Tag: nest

Swainson’s Hawks Of Montana’s Centennial Valley

On my trip to Montana’s Centennial Valley last month Swainson’s Hawks were very abundant.  I found two families of them that would reliably hunt close to a road and since they had become habituated to the traffic they were easier for me to approach as long as I stayed in my pickup truck.    1/1000, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This was one of two juveniles along the river at the west end of the valley.  Both birds, along with their parents, would repeatedly perch on posts and poles close to my pickup.  But it was very difficult to get an acceptable light angle at this location in the morning so I include only this one shot of those birds.       1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I had more luck with another family (two juvies and one parent) at the east end of the valley.  The light angle was better and I also preferred the fence posts in this area – they were older and had more character.       1/500, f/11, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm Occasionally I was able to get both juveniles in the same shot but of course that situation often brings with it a depth of field problem so I switched to the 100-400 zoom and set my aperture at f/11 and focused on the post between the two birds.  It seemed to work pretty well.       1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc  I loved the “butterscotch” colors on these two juveniles – particularly this one.       1/2000,…

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Nesting Osprey Of Flaming Gorge

There’s lots of great Osprey photos “out there” but sadly none of them are mine.  I’ve tried with this species time and again and something has always gone wrong – crappy perches, poor light, couldn’t get close and most often I couldn’t even find the birds.  But recently I finally got some shots of them I like. As I mentioned in an earlier post Mia and I spent three days at Flaming Gorge this week.  I was delighted to find a nesting pair of Osprey as I’ve had very little luck with this species in the past.  The nest was on a nesting platform right next to a boat-launching ramp so the birds were used to human traffic and went about their normal routine even with vehicles, boats and fishermen in the vicinity.  There were no chicks yet but they were obviously incubating eggs.    1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc One bird of the pair was always on the nest of course but occasionally the other Osprey would fly by very close and then immediately leave again – it seemed to me that it was “just checking up” to make sure that everything was ok at the nest.  I believe this bird is the male.  Sexing Osprey can be tricky but on average males have fewer (if any) dark markings on chin, breast and sides of neck than do females.  You’ll see what I think is the female of the pair a couple of images later.      1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc  Another shot of the male…

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Short-eared Owl Delivering Food To The Nest

In previous posts (here, here and here) about these Short-eared Owls at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge I’ve shown and described snippets of the fascinating behaviors I observed when this male would deliver voles to the female and two youngsters at the nest.  But it struck me that I’ve never put the whole process together in sequence so the behaviors could be fully appreciated so that’s what I’ll attempt to do here.   Most of the images will be different from those in the previous posts.     1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc The male was a tireless and highly skilled hunter and I never saw him with any prey other than voles.  When successful he would always return to the vicinity of the nest and land momentarily on one of two favorite perches – the dark sagebrush at lower right in the above photo or a metal post a few feet from the sagebrush.  Here he’s coming in for a landing on the sagebrush with vole in talons and glances up at me to make sure all is safe.  I really like the intense direct eye contact in the shot.       1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc  Now he’s focused on the sagebrush in order to make a successful landing.       1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This time he stayed perched for less than five seconds and didn’t even pull his wings in against his body – he just kept them out or up while he seemed to contemplate his next…

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Just A Shot That I Like… #17 – Short-eared Owl In Flight With A Vole In Its Beak

This is another image from my time with the Short-eared Owls at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  This male was kept very busy hunting voles and feeding his mate and youngsters at the nest.   Typically I would see him hunting far off, dive for a vole, and if he was successful he’d occasionally eat the vole himself but most often he would return with it to a favorite perch in the vicinity of the nest – and without exception he would always carry the vole in his talons before he got to the perch (and always his left talon, but I covered that topic in another post).     1/1600, f/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc However, just before (or just after) he took off from the perch to deliver the meal to his family he would always transfer the vole from his talons to his beak.  I have a theory as to why he did so.  The nest was on the ground at the base of a sagebrush.  Whenever the male landed at the entrance to the nest with the vole the female would rush out and very aggressively grab the vole.  And I DO mean aggressively!  If I’d been him I’d have been afraid to get that close to her with food.  So the male would approach the nest very gingerly with the vole in his beak and drop it in front of him and quickly retreat as she rushed out.  I suspect it was easier for him to avoid a confrontation with her if he could quickly drop…

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Just A Shot That I Like… #16 – Black-billed Magpie In Flight

Black-billed Magpies aren’t appreciated by everyone.  Their raucous behavior and scavenging habits put some folks off but I’m quite fond of them for their relatively high intelligence and incredibly interesting behaviors (examples – they conduct ritualistic “funerals” of up to 40 birds around the dead bodies of other magpies and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen one tormenting a cat by repeatedly pulling its tail).    That said, they’re very difficult photographic subjects.  Their black plumage soaks in the light while the bright white feathers reflect nearly all of it so getting exposure and detail in the overall bird is incredibly challenging.  I probably delete a higher percentage of images I take of magpies than I do of any other species I regularly photograph which makes getting an image I like especially rewarding .  I enjoy meeting the challenge…         1/1250, f/8, ISO 500, 500 f/4 When the light’s at the right angle you can sometimes get impressive iridescence in the blacks which also helps to bring out some of the detail there.  This bird had just taken off from the sagebrush that its nest is deeply buried in.  And it was even considerate enough to give me a pleasing head turn and eye contact as it did so. I’ve photographed this bird and its mate at their nesting site for three years now (and yes I’m very careful not to disturb them).  Can’t wait for early spring to try it again.  Ron  

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Marsh Wrens of Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

 This week I was finally able to get some decent images of Marsh Wrens.    Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc In the past these birds have always been buried too deeply in vegetation for me to get shots I liked but a couple of days ago they finally cooperated with me.     Canon 7D, 1/1600, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Marsh Wrens have incredibly interesting behaviors.  For example, western males must learn up to 200 different songs (eastern birds only learn about 50).  Perhaps that’s why these males sing so much – it would take a lot of practice to learn that many “tunes”.      Canon 7D, 1/1600, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc These birds are extremely territorial and aggressive.  They are polygynous (males mate with multiple females) and in order to attract females the male builds from 6 to 22 “dummy” nests for every one that is actually used to raise a brood of chicks.  We could see several of these nests buried in the cattails along the refuge road.      Canon 7D, 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc According to the Bear River Blog many of these nests were destroyed by our recent stormy weather and heavy rains so many of these males have had to start over.      Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Marsh Wrens of both sexes regularly destroy eggs and chicks of other birds near their territories, including those of…

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Northern Harrier with Nesting Material

 I’ve been photographing Northern Harriers in northern Utah for five years now and until earlier this week I’d only seen this species carrying nesting material once before and wasn’t able to photograph it.   Harriers are very common here during winter but most of them head north for the breeding season and those that stay usually build their nests in inaccessible areas of the marsh, so it’s rare for me to see any nesting activities.      Canon 7D, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, 1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400 Two days ago Mia and I were photographing birds at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.  We were about to call it a day because it was late in the morning and light was no longer optimal when we spotted this harrier flying at a distance.  We figured it would veer off before it got close, as they always seem to do out there, but this one kept coming toward us.  We were watching it through our lenses and soon noticed that it had nesting material in its beak.    Canon 7D, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, 1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400 By chance we happened to be at a place on the dirt road that was within 100′ or so of the  nest of this bird.  It decided to ignore us and come in to complete its delivery.     Canon 7D, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, 1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400 The nest is apparently in this bed of last year’s dead Phragmites.  The dark spots you see in the last three images of this…

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Handedness in Short-eared Owls

Last summer Mia and I spent four days photographing a family of Short-eared Owls in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  There were two baby owls in a nest under a sagebrush guarded over constantly by the female while the male hunted and brought in food.   That food in every instance that we saw was a vole (mouse-like rodent).  Many of the photos I took were of the male in flight, returning to the area of the nest with a vole in his talons. Male with vole It wasn’t until I returned home and began processing the images that I began to notice that the male always seemed to carry the vole in its left foot.  This piqued my curiosity about something I’d never considered – do some birds show “handedness” – the preference of using one limb as opposed to the other?  Could this male owl, or perhaps all Short-eared Owls, be left-“handed”?   Once again, carrying the vole in the left foot So I decided to do an inventory of my images of these birds to see what would turn up.  After culling my photos of these owls from this trip I had 271 photos to go through.  Most of those were flight shots of the male and in more than half of them he was carrying a vole.  My goal was to try to determine how many “sorties” he made with a vole that I had photographed (I often got multiple shots of the male with the same vole in the same sortie) and determine what percentage of the time he…

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Great Horned Owl Fledglings and Juveniles

Great Horned Owls (hereafter referred to as GHO’s in this post) have been resident on the Dudley farm in NW Montana for years and are usually successful in raising one brood of youngsters.  Typically they’ll nest in one of the several old granaries available to them.     Peekaboo youngster Most of these older granaries have seen their better days since many were constructed  in the 1930’s and have had to withstand the fierce Montana wind but the owls love them for both roosting and nesting.  Here you can see a very young GHO peering out at me over the back of its sibling.       Siblings on granary floor These are the siblings on the granary floor.  It has been used only for junk storage for many years so it’s very cluttered but the owls don’t seem to mind in the least.   Chicks in tree nest GHO’s will often nest in trees but like other owls and falcons they do not build their own nests, preferring to take over the previously used nests of other species such as Red-tailed Hawks (most commonly), other hawks, crows, ravens and herons.  I found this nest next to a major road about 35 miles from the farm.   I don’t know what species originally constructed this nest but the spring after these photos were taken the nest was being used by a pair of Swainson’s Hawks.  Interspecific  recycling in the bird world…      Three GHO chicks in a tree This is the same nest as in the previous image.  As you can see the…

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Black-billed Magpie Nesting Behavior

This past spring and summer I had the opportunity to observe and photograph nesting behaviors of Black-billed Magpies on Antelope Island in northern Utah.  Magpies are common in Utah and much of the western US but they’re typically difficult to approach (and very challenging to photograph well because of the contrast of their coal-black and almost pure white plumage) but this pair of birds was so intent on their nest-building activities that they virtually ignored my presence.     Mated pair of Black-billed Magpies Magpies are monogamous and typically mate for life.  This is a mated pair on top of their domed nest in a sagebrush.  The male is on the left, the female on the right – males are about 20% larger than females so they are sexually dimorphic.  As you can see from the muddy bill of the female they’ve been actively building the mud-bowl found inside the nest.   Typically the male provides the heavier branches and sticks for the nest and the female delivers most of the mud for the mud bowl, which probably explains why the female’s bill is so muddy while the male’s is not.      Obtaining mud for then nest    The mud for the bowl of the nest was obtained wherever the birds could find it.  When we’d had dry weather they would have to fly quite a distance to get any but after a recent rain they would often get it very close by.  This bird has just scooped up a bill-full.  When it’s available they’ll sometimes use fresh cattle or bison dung in place…

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The Short-eared Owls of Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge

  Male Short-eared Owl with a vole for the family  Red Rock Lakes NWR is simply a wonderful spot on this ol’ earth.  Located in SW Montana about halfway between Yellowstone National Park on the East and Interstate 15 on the west, it lies in a beautiful high elevation valley and the setting is stunning.  It’s not for the faint of heart though as the weather holds many potentially nasty surprises and the access to the refuge is primitive at best.  But that’s one of the things I love about Red Rock.    In late June we had the place mostly to ourselves, which is ideal for me.    Coyotes howling, other  mammals  in abundance, birds plentiful, wildflowers galore, spectacular mountain scenery, amazing sunrises and sunsets, weather surprises, bad roads to limit visitation, isolation and especially those incredible Short-eared Owls.   I love this place!    Female at the nest with one of two youngsters  On our second day there we found a pair of nesting Short-eared Owls with two youngsters.  The nest was at the base of a sagebrush within a few feet of a road.  I have a (very unscientific) theory as to why these birds would make their nest so close to a road with regular traffic.   Coyotes are very common on the refuge – we heard them howling often and would see them but they were seldom close to any road.   They seem to avoid roads whenever possible.   A nest on the ground would be very vulnerable to coyote predation.  So I wonder if the choice to build…

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