Exploring Kootenay Lake

January draws to a close and I find unused images of miscellaneous birds on my computer. Many of them I shall ignore, but here are four I liked.

European Collared Dove

Belted Kingfisher

Black-billed Magpie

Wild Turkey

Derek Derek Kite has often permitted me to include some of his local images within a posting I made. I have finally persuaded him to make his own posting. I hope this will be the first of many. Alistair

If you find yourself in the woods in the next few months you may hear a very low thumping sound that increases in speed. (Recordings are widely available, one is mentioned, below.) You have to stop and listen; it isn’t very loud but if you are like me you will feel a shiver of pleasure. It is a ruffed grouse drumming, or beating its wings. The females seem to like it as much as we do, and if suitable, ends in romance and a clutch of chicks.

This grouse has blue feathers on the neck and a grey tail. It is a grey phase, distinguishable from the recently posted grouse crosses road, a rufous phase. It is the same species with different colouring.
The grey and rufous can come from the same clutch of eggs; the grey phase tends to be more common in the north. We have both in our area. When the male ruffs it’s neck feathers this specimen will show blue feathers. This shot shows one ruffing it’s feathers showing dark feathers on it’s neck. It appears to be the gray phase but without the striking blue.

Here is one site offering recordings of a Ruffed Grouse drumming.

Flight is the sine qua non of birds. (A few non-local birds had, but lost, the capability.) So, why doesn’t this blog show more airborne birds? Unfortunately, they are more difficult to photograph.

Every so often, it is fun to explore flight—in this case the liftoff of a Great Blue Heron. During an upstroke, the wings are bent to displace the least amount of air; during a downstroke, they are spread to displace the greatest amount of air.

A juvenile heron hunting in a field caught my attention.

When a bird takes off from a high perch it first descends using gravity to pick up speed. A take off from the surface necessitates that the wings do most of the work. The first step is to bend the wings so that as they are raised, they will not displace much air.

The wings are then extended and thrust down. The heron lifts off.

On the next upstroke, the wings are again bent at the wrist and twisted so that raising them displaces as little air as possible. The heron has already tucked its neck back into an S curve. 

The airborne heron has again spread its wings on a downstroke. This juvenile’s feathers are moulting. 

 

How difficult can it be to identify a couple of local buteos?

Buteos are the broad-winged hawks that hunt in open spaces. There are only two likely to be seen locally at this time of year: Red-tailed Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk. (Well, there may be other accidental visitors, but don’t count on them.) The Red-tailed Hawk is named (not surprisingly) for its red tail. The Rough-legged Hawk for the fact that its legs are feathered down to its toes.

The problem arises because each of these hawks has a range of plumages, i.e., morphs. Further, the Red-tailed Hawk has a sub-species, Harlan’s Hawk, that some think should qualify as an entirely different species. Well, that is my excuse for not being able to sort out some casual observations. 

In the numbered pictures, below, I offer guesses, not assurances. Suggestions are welcome. 

1) First, an easy one: a Red-tailed Hawk on a fence post.

2) Then, a Red-tailed Hawk hunting in a field.

3) Here are two views of the same Rough-legged Hawk.

4) And a Rough-legged Hawk in flight.

5) This bird is unclear, but it might be a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. Suggestions?

6) Finally, the ultimate problem hawk. I speculate that it is a juvenile light-morph Harlan’s Hawk.

Well actually, the Ruffed Grouse did not manage to cross the road.

The grouse tried repeatedly, but it walked so slowly that during each attempt another vehicle would come along, and the grouse was forced to retreat. Finally, a big truck came by. With this, the grouse gave up and flew back over the snow bank from which it had started.

The odd thing about this is that as vehicles were infrequent, there had always been ample time for the grouse to have merely flown across the road.

Why try to walk? Who can fathom the mind of a grouse?

A Ruffed Grouse repeatedly tried to walk across the highway. It finally gave up and flew back over the snow bank.

We have falcons around Kootenay Lake, but only two species are normally encountered: Merlin, Kestrel. Merlins have appeared in this blog, but my nicest shots of them are on the main website. Two postings about Kestrels have been: Kestrel bonanza and Kestrel versus vole.

This is the first Prairie Falcon I have seen around here, or indeed, anywhere. This one has been seen by others off and on for the last month on the Creston Flats. At very least, it is a rare visitor.

A month and a half ago, I posted my first pictures of the season of a Northern Pygmy Owl, and expressed the hope to see this winter visitor to the valleys again before the season was over. Indeed I did see it, but always from a distance that didn’t favour satisfactory images.

Today, towards the end of the season, I watched a Pygmy Owl hunting along the lakeshore. It would perch and watch from one spot. If it found nothing, it would fly maybe 30 metres along the shore and look again.

When spotted, this Pygmy Owl was hunting beside the Harrop Ferry landing.

It soon shifted to the other side of the landing, hunted for few minutes, and then moved on again.

I suspect that I won’t see one many more times this winter.