Smoggy Skies

Recent forest fires in Banff and around Western Alberta have left the Southern skies smoggy and grey. The fire is burning about 3 hours drive from Fort Macleod and one evening we could smell the woody smoke in the air.

(Parks Canada Photo)

It was only a few weeks ago that we were watching the flood waters of the Old Man River creep dangerously close to the bank across the road from our house. Here you can see how far from the river the debris traveled.

This is the view of the Old Man River from our field house on a good day. The river is now tame enough to kayak and tube down which I hope to do at some point.

Undeterred by threats of floods and fires, we continue to observe the hawks. This week I have been checking up on some of our nests South of Fort Macleod near the Montana border.

Here the native prairie grasslands gently roll along, sometimes being disrupted by a river and rocky outcrops. The landscape feels wild here, so when I came upon this Golden Eagle, it seemed perfectly in place.

The pure white tail with a dark band is seen only on hatch year Golden Eagles (this years young). The tails become progressively dark with each year as the bird matures. With smoggy skies in the background, this juvenile giant flew over a herd of cows, it's wingspan was almost the same length!

Unfortunately some of the fledglings decided the road was a great spot to sit and wait for mum and dad to deliver food. Many motorists see the birds in the road and figure they will move so don't bother to slow down. The young hawks, still learning to fly, lack the flight skills to move quickly and have yet to associate vehicles with danger. Road collisions are one of many human threats that the birds face each day. I chased this guy into the field for his own good.

At a different nest, I noticed the female was getting harassed by an Eastern Kingbird. Kingbirds are very defensive of their nests and will attempt pluck feathers and generally annoy raptors that get too close for comfort.

Looking up at the sky and paying little attention to where I was walking, there was suddenly a loud flapping in front of me! I had almost walked right into a very surprised FEHA fledgling!

Trying to look as big and scary as possible, it stretched it wings out and bared it's beak!

By the end of the week, all but a few late layers will have empty nests. The project will begin to focus more on assessing the perching sites around the nests and other significant habitat features.

They're Off!

At around 50 days old the young begin to fledge! For the first few days they tend to stay close to the nest and will spend a day or two sitting in the branches around the nest before they make the leap. 

Spotting the newly fledged young can be a challenge. As you can see, this young FEHA was doing a pretty good job at hiding behind a leaf. One down, I had to try and find the other 3 fledglings. One was way out in a crop field sitting on a sandy mound, the other two were hiding in some long grass. Once the other young were located I made a quick dash for the truck, turns out the nest was very close to a  swarm of bees!

This fledgling was feeling brave and took flight in my direction when I checked his nest today.

Easily distinguishable from the parents, the young hawks fashion a light brown bib and have less feathering on their legs.

Some prefer to take it easy and wait for mum to bring the food.

There are no shortage of Swainson's Hawk fledglings around, so many in fact that I forgot to take a picture. Instead, here are some other raptors I've seen on my travels.

This is a male Harrier hawk. These birds nest on the ground and are often seen hovering in search of food around marshes. I've seen only 1 harrier fledgling so far this season. This adult male had his eyes fixed on the ground and didn't seem too bothered by my presence. 

Red Tailed Hawks are the most common hawks in North America and are a common sight in Southern Alberta. They generally have a distinctive brown band on their chest and the name sake, red tail. Their calls never fail to give me chills, if you've never heard a Red Tail call, it's worth a listen, HERE is a link if you haven't.

Once fledged we no longer monitor the nests. Consequently the number of nests left study are getting fewer by the day. It's sad to see the young leave the nest but watching them running along the ground with their wings out trying to catch food for the first time is truly hilarious. I'm really going to miss these hawks.

Peeping Nests

As the season progresses we visit the nests in our research area once a week to get numbers and ages of nestlings. The nests are typically too high to climb so we attach a camera to the end of a paint rolling pole and try to get a full view of all the nest and the contents. 

Nest peeping can sometimes be a challenge. It usually starts with crawling through a barbed-wire fence.  Followed by keeping track of the hawks flying overhead whilst avoiding twisting an ankle in a gofer hole and trying not to upset the field of cows and bulls. I've gotten away with ankle injuries so far but that doesn't mean I haven't ended up flat on my face staring at the grass hoping the gofer was the only one that saw it happen. Then, if it's been raining, which it has, you might also come across some unexpected ponds that don't seem to be too deep to walk through until you step onto a fairly solid looking tuft of grass, and then watch as your non-waterproof hiking boot disappears slowly as it's engulfed by stagnant swamp sludge. 

Then there's the clouds of mosquitoes which you can out run until you have to get back through that barbed-wire fence. 

But it's all worth it to get to see the hawk babies and collect the important data. 

The parents are now committed to their nests but we keep the nest visit times to a minimum. Once the young reach 30 days we avoid peeping the nest to avoid premature fledgling of the nestling.


The nestling to the left is around 38 days old. Mum is keeping a close watch over the nest.

These nestlings are about 36 days old. Looks like they are ready to look after themselves!

Recent storms have hit the nesting birds hard, not all nests have made it, some have been predated, others couldn't take the strain of the harsh weather. Many however are doing great, today I saw a full nest of 5 fledglings! It won't be long now until we start to seem them test out their new flight feathers!

Today I saw the prairies reflected in the eyes of a breath taking hawk.

Part of the University of Alberta Ferruginous Hawk study involves trapping the hawks and attaching leg bands and tracking devices. By trapping the birds we can get information such as migration routes, overwintering ground location and home range use. The devices record a location once every minute and are designed to fall off after 1-2 years and run off solar power. Every day the transmitter sends an email containing the movement locations for that day. This data can be seen on a 3D map showing the location and elevation the birds have been flying at.  

First we choose a mild, dry day and make sure the chosen nest has young that are old enough to with stand the brief  absence of their parents. This male is keeping guard over his transmission tower nest whilst the female sits on the nest.

Next we set up the nets.

Live Great Horned Owls are a natural enemy of the hawks and often prey on young in the nest. The hawks will defend the nest against the owls by swooping down and dive bombing them. We have Fiest, a rehabilitated and rescued bird from a local sanctuary to use as a hawk lure. Fiest sits behind a Dho Gazza net. As the hawks swoop the owl it gets caught in the net and the owl remains unharmed. 

Then we sit in a blind and wait hawks to get caught. The aim is to catch the male as he will provide more  location readings than the females who to tend to stick closer to the nest. A falconry hood is placed on the bird to keep it calm during banding and transmitter attachment. 

The transmitter is checked and then double checked to make sure it is loose enough before the release. 

I had the privilege of releasing this light coloured (or light morph) male.  

Just before I gave him back his freedom, I got chills as I noticed I could see the vast prairies reflected in his eye.

Then I gave the him back to the prairies. 

Here is a link to a great video of the project and who and what it involves. http://www.biodiversityandclimate.abmi.ca/ . 

Getting Antsy in the Nest

It has long been believed that Ferruginous Hawks prefer nesting in lone standing trees in undisturbed native prairie. Although many of the nests we have found have fit this description, some hawks break these rules by nesting outside of houses and on roadsides where trucks kick up dust clouds as they roar past multiple times in an hour. 

Here is a new active nest I found this year. This pair found a nice quiet tree row down a dirt track to call home. Many FEHA return to past nests each year and after years of refurbishment these historical nests get so large and heavy they can break the tree branches.

   

Up to now we have been collecting data from the road side using a spotting scope and binoculars to observe the incubating females. After weeks of being glued to the nest the dedicated mothers are getting fidgety. Some are looking into the nest and tucking their heads down which usually means someone has hatched. In the nest few weeks we will be visiting nests, taking pictures of the young and taking nest measurements. The data from these nest observations and visits will be used to determine the impact of different types of disturbances on the hawk breeding success. 

The weather in southern Alberta involves long cold winters with hot and windy summers. This year it seems as though Spring lasted only a few days. Climate change will likely exasperate this already extreme climate. We have set up 4 weather stations this week. Data from these stations will allow Masters students at the University of Alberta to look for relationships between extreme weather events and nest failure. 

The Great Horned Owls are weeks ahead of the hawks, these owlets were testing out their new flights feathers when I drove past. 

Once free roaming the prairies by the millions, buffalo now live a fenced-in existence. Still, seeing these mothers and their calves enjoying the sun was a delight.

More Swainson's hawks, they are less flighty which makes them easier to photograph. This one wasn't so happy about all the attention and yelled at me as it flew away. 

Next week will involve setting up bird song meters and looking into FEHA nests!

Sharing Lunch With New Friends

At the moment we are recording hawk nests within our study area in Fort Macleod. This involves driving up and down every road within six mile square blocks looking for nests made of sticks. 

In theory this sounds pretty simple, and it is, until your map shows you a road that needs surveying but instead of a nice gravel road you find two deep muddy tractor tracks, the road turns into a pond and then back into the road, or the road becomes a crop field and you have to reverse 800m because there is nowhere to turn around. Then you sit in your truck debating with yourself whether or not to risk getting stuck and having to ask the local farmer to pull you out. There were no sticks around to test the depth of the pond plus the ducks seemed pretty content without me causing a rip tide so lets just say I'm getting pretty good at driving backwards. 

The Ferruginous Hawks arrived around the beginning of April and we are trying to find as many new nests as possible before the leaves are out. As the days begin to warm up I've noticed the Swainson's Hawk have come flooding back and many stick nests that previously appeared unoccupied now have a fresh lining of dried grass, the tell tale 'straw hat' nest of a Swainson's hawk.

Swainson's Hawk

I am lucky enough to catch glimpses of many of Alberta's threatened species. So far this includes an American Badger, Long Billed Curlews, Bald and Golden Eagles and a Prairie falcon. These species are often illusive and are out of sight before I can get my camera lens cover off.

Two days ago I noticed two dark objects in a Hay field. Being a hectic day I continued to drive to my next surveying route. The route happened to take me not to far from where I originally spotted these strange dark objects. I had pulled over momentarily to look at a map when..

Two very cute and very smelly pigs appeared in my wing mirror!

Grunting and snuffling around as they trotted over.

I couldn't help but share my lunch with them. They chewed up the sweet peas and baby carrots I gave them with most of it ending up on the road, but that's OK, it can't be easy to chew with your mouth closed when you are a pig, plus it was fun to watch.

After a few minute they tried eating my shoes and then realised I was all out of treats.

And so they snorted off into the distance.

They might not be a threatened species, but they definitely made my day!

Ferruginous Hawks

Ferruginous meaning rust-coloured, these hawks have a red-brown back and leg feathers with grey-black primaries. Their underparts are mostly white with the tell tale brown V from the rusty leg feathers. With a wingspan of 135cm, the Ferruginous Hawk (Buteo regalis) is the largest hawk in North America.

Provincially endangered and federally threatened, the hawks are under threat due to loss of native prairie, agricultural expansion and resource exploration. Ferruginous hawks or FEHA, prefer to nest in a lone tree surrounded by native prairie where they can find ample prey, mainly Richardson's ground squirrels. A single breeding pair and offspring can consume up to 500 ground squirrels in one breeding season. Being sensitive to disturbances, adult birds are known to abandon nests and or young if they are disturbed early on in the breeding season.

The FEHA overwinter in Southern Prairie provinces of south western USA and Mexico and return to Canada in early April. In Canada breeding pairs of hawks are found mostly in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and have recently re-established in southern Manitoba. Habitat loss has reduced their historic range by about 50 percent. Not so long ago when the prairies were still roamed by wild Bison, bison bones would be used as nesting materials. More recently, nests are found to be comprised of dead grass, sticks, roots and cow dung.

My first opportunity to take a picture of a FEHA so far this season. Looks like I need to get a telephoto lens. 

 It didn't stick around for long.

Other threats to these hawks are predators such as Raccoons, Magpies and Great Horned Owls . 

During nest checks it's not uncommon to find great horned owls and their fuzzy white owlets occupying a historic FEHA nest.  

At the moment my job involves looking for new and historical hawk nests and recording data. The hawks are currently deciding where to nest or incubating eggs. 3-5 eggs are laid in late April to early May and are incubated for 30 days. As the filed season progresses we will be monitoring the progress of the nests and banding some Ferruginous Hawks.  

I met these curious faces on a native reserve on the hill tops near to a wind farm that can be seen in the distance.

There is something very tranquil about seeing horses grazing freely on a sunny day.

Training

I stayed in Edmonton for 2 weeks whilst undertaking training at the University of Alberta. We updated protocols and rummaged through field equipment to find all of the spotting scopes, wind meters, range finders, maps and 1000 other items for each researcher’s own equipment bin.

 

On my days off I visited the Royal Alberta Museum. I was really impressed with the displays, which were combinations of taxidermy animals submerged in their ‘natural habitats’ and live fish and insects. I spent a good amount of time trying to find a leaf insect on a small branch.  There was a 1 in 10 chance that that leaf I was looking at was the actual insect which made me all the more determined to find it. Other than an obnoxious fruit fly, I'm still not convinced there were anyone in there.

I did however find a soon to be familiar face.

This is a not so lively Ferruginous hawk. Although I'm not the biggest fan of stuffed animals, seeing the different hawk species all together helped to give me a perspective on the size of the birds in relation to one another which turned out to be pretty helpful when I got out into the field.

After the museum I took a walk down to the river. It was still partly frozen over. I sat in the sun and listened to the ice chunks clink together musically as they drifted downstream.

I also visited the Edmonton Zoo with friends Ashley and Brad. As anyone who has worked in a zoo would know, there is a lot I could say about the zoo and it’s enclosures but I’ll keep in short and sweet.

We made it just in time for some seal training and talk from the interpreter. 

The primates had lots of colourful plastic toys in their enclosures; this spider monkey was making a point by choosing to rummage through the sawdust and straw on the floor.

Here is Lucy the elephant going out for a walk. She has been made famous over the debate on her being relocated to a sanctuary in a warmer climate where she can be with other elephants. 

I also visited the West Edmonton Mall where my dear friend Beccy works and trains sealions. She was in Limeyland when I was at the mall which is just as well as I forgot my camera.

After the 2 weeks training was completed the hawk team and I headed to Southern Alberta to start fieldwork!