First, an update on Stephen Barnard’s eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) parents, Desi and Lucy, who are raising at least two chicks. We have a magnificent photo showing a parent arriving; do notice the little gray chick in the nest (middle).
And then Stephen’s video of Desi bringing a fish. Lucy vocalizes loudly: “Where’s that goddam fish? The kids are starving!”
Reader Bruce Lyon sent a cool series of photos of Swainson’s hawks (Buteo swainsoni):
I recently was lucky to capture a sequence of photographs of courting Swainson’s Hawks at Davis, California. I was trying to get flight shots of a hawk when it suddenly closed its wings and went into a dive. It was diving to connect with its mate—literally. Many raptors have courtship flight displays that involve locked talons and the two Swainson’s Hawks locked talons and then began dropping while cartwheeling and somersaulting. The series of photos below shows some of the aerial shenanigans:
They’re holding hands! Bruce continues with another series:
A couple of years ago I was on a research trip to the Pawnee National Grasslands in Colorado and watched an amusing episode of a pair of Swainson’s Hawks trying to build a nest atop an electrical transformer. The birds would fly down to the field below the power pole, collect very lightweight dried stems of some herbaceous plant and then fly to the transformer and deposit them. There was a strong wind so the lightweight ‘sticks’ invariably were blown off the smooth metal top of the transformer within a few seconds. Below is a sequence of photos showing a bird struggling to pick up a large stem, and the last photo shows a bird leaving the nest site after unsuccessfully trying to get a stem to stay in place:
Great photos. Love the raptors.
Sub
The hawk’s on the transformer are probably lucky their mission failed. One or both would have probably wound up electrocuted. Unlike landing on a conductor (single power line), where there is no difference in potential to cause current to flow; the top of a transformer always has at least 2 (frequently more) conductors of different potentials exposed. In fact in the final picture, the bird looks very close to being cooked.
That seems to be very poor design, considering the number of units spread around the world; reminds me of the (declining) practice of leaving grids of uncapped drill-holes across vast areas after seismic surveys, which act as terminal pitfall traps for uncountable numbers of small vertebrates (but also shelter for bats).
There is no one post or one time to say this, but… I ADORE all the photos! Of all animals, insects, etc! From the professionals and the amateurs! To quote the Lego movie, “Everything is awesome!”
Ditto! Ditto!
Love those hawk photos!
Great photos. I wonder if the nest building hawks were a young couple. My impression is that birds often make mistakes in nest building and brood rearing their first year, but they later catch on to ‘how its done’.
Bruce, the action shots of the hawks are fantastic! Thanks for sharing.
Wow Bruce! Fantastic pics! It must have been amazing to watch in real life.