Battle Serendipity - Red-tailed Hawk and Crows

Yesterday, I actually got to a job without being too distracted. However, while Weeding For Dollars, I was admittedly taking photographs and prepared to do so at the drop of a bird poop from the trees. Or, my hat, as it were. And let me tell you, Mister Man! It was a good thing I was or this whole event would have been lost to the history of mankind. This is a Red-tailed hawk being mightily harassed by a few crows. The one on the right that looks bigger might be a Raven. This battle went on for a few minutes as the hawk dodged and weaved and dove to try to shed the pesky varmints from its tail. As far as I know, RTs aren't nest robbers, so I'm not sure what this was about. Maybe crows just don't like any other dude on their corner for any reason. I was in Phippsburg when I took these shots. When I came home, I read my e mail as I usually do while waiting for my aching back to calm down. There's always lots of stuff from the Audubon List Serve bird reporters going at this time of year. Everyone's having palpitations about the warblers and everyone wants to be the first to report something rare. I must admit to some of the ego driven competitiveness myself. Plus, there is just the thrill of seeing the twitterers everywhere, rare or common. I didn't see anything rare yesterday. But I did catch this battle royal and lots of Baltimore Orioles and a lovely White-crowned sparrow. I'll share those in a separate post. Here is an unauthorized excerpt of one of the list serve e mails I read:
" Greetings, birding friends. Is it still called "birding" if there are no birds present? That was basically the deal on the Maine Audubon walk at Evergreen Cemetery this morning. Whew, it was dead. Deader than roadkill. We're talking slooooooooooow. And what few birds our group encountered, we couldn't see. They taunted us from the treetops or from deep in the scrub. The few birds we could hear, we couldn't quite identify. Their vocalizations were unfamiliar and possibly new to science. Until the wind picked up and we couldn't hear them anymore. By then, thankfully, it was time to say goodbye, sell my binoculars on eBay, and take up gardening."

I had to laugh as I saw what I did while gardening and captured it for everybody else. Tomorrow, I have a date with a fellow birder to go to Evergreen Cemetery. I bet I'll photograph something, anything, even if it's an interesting head stone. If I don't photograph something interesting, it will be because I'm not gardening.

 

This isn't an escort service. The Crow had dodged ahead of the hawk and doubled back on it.

You May Call Me 'Cleopatra -Queen Of The Mud Flats!' - Glossy Ibis & Co.

Yesterday, while on my way to Weed For Dollars, I stopped at the marsh by Lobster Cove on Rt 216 in Phippsburg. It's a place I always check out for water fowl and that's where I got the shots of the weasle/mink/fisher CAT/dog/porpoise, whatever. It's a very busy little spot for wildlife, no matter what one calls it. Three years ago, I had seen two Glossy Ibises there hanging around with a couple of Snowy egrets. Even though I looked every time I went by, I had not seen them again since. Until TODAY! The muddy tidal inlet smelling of clams may not be the Nile, but I am definitely Cleopatra! I was treated by not only the Ibis, but it was with seven Snowies and this Great Blue Heron. They were on the east side of the marsh, a little too far away to get great photographs. I could get good shots, but not GREAT shots of them. Like Cleopatra wrapped up in a rug and sneaked into Julius Ceasar's bedroom, I sneaked down the embankment. I stopped behind a lone boulder. I stood there a while, then moved to the far side of the boulder and stopped again. I headed across the marsh with a stop-start wide zig zagging approach. Eventually, I was able to move all the way across the marsh until I was stopped by the channel. Like any queen, it's a good thing I dont actually have a boss. This whole affair took me an hour, so I would have been really late for work. But, I did get within 100 feet of the birds. They were fishing in a pool that was isolated on an outgoing tide. Little fish were trapped there which made the fishing easy for the waders. They were so engrossed in the 'fish in the barrel' that they didn't mind me at all. In these photos are Snowy egrets, a Great Blue Heron and a Glossy Ibis. Of the three, the Ibis is the least often seen here. Glossy Ibis are about 23" tall. You can see their relative size easily in these photos with the other waders. They winter along the Gulf Coast and Central and South America and breed here. They are found all along the east coast of the United States from Maine to Texas. They nest and roost in trees with other waders so it stands to reason that they would dine together, too. This was not the Sacred White Ibis of Cleopatra's Egypt, but it is my ibis and I am the Queen of The Mud Flats here!

"That's really gauche when you scratch in public like that! Gross!"

This shows the sizes of the three waders. For a birder, it could only have been better if there was a Great egret or maybe a Roseate spoonbill in there, too! To the ancient Egyptians, the ibis was the patron saint of writers. That's one more reason this ibis is my ibis.

"Okay, which one of you invited him? I KNOW I didn't!"

Lobster Roll - Snowy Egret Catches Lobster

Yesterday, I saw eight Snowy Egrets at Lobster Cove on Rt 216 in Phippsburg. They were fishing in the shallows along with a few Double Crested Cormorants. Two Herring gulls were taking advantage of prey being kicked and hauled up by the other birds. The egrets were fishing for baby lobsters, which can be seen in these photos. 'Snowies' use several methods for fishing. Today, they were using the 'kick the mud around' method to get the little lobsterettes to rise from the bottom. These birds, like so many when they are in breeding plumage, look magnificent and at the same time preposterous, cartoon characatures of themselves.

Do you see the little lobster in the egret's beak?

 "Hey, buddy, you gonna share some of that?" 

"I like a bit more mayonnaise with mine and maybe a dusting of paprika. Okay?"

Sleepless In The Burg

I often suffer from sleeplessness. Since I was young, thinking back as far as when I was no more than ten, sleep has been an elusive and unreliable event. My brain will simply not shut off and let me go, let me drift to the bottom of the dark pond called sleep. I consume an alchemist’s concoction of medications compounded to over ride my hot fired brain, but it does not always work. I simply get less sleep, sometimes none at all, awash in chemical stew that leaves me feeling hung over. Nights when sleep won’t take me, in advance I can feel the neuro-chemical process that kicks in, then assumes command of my brain. It’s like hearing the rumbling of an army off in the distance, thumping bombs, marching feet, rumbling trucks of an approaching front. And then I know – I will be awake, tortured for hours, restless, ill feeling and just waiting. Waiting for daylight or a miracle to let me go. I lie awake, listening to the night sounds of my house, my husband’s breathing, my dogs twitching legs. Sometimes, I do math problems. I pick a long number like 1,331,750 and divide it by 15.3. Over and over I start the problem in my head, but get lost along the way. Then I start over. I keep at it, in the dark, until I either reach the answer or I’ve tricked my brain into clicking off for sleep. There is no rhyme nor reason for my sleeplessness; I don’t have to have some anxiety or worry or event on my mind. It does not have to be the full of the moon. Though all of these things can jump start the toxic brain chemistry, often it is just nothing. Last night was one of those nights of torture.

---

SLEEPLESS

It’s a fight

Waiting, waiting

for the light,

for dawn.

So tired,

I can’t even yawn

And every hair

Annoys

And every sound

Pounds.

A clock

Strikes the hour

One, two, three

“Please!” I cry

For sleep

Or death,

Whichever will come

Before the rising sun.

                                                                                       Robin Riley Robinson

---

Sleep would be a golden goose.

Canada geese and goslings, Upper New Meadows River May 3, 2010

                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Domestic Geese, Phippsburg

Shadblow And Alewives

 
     Amelanchier canadensis
The Service Berries are in bloom. The diaphanous shrubs almost look like puffs of smoke across the marshes and meadows. Indigenous to North America, the small trees are not only lovely, but important to wildlife for the fruit they bear. I just planted one for a gardening customer at the bottom of their serene meadow. It’s in a perfect setting where the soil is consistently moist and the flowers will be back lit by the evening’s setting sun. It has plenty of space to send out suckers and make a clump which it prefers to do. Maybe I’ll talk to them about putting in some ferns around it’s legs. It’s also fiddlehead season, so it seems like an appropriate combination; they like the same conditions. The tight fisted crosiers of Ostrich ferns are a traditional Maine spring food. Like the flowers of the Service Berries, they are only around briefly before they unfurl and aren’t edible any longer. It has been a record breaking warm spring making us tend to forget that often at this time of year, there is still frost in the ground in the deep woods and in Aroostook County - “The Crown” of Maine. ‘Service Berries’ were given the name because their bloom coincides with when the ground has thawed and can reliably be dug to inter those who died when it was still frozen. When the Service Berries bloom, winter is over. They are also called Shadbush and Shadblow because they bloom when the shad or Alewives run. ‘Blow’ is an old fashioned word meaning full bloom. The Alewives have just started to run. When I was young, my father took me up the coast from here to Damariscotta Mills to see them. Alewives are a type of herring that lives out at sea, but travels up freshwater rivers to breed and spawn. Damariscotta Mills is narrow so thousands of the fish can be seen clearly from the shore. The Osprey, gulls and eagles go crazy feeding. At night, the raccoons come around for the dead ones that line the shore. For many of us, like eating fiddleheads, it’s a spring ritual to go there to see the fish and birds. I remember kneeling down and putting my hands in the water to feel them when I was a kid. The water was so thick with them you could literally grab them with nothing more than your hand. So many people go there now that there is a parking lot and traffic jams. When I was a kid, though, my father and I had to climb down the banking through the bushes risking poison ivy and a slip and fall on wet rocks. We could hear the water and feel the cool mist from the little falls above the pools of fish before we came through the bushes. It was thrilling!  Alewives are caught en masse by netting. Today they are used mostly as bait fish for lobster trapping. When eaten, they are usually smoked, though I’m told they have a very mild flavor. Traditionally, a little vinegar is served with them which is true of fiddleheads, too. I can only imagine, back in the days of our settlers in the late 1600s and early 1700s, how thankful folks must have been after surviving winter to have fresh fiddleheads, bountiful fishes and to be able to bury their dead. They must have wept when the Shadbush bloomed.


                                                                    

Technorati Tags: Robin Robinson photography, Maine, fiddleheads, Ostrich ferns ,alewives, shad, shadblow, Service berry

Fish Fight - Osprey And Eagle

Last evening, I was standing on my deck with a glass of wine when this Bald eagle came zooming out of the trees after this Osprey with it's evening supper. I don't know what kind of fish it had and my subjects were slightly far away for fantastic photos, but they'll do. This series of shots clearly captures the fish food fight. The Osprey won, by the way. It took for the cover of the trees with it's supper, and the eagle gave up. It went across the cove and landed in the top of a spruce tree to rest and I'm sure, to pout. I don't know what the numbers are, but my personal observations are that the eagles are not often successful with this approach to food acquisition. It takes an enormous amount of energy for them to zoom around acrobatically after the more agile osprey. Their best bet is to get the osprey to drop the fish where the eagle can get it, for example, on the rocks versus into the water. Usually, in my experience, the eagles don't keep after and osprey as this one did. They usually only try once and the Ospreys rocket straight for cover. It's a fascinating and magnificent event to witness. 

I took this a few years ago on the rocks in front of our house on Totman Cove. I have never understood why the Osprey had seaweed in it's talons. Did it think it could slap the eagle senseless with it and take back it's Striped bass dinner?

Broad-winged - Hopefully

Broad-winged Hawk in Phippsburg. Broad-wings are a type of buteo. They are birds of prey and hunt small animals from a perch like this. Shy birds, they usually prefer the woods. They are migratory and spend the winters in tropical forests of South America. They migrate in huge flocks or 'kettles' of hundreds to thousands of birds. At about 15" they are a stocky little hawk.

I'm going to go with Broad-winged Hawk on this identification. After my last hawk fiasco, I'm hopeful that I'm correct this time. I'm going with Broad-winged because of the the thick barring of the breast and the relatively short tail. It also hollered several times, "Look, you! Get it right this time; I'm a Broad-winged. Got that?" I could hear it plainly from my open car window. I had been whizzing my way homeward from a long day of Weeding For Dollars when I spied it sitting on a power line on Rt. 209 in Phippsburg. For those of you who know the area, the hawk was sitting just south of the elelmentary school. I saw the  bird on the wire, but it was actually too close for my long lens. I continued then doubled back around so that when I came back I was across the road. I never got out of the car. While I sat there shooting, lots of people drove by. Many of them slowed down to see what I was looking at, including one of my neighbors. They thought my lens, or "that thing," was protruding too far out of the window into the traffic lane and called to tell me so. I always look to see where my car is in situations like that. I do not want to cause any accidents or even inconveniences for other people. My car was four feet from the painted line on the side of the road, well out of the way. The school bus stopped not too far from me to let out some kids. I thought it would be nice if the bus driver had said to the kids "Look! There's a hawk on the power line and that's a National Geographic photographer right here in your home town!" I would like to think of myself as inspirational to those children even if I'm not a Nat. Geo. photographer. Maybe one day, one of them will be a famous photographer and perhaps I will have helped them on their way one fine day when they were coming home from school.

Thanks to David Allen Sibley's The Sibley Guide To Birds and allaboutbirds.org for the information.