Outside My Window

If you think the Pittsburgh peregrines’ life is a soap opera, they’re not the only ones.

My mother has been keeping me informed about a pair of bald eagles who are living their own Peyton Place at Norfolk Botanical Garden in Virginia. Their nest has an Eagle Cam so people can watch the drama - and there’s been plenty of it.

This pair has nested at the Garden for seven years, but this year after the female had laid two eggs a 4-year-old intruder (female) arrived, chased away the resident female and made herself charming to the resident male. The eggs got too cold to be viable and had to be removed from the nest. After a brief fling, the intruder left and the original pair reunited.

It looked like life was back to normal after the orginal female laid two more eggs, but those eggs bit the dust too. Something scary made her jump around in the nest at night and she stepped on them. Oh no! They cracked! She ate them the next day.

She laid one more egg (her third try this year) and has been incubating it since March 22.

So you see, life can be complicated even if you’re an eagle.

Read more and watch the videos at:

This awesome picture from Bill Barron and some sad news from Boston’s Fenway Park got me thinking about hawks who live near people.

Bill captured this photo of a red-tailed hawk at the moment it took off from his chimney.  Obviously the bird is comfortable where there are lots of people - a comfort level that’s a relatively new phenomenon.

Years ago people persecuted and killed hawks, believing they attacked farm animals, but since 1937 a series of laws have made this illegal.  There are still some evil-minded people who rationalize that they’re above the law and they shoot hawks, but this is rare and not often found in cities. 

Since red-tails are rather safe in cities, they now take advantage of the food in our vicinity (mice, rats, squirrels, chipmunks) and benefit from being near a top-level predator (us) who keeps the other predators at bay.

Which brings me to the Fenway Park incident on April 3rd. 

Red-tailed hawks have been hanging out at Fenway for a couple of years.  This spring a female built a nest near the press box.  She was fine with people’s presence until she laid an egg.  As soon as she became a mother her protective instincts kicked in.  “Don’t get near my nest!”

Unfortunately a middle school girl got too close during a tour and the hawk told her to back off in the only way she knew how - she swooped down and used her talons.  It was a huge misunderstanding.  The hawk didn’t realize that people couldn’t honor her nesting boundaries at a place like Fenway and the people didn’t understand that the boundaries had expanded because of the nest.  The hawk lost everything.  Her nest and egg were removed.

Now for those of who you are thinking, “Oh my, hawks really are dangerous!” I want to point out that on the entire continent of North America this is a stand-alone misunderstanding between people and a bird.  It’s not a pattern, it doesn’t happen every day and that’s why it’s news.  99% of the time hawks are smart enough not to nest near people and people are smart enough to stay clear of nesting hawks.   Everyone involved in this has learned something - and so have you.

A little bit of common sense is all we need to get by.  

Yesterday at work Cliff Curley called me around 4:00pm to say, “Come right now!  Your hawk is on the ground by the loading dock eating a rabbit!”

By the time I got there she had created quite a stir.  (I could tell it was the female because she has a much paler head than her mate.)  According to all accounts, she was perched on our roof for quite a while, staring at the hillside behind the dumpsters.  When no one was watching - and certainly not the rabbit- she flew down and pounced.  Dinner!

Surprisingly, none of us had a good camera available but Kelly Foreman snapped this picture with her small one.  In the original wider photo, the hawk and rabbit both blend into the background so well you can hardly see them.  Obviously, this is how they avoid detection - the hunter and the hunted. 

Our lady hawk has been very busy these past few days.  Not only is she eating well but she has been courting with her mate and building a nest.  Three times I’ve seen her fly past my window carrying sticks in her beak to some unknown place nearby.  I’ll love to know where that place is.  I’m sure she’ll keep it a secret as long as possible.

In Central Florida there’s a member of the falcon family who looks and acts unlike any other North American falcon - and it has a very cool name:  the crested caracara. 

I had almost given up seeing one this year but on the last day of my trip Chuck and Joan Tague took me to Viera Wetlands, a water treatment plant west of Melbourne. 

In warm climates it’s become common to use man-made wetlands to treat sewage.  The artificial wetlands attract all kinds of birds and that attracts birders.  The birds are so easy to see, it knocks your eyes out. 

That’s what happened at Viera.  The three of us were gazing intently into some reeds, watching a least bittern, when Chuck turned around.  Standing on the road behind us was an immature crested caracara looking at us if to say, “Whatcha doing?”

Crested carcaras are classed in the falcon family but are in a separate subfamily called Polyborinae.  Unlike “true falcons” caracaras stand on the ground a lot, they don’t have pointy wings, they have extensive skin on their faces, and they are scavengers with eating habits more like vultures than peregrines.  In fact they watch for vultures and follow them to feed on carrion.

Our caracara watched us at close range for a while - yet another way in which he wasn’t like the other falcons - then he flew away and I lost track of him.  Best Bird of the trip!

I can’t say enough about the birding at sewage treatment wetlands.  If you get the chance to visit Central Florida, don’t miss Viera.  Two of my other favorite places are Wakodahatchee Wetlands (Delray Beach, Florida) and Henderson Bird Preserve (Henderson, Nevada). 

In the past six days I’ve been in Florida - looking at birds of course.

Every winter by the end of February I can’t take the relentless gray and ice in Pittsburgh so I visit my friends Chuck and Joan Tague who spend the winter near Daytona.  Birds and friends and warm weather are such a welcome break! 

We humans aren’t the only ones who escape to Florida.  There are a heck of a lot of birds there right now, the most noticable being the vultures. 

Florida has two species: turkey vultures and black vultures.

Turkey vultures are common in western Pennsylvania from March to November but they spend the winter in the south because they can’t eat frozen food.  Vultures eat rotting dead things, the more rotten the better.  Freezing weather preserves the meat - therefore no rotting - and vultures’ beaks are not strong enough to break apart tough substances, so they go south.

But if it’s possible to have favorites among such ugly birds, my favorites are the black vultures.  They are less shy than turkey vultures, they have timid-looking faces and they are rare in western Pennsylvania.  I suppose absence makes my heart grow fonder.  I don’t have to deal with them all the time.

Near Daytona there are two places where I’m guaranteed to see lots of black vultures:  Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge and at my hotel’s parking lot.  This has nothing to do with the hotel and everything to do with the fast food restaurants nearby.  The black vultures roost overnight on cell towers and pines and coast down to the restaurant dumpsters in the morning.  Sweet and shy as they look, I don’t get too close because they projectile-vomit when scared and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that!

At Lake Woodruff I can get a little closer.  The vultures sit in flocks on the dikes and as we approach they hop away, sometimes holding their wings open and skipping ahead of us.  They look so silly that I had to imitate them and Chuck snapped my picture. 

Yes, I look silly too.  Oh well.  You’re never too old to have fun.

Another cold night in Pittsburgh.  Tomorrow morning it’ll be only 10 degrees. 

As I walked home this evening I passed a brush pile on Forbes Avenue and heard the thin ‘zee’ of white-throated sparrows calling to each other.  I couldn’t see them but I’m sure they will shelter there tonight to stay warm.

To some of you a brush pile may look like “junk” but to a songbird it’s a life saver, providing protection from bad weather and predators. 

My friend Marcy Cunkelman is a great gardener and has made her yard both beautiful and bird-friendly.  For the songbirds, she constructed several brush piles.  The birds love them.

As you can see in Marcy’s photo, the coopers hawk - who eats birds - is very interested in the brush pile.  Perhaps he can see the songbirds hiding there.  Marcy tells me he sometimes tries to dive in to scare the little birds out of it, but they are safe inside.  

Tonight they’ll be in there out of the wind, fluffed up to stay warm.   Brrrr!

If you’re squeamish, close your eyes and go to another website right now.  Otherwise, read on.

Yesterday I learned about a bird incident that happened last Saturday in downtown Pittsburgh across the street from the Westin Convention Center Hotel. 

Mark Wolz, who works at the hotel, reported it to the National Aviary.  His pictures and story were so fascinating that my friends at the Aviary shared it with me. 

According to Mark, patrons of the Tonic Restaurant said the hawks were chasing and ran into the restaurant window.  By the time he saw the birds, the red-tailed hawk had killed the immature coopers hawk and was beginning to eat. 

As you can see from Mark’s picture, the red-tail was very hungry.  Even so, people could get quite close.

Normally red-tails pick up their prey and carry it to a tree to eat.  Perhaps the prey was too heavy or the red-tail decided it would be too hard to move with so many people nearby.  Instead he spread his wings and mantled over his meal.  This made him look large and fierce. 

After the red-tail finished eating, he flew to perch on a street light at 10th and Penn.  At that point another hawk dove and screeched at the red-tail. 

Mark said the attacker had his wings tucked back like a jet fighter as he dove at the red-tailed hawk.  That shape sounds like a peregrine to me and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the Gulf Tower peregrines.  Peregrines defend their territory against red-tailed hawks and the Gulf Tower is right next door.

Hawks don’t usually eat other hawks so I wonder…  What led up to this?  Was the coopers hawk weak and picked out as a potential meal?  Did the red-tail merely intend to harrass the coopers but decided to take advantage of a stunned foe?  Who was the final attacking hawk?  Was it one of the Gulf Tower peregrines?

The more I watch birds, the more I’m amazed by what they do.

An animal-lover friend of mine began to feed the birds and was shocked when a coopers hawk killed a mourning dove at her feeder.  She does not eat meat and wanted to know if she could train the coopers not to eat meat either.  “If I put out more corn, will he eat the corn and not the doves?”

“No,” I said, “he will not eat corn.  He’s a carnivore.  That’s just how it is.”

Because humans are omnivores and we grow our own food, we find it hard to imagine the lives of creatures who must hunt to live.  If a coopers hawk is not an efficient hunter, if it does not kill birds, it will die.  It would be cruel to the hawk if it could not hunt. 

But what about the prey species?  Is it cruel to them that they are hunted? 

There is a beautiful poem by James Dickey in which he describes the heaven where wild animals go.  Called The Heaven of Animals he describes the predators in their heaven crouched on the limbs of trees and writes,

“And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.”

The universe is structured so that everything is eaten by something - in the grave, if not before. What an amazing cycle.

That’s just how it is.

Today was Pittsburgh’s Christmas Bird Count, always held on the Saturday after Christmas.  I counted birds from my attic window during dawn “rush hour,” then walked my neighborhood on a route I’ve done for the past few years.  It was interesting to compare this year’s species and weather to the counts I’ve done in prior years.

You might be wondering, what is a Christmas bird count and how can it be accurate? 

The Christmas bird count began in 1900 when Frank Chapman of the newly formed Audubon Society decided that counting birds was a far better activity than the Christmas “side hunts” in which people killed as many birds as possible.   Each Christmas Count is held within a 15-mile diameter circle and on a single day between December 14 and January 5.  Volunteers organize their routes so they don’t overlap.  They tally the number of birds seen per species and record the weather conditions, the number of participants, hours spent and miles travelled. 

It’s impossible to be absolutely accurate counting large flocks or skulking birds, but over a span of 100+ years the counts are accurate enough to indicate trends in bird populations.  The main thing is that we do the same thing at the same time every year and allow for changes in number of participants, hours spent, etc.

This year was different for me in a few significant ways.  First, the weather was sunny and windy in the morning - it’s usually overcast.  Then, a few of the bird feeder locations were missing or empty, so no birds there.  On the other hand I found more birds than usual and it was an excellent day for raptors.  I saw a pair of red-tailed hawks in courtship flight, counted three Coopers hawks and stopped by University of Pittsburgh to tally the resident peregrine pair. 

And my absolute Best Bird was an adult bald eagle flying along the crest of the hill overlooking the Monongahela River.  It can’t get much better than having a bald eagle in my city neighborhood.  Wow.

(Chuck Tague took this picture in Florida but the eagle I saw looked much the same - just a little further away.)

Since I was already near Harrisburg for Christmas with my husband’s family, I took the opportunity last Wednesday to visit the lower Susquehanna River with Scott Gregg and his daughter Karena, two birding friends from Beaver Falls. Our goal was to see bald eagles.

Our main stop was Conowingo, a hydro-electric dam in Maryland and the last dam before Chesapeake Bay. The river was so high that the floodgates were open and sirens were wailing to warn boaters of the flood and turbulence. Spray rose from the dam’s waterfall and hundreds of gulls wheeled through the mist. Black vultures hunched on the dam and in nearby trees. Great-blue herons waited out the flood on a rocky downstream island.

We saw more than a dozen bald eagles but it was hard to count in the misty air. Some perched on the power towers, some circled above the electric lines. There were more immature eagles than adults. The immatures are mottled brown like a huge hawk without the white head and tail until their fourth or fifth year. Chuck Tague’s picture shows an adult eagle in Florida (that’s why the sky is blue!).

Bald eagles are in the genus of sea eagles. They always live near water and eat mostly fish. During the breeding season they claim a territory and keep other eagles away but in winter they congregate in large numbers where there is open water and lots of fish. The dams along the lower Susquehanna are just such a place.

Apparently the fishing was easy at Conowingo. With the river rushing through the floodgates, the fish were taking a beating. No wonder we saw so many gulls, black vultures … and bald eagles.