Grazing herbivores regularly battle snow, which limits their winter access to the grass below. They paw at the snow with hooves to open a hole and then stick their heads down and feed. I had not noticed White-tailed Deer grazing this way before I captured this scene.
A January jaunt through the open farmland south of the Main Lake usually reveals diverse raptors: eagles, buteos, falcons and owls. Adding to these flying predators, coyotes prowl the fields. Not so yesterday. The fields were covered with enough snow that the voles and mice were hidden. On this jaunt, the only raptors spotted were Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks, two of each.
The plumage of Red-tailed Hawks is remarkably variable. Indeed, its eponymous and often spectacular tail is not always red, and even when coloured, the red might be unseen from below.
So, what does one use to reliably identify this hawk as it flies by overhead?
A good indicator of a Red-tailed Hawk is the broad splotchy belly-band. Even better are the dark patagial bands on the leading edge of the underwing. In ancient Rome, the patagium was a gold edging on a lady’s tunic. One modern usage of the word is an edging on a hawk’s wing. The dark patagium on the Red-tailed Hawk extends from the neck to the bend in the wing (the wrist).
A Red-tailed Hawk flies closely overhead and even though the underside of its tail isn’t red, the belly band and dark patagial marks betray its identity.
A clear morning with a brisk sub-zero wind over the water is ideal for sighting steam devils.
There was only a gentle wind two days ago and the devils were not as grand as on some earlier occasions. Yet, as I get to see them play for only about a half hour every three years, and each devil lasts less than a minute, these ones were worth recording.
Steam devils are vortices in the wind made visible by the droplets of steam fog (just as a dust devils are made visible by tossed-up dirt). On a lake covered by steam fog, the devils can form almost anywhere, but are most easily seen when backlit against a dark background.
A steam devil is seen just as it forms.
Sometimes, a steam devil can extend tens of metres above the surface.
The best contrast is between the yellow sunlit devil and the dark bluish mountainside.
Dot: This is the second of two postings about the behaviour of a dipper, dubbed Dot, owing to a white spot on its back.
Once thought to be a uniquely human characteristic, the use of tools is considered a sign of intelligence. Only a handful of animals have been credited with employing tools.
A tool is defined as any physical item that can be used to achieve a goal, especially one that is not consumed in the process. For example, sea otters use stones as tools to crack open mollusc shells so as to eat the abalone inside.
Interestingly, dippers face a problem similar to that of sea otters, but with caddisfly larvae. The larvae are encased in found materials (sand, wood) that prevent easy access to the grub inside. A solution sometimes employed by a dipper is to shake off the casing. That, of course, does not represent using a tool, which would necessitate using of an external physical object for the task.
However on this occasion, a dipper does seem to make use of a tool.
A dipper surfaces from a dive with a caddisfly larva encased in found material. Dot is standing in shallow water atop anchor ice.
To remove the casing, Dot swishes it through the water. The water has become the tool that is used to remove the casing, much as a rock is used to remove a shell by a sea otter.
The casing having been removed, the grub is exposed.
Five seconds after the first picture, the larva has been consumed.
Can we really credit this dipper with having employed a tool to gain access to the grub?
This will be a two-part posting about Dot, the dipper.
It is not unusual for a dipper to be featured on this blog. Although, not a common bird, I happen to live near dipper central and manage to watch this strange aquatic songbird now and then. Two days ago, as the temperature dropped, I was curious about how dippers might be handling their creek’s border ice and anchor ice. After all, dippers feed primarily on the stream bed, and either form of ice can block a dipper’s access to their delectables.
I wrote about dippers and ice in one of my longer essays. In it I explored how dippers deal with a creek’s ice, and even speculated that it was ice formation that influenced their preference for turbulent waters.
This time I was able to watch something new, indeed, two somethings new. The first, considered here, is a minor wrinkle. The second, treated in the next posting, is a more interesting behaviour. Both postings treat the same bird, one with a white spot on its back, and so dubbed, Dot.
The problem faced by dippers when the temperature drops is that a creek freezes. Border ice forms in the calmer waters along the stream edges and so squeezes access from the surface. Indeed, in tranquil streams, border ice spreads across the stream and blocks all access to the stream bed. While this is minimal on fast flowing streams, it is there that anchor ice forms on the stream bed. Sometimes a creek has a goldilocks zone where the flow is not gentle enough for border ice to cover it all, but not turbulent enough for anchor ice to spread over the bed. On this occasion, I did see one dipper hunting in such a zone. However, Dot opted to hunt amidst the chaos, finding access to the stream bed in the smallish gaps between both forms of ice.
This is general area in which Dot was hunting. The border ice is atop the water, while the anchor ice is the patchy greenish ice on the stream bed. The dipper must find gaps between both.
Dot would watch while standing in the water atop the anchor ice covering a weir.
From this perch, Dot would dive into the waters below to search between patches of anchor ice.
After one of its dives, Dot surfaced with a quickly downed fertilized egg of a Kokanee. The white spot that gives this bird its name is visible on its right side.
“It is my understanding that this is a good day to eat well and wear a red cap.”
Seeing seven swans yesterday was both a pleasure and a disappointment. It was a pleasure to be able to watch these magnificent Trumpeter Swans; Yet, it was a disappointment that once again, they were Trumpeters rather than Tundras.
Two species of swans migrate through this region — indeed through all of the southern interior of the Province: Trumpeter Swans and Tundra Swans. If we go back three decades, most of the migrating swans were Tundras. At that time, one yearned to see a few Trumpeters. Now most of the migrants are Trumpeters, and now one yearns to see a few Tundras.
What has brought about the transition? I do not know. But, it remains: I now fervently watch for Tundra Swans.
Three (of seven swans seen were) magnificent Trumpeter Swans swim across the water.
One left the group and then flew past me.
After it alighted, it realized it was being watched, and barked its displeasure.
It then drifted away across the water.
Irruptive species of birds are ones that don’t migrate to a particular region every winter. Rather, they do so some winters, but not others. This year is shaping up to be a good year for seeing irruptive species around the Lake. Here are three seen a few days ago.
Redpolls have already been mentioned this year, but there are many around.
Bohemian Waxwings are back in good numbers.
So far, I haven’t seen many Pine Grosbeaks, but a few females were enjoying rowan berries.
High-key redpolls
There is an unusual form of lighting found in the natural world: the whiteout. When fog blankets a field of snow, the diffuse light leaves no shadows on nearby objects and the horizon vanishes between snow and fog. Enveloped in an etherial world of white, one seems adrift in the void. I have experienced a whiteout while ski touring across a snow field, and even stranger, the whiteout transformed into a pinkout as the Sun set.
Studios have recreated the light of the whiteout, albeit only in the direction of the photographic subject. They call it high-key lighting, a name based upon the relation between the studio’s key light and its fill lights. Shadows vanish and average tones shift towards white. This lighting was first employed as a technical compromise — not as a purposeful mimicry of a whiteout — but the satisfyingly tranquil images it produced prompted it to become a staple for portraits of children, models, and commercial products. (The contrasting low-key lighting emphasizes darker tones resulting in moody, contemplative portraits sometimes used for pictures of the elderly.)
While nature’s whiteout was omni-directional, the studio’s high-key lighting was limited to a view towards the subject. Curiously, a natural-light photographer sometimes encounters a similarly directional view that now seems to mimic a studio’s high-key lighting.
This last week I managed two high-key shots of Common Redpolls. Diffusely lit by a cloudy sky, the shadowless birds were seen against a field of snow. The birds appeared to be adrift in a world of white. It was as if nature was now mimicking the directional view of the studio, which had earlier seemingly mimicked the omni-directional whiteout of nature.
Below are two pictures. The first picture reshows yesterday’s whimsical shot of one bird (supposedly) showing its independence by flying against the direction of the flock. The second picture shows the birds feeding.
In each picture, the look of high-key lighting leaves the birds suspended in a tranquil and etherial world of light. To observers used to the distributed tones found in most scenes, these images seem almost contrived. Yet in this situation, each image looks much as the scene appeared to the eye.