it was the 4th he had seen that day, soaring over Yells Back Butte. Chee first thought it to be a Red-tailed Hawk. Then, as it banked, saw it to be a Golden Eagle.
He further noted it had a gap in its fan of tail feathers. Chee concluded it was an old bird because, as he says, tail feathers are not “lost to molting”. Later, in discovery, it is learned the eagle poacher had, in addition to being clawed by the eagle’s talons, inadvertently pulled a feather from the tail of the bird and thus must turn the eagle loose. As the case progresses, Sgt. Chee recaptures the eagle, and in the end the poacher is proven innocent of the murder charges, although is charged with eagle poaching.
Now, sorry Sgt. Chee, birds do loose tail feathers to molting, and it was late summer. Molted feathers, and those pulled out, do grow back relatively quickly. However, Jim Chee did identify the one bird out of many. Further, the bird did have the blood evidence on its pantaloons. Thus, again, Sgt. Chee and retired Lt. Leaphorn close another case.
Just weeks ago we were presented with answers to a puzzlement we had been wrestling with all summer. It started right outside our computer room, 18 feet from the glass slider. An immature Cooper’s Hawk was perched on a limb, facing us, about 4 foot off the ground, eyeing two young ground squirrels. These partially grown prey were more than the young, inexperienced bird thought it could handle. Its yellow iris, light nape, long rounded tail and streaked front needed no glass to closely study the field marks.
In the afternoon Jean called from upstairs saying the cooper’s was back. However, This bird was an adult, and was standing in the “pond”. Now, off and on we had been seeing, individually, both a juvenile and an adult cooper’s all summer. Both birds come to this 2’ by 4’ pond located under the canopy of a large Interior Live Oak to drink and bathe.
Either bird will stand in the water for 15 to 20 minutes with their heads swiveling, their eyes darting about its forest surroundings, then they bathe. Soaked, they struggle to a limb perch still under the tree canopy and begin to preen. When all is done, with a flap, they glide off into the forest. Our dilemma has been, since each bird we saw, adult or juvenile, seemed different, how many birds do we have and are they related?
This day, due to size, we judged it to be a female. For 45 minutes she stood in the water! Why so long? Do not know, but it did give us a long time in the glass (only 30 feet from the kitchen window) to study feather by feather her field marks as she turned around from time to time. Orange iris, barred, orange chest and belly, long, rounded tail with white terminal band, relatively large legs and feet (compared to a “sharpie”), all nicely displayed for 45 minutes. Yes, she finally bathed.
Again, the next day, I was called upstairs because “the cooper’s is back”. Looking through the glass I called it’s the immature! Jean said, no, it’s the adult. No! Yes! No! Back and forth we went. Suddenly the bird I was looking at flew buzzing the bird Jean was watching. We were both right! We had been looking at different birds! Subsequently the adult bathed. The young bird may have returned later to bathe - we don’t know.
Then in the afternoon, again, a cooper’s in the pond! It would be very unusual for a bird of prey to bathe twice in one day. Too much time off the job and too often being inattentive and water logged thus being vulnerable to itself being preyed upon. It was a different bird! An adult, eye getting closer to orange than yellow, and smaller. A male?
What we now know is that we have a family out there in the forest, where the juvenile has as yet to disperse, while the male adult is just hanging around to take advantage of the bath tub and the “Cooper’s Hawk feeders.” Several times now we have seen the female adult and the juvenile together.
As an aside, the Keene’s report several juvenile Cooper’s at a time at Lake George! Is the water attracting birds for the Cooper’s to prey on, or is the water drawing the Cooper’s and the prey just happen to be present. Whatever, the water is the connection.
Pay attention to those birds out there, especially the big birds. Look for a primary, a secondary, a tail feather missing, a juvenile rather than an adult, eye color, a slightly different morph. All individuals of the species (sans sexual dimorphism) do not necessarily look exactly alike. It is difficult, but not unusual, to pick out one from the many - or even the Second Hawk from the First Hawk.
Good birding, gone birding.
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