This is not how I woud choose to make a living: stand in an icy and turbulent mountain creek while attempting to catch delectables in the water, but this unusual songbird does just that. Hmm, come to think of it, that is roughly how many fly fishermen operate.
Joke’s on me When I posted these pictures of the owl and raven, I thought the protagonist was a Barred Owl (and made a play on the words barred and bard). I was wrong. Two competent birders assure me that the pictures show a Short-eared Owl, a bird both smaller and rarer than the Barred. I have revised the page (and title).
Yesterday, we watched angry birds.
It started when a Common Raven swooped and dived upon some unseen object among the hummocks in a meadow. It was not possible to tell what attracted the raven’s attention until suddenly a Short-eared Owl burst from the grass, a typical habitat for this species.
Why the raven cared about the owl is unclear, but ravens do make a practice of attacking birds of prey.
Once the owl was airborne, the raven chased it mercilessly, but soon…, well, the pictures tell the story.
The Short-eared Owl took to the air.
The Common Raven gave chase.
Deftly, the owl circled and attacked from above.
The owl now chased the raven.
Although half the weight of the raven, the Short-eared Owl was the victor.
Derek Kite took the three pictures which show both birds (his were better than mine). He has given me permission to use them here.
A casual walk around the neighbourhood today revealed many berries vying for the attention of animals. While these berries help sustain the birds and mammals through the winter, from the perspective of the plant, the animals are merely devices for distributing their seeds widely. Here are six I saw.
Elderberry
Mountain ash
Snowberry
Red-osier dogwood
Climbing nightshade (also known as poisonberry)
Rose hips (wild rose)
I have a Ruffed Grouse in my yard. Well, it doesn’t spend all of its time here as the home range of the Ruffed Grouse is perhaps twenty or so hectares. This leaves my yard as but a sliver of its space. Yet, the bird visits regularly, as an earlier posting attests.
A survival strategy of the Ruffed Grouse is to imagine that its variegated plumage enables it to vanish into the background as long as it doesn’t move. The plumage makes for interesting pictures and the stillness makes them easy to take.
Here is yesterday’s grouse. The bird knew I was nearby, but seems to have thought it was invisible.
Last week I took a picture of an eagle at sunrise. That shot was so satisfying that I was unwilling to detract from it with supporting images or text. So, a single unadorned image was posted.
Yet, prior to that picture, the behavior of the eagle in the shifting predawn light was interesting, so with the remove of a few days, here are the earlier pictures.
In the dim twilight, a Bald Eagle finished its breakfast atop an ancient piling.
Sated, the eagle flew down to the water and drank.
It then appeared to be leaving for good.
But, promptly stopped on an adjacent piling to await sunrise—and its portrait.
One might have thought that any self-respecting insect would have closed down shop for the year, but this is not the case. Yesterday as I wandered around my yard, I saw a dragonfly (a darner), a bumble bee (Bombus vagans), many wasps (aerial yellowjackets) and at least four species of hover flies.
The hover flies are also known as flower flies in that (as adults) they feed on the nectar and pollin of flowers. Many of them also look somewhat like wasps or bees—a defence against the birds that would eat them. But, they are flies that neither sting nor bite.
Below are three different hover flies seen yesterday.
Hover fly on hawkweed. Things to notice: the widely separated eyes show this to be a female; unlike many insects, flies have only two wings; the vestigial second set of wings has been reduced to the halters—the knobbed filaments just behind the wings that are used as a vibrating gyroscope to provide balancing information.
Hover fly on cinquefoil. Again, the eye separation shows this to be a female.
Hover fly on aster. The large closely spaced eyes show this to be a male. The males use their large eyes to help them find the females.
The Horned Lark is not seen often around Kootenay Lake, but when it is seen it is most likely to be now, during migration. Two local subspecies can be seen: one with a markedly yellow face found at low elevations; one with a more whitish face found high. Two pictures, taken in an open field at about 1370 metres, show the more whitish-faced bird.
The Horned Lark is a ground feeder. This may well be a juvenile.
At these elevations, the throat of the Horned Lark is more whitish than yellowish.
Each year at this time, Michael McMann monitors the movement of raptors along the west side of the Selkirk Mountains. These are the raptors from northern B.C. that move south along the valleys of the Slocan and Arrow Lakes and then follow the ridges along the east side of the Columbia River. He monitors them from a bench of land high above the Columbia. The location offers an expansive view of the ridge and although the distance to the crest of the ridge is over two kilometers, the vantage provides the opportunity to spot many species and identify most of them.
Distinguishing among the maybe a dozen different possible species at this distance depends upon subtleties of the birds’ flight, shape, and shading. These are skills not quickly mastered (and they remain elusive for me).
Yet, while this observing location is good for monitoring the passage of a large number of birds, it is not good for bird photography. This contrast is illustrated below. First is a pair of pictures taken on Saturday from the monitoring location. Second is a picture taken Sunday when Michael and I climbed about 900 meters higher onto the crest of the ridge. The image difference is striking.
Each of this pair of pictures from the monitoring location has been greatly magnified so as to hint at the scant details that reveal the species. The left image shows a Golden Eagle distinguished both by its silhouette and the faint whitish underwing patches. The right image shows three birds: an easily identifiable Bald Eagle in the lower right, a raven to its left, a Sharp-shinned Hawk above.
Photographically more satisfying is the view of a raptor from high on the ridge. This appears to be a juvenile, dark-morph, Red-tailed Hawk.
