Herring Gulls

Herring Gulls are thick as thieves in Maine. When I first moved there I wondered why we called them "herring" gulls? Why not, oh, something like "gray-backed gull", something more descriptive of their appearance?

I found out during the Herring run just how these gulls got their name - be warned, these pics are not for the fait-of-heart (or stomach).

This Herring Gull just caught a herring.

And yes, the gull is consuming the herring whole...

These gull certainly love their fish VERY fresh!

The Rough-Legged Hawk

Rough-Legged Hawk, hunting rodents near Louisville, CO

When the winter storms begin to sweep across the high arctic of Canada and Alaska, thousands of Rough-Legged Hawks (Buteo lagopus) move south ahead of the cold. They migrate to central North America, some to as far south as northern Mexico, where the hunting is easier and the storms and cold not quite as intense.

The arrival of these smallish hawks signal to me that the cold winds of winter are sweeping in. They fly down to Colorado as early as September and stay until the Spring thaws creep northward into Canada. Feasting mostly on small mammals such as voles and mice, wintering Roughies here in Colorado often hunt from power poles or fenceposts along open fields or farmlands. Some, such as the one pictured below, hunt the greenways adjacent to major highways looking for a meal, which puts them in danger of being hit by passing cars and trucks.

Roughie hunting along the toll road near Louisville, CO

As with many types of hawks, Roughies appear to mate for life. During their breeding season in the high arctic (summer), hawk pairs build their nests on available cliffs or rock outcrops. They hatch up to 7 young in a season.  Young, flightless hawks are at the mercy of the arctic's other dangers: storms, Arctic Foxes, bears, wolverines, other hawks, falcons, and eagles, so relatively few survive to adulthood. 

Those young that do survive often head south into the sunbelt alone for their first winter. When the warmer weather of their first spring comes around, they'll head north looking for a mate, unfortunately without the benefit of online dating to help them out.

How can you tell these hawks apart from our more common Red-Tailed Hawks? Well, I always remember that Roughies look kind of, um, cute. 

Rough-Legged Hawk

They have more rounded heads and a smaller beak than a Red-Tail, plus their look is much less fierce:

Red-Tailed Hawk, note head shape

I love watching these birds hunt! These are agile hawks who can hunt as well from a perch or on the wing. In fact, I have seen a few of them actually hover-hunting, much as a Kestrel can do. Hovering in one place to hunt is a tough feat for such a large bird - it requires a lot of energy - but it can be the only option if prey animals are scurrying around a long way from an available perch.

Roughie perched on a power line near Louisville, CO

Rough-Legged Hawks seem to be a bit more shy and "spooky" than our resident Red-Tailed Hawks. Maybe being hatched and raised in the high arctic makes them unsure of what people are all about. Or maybe they've learned from their parents that some humans aren't very trustworthy, and therefore give us all a wide berth. 

No matter the reason for their shyness,  it's unethical and unhealthy for the bird if you harass them by trying to approach too close. If you come upon a bird and it flies off, let it go. A simple rule of thumb to remember when photographing or observing any wild animal is: if your presence causes a behavior change in the animal (such as moving off or sounding an alarm), you are too close. Back off. It is in your best interest, as well as in the best interests of the animal, to do everything you can to prevent it from feeling stressed by your presence.

As a photographer, I find it difficult to approach these birds without spooking them so I tend to photograph only those birds more used to people, and use a blind (usually my Honda). The bird on the power line, above, was hunting near a busy intersection near my home. I simply pulled my car off the side of the road in a large pullout, opened my window, and took several photos from inside my vehicle. The hawk glanced my way a few times but was much more concerned with hunting mice in the nearby field than it was with the photographer in the car.

All text and photos copyright Nancy Rynes, 2013. You may link to this page, but do not copy any content or images, for any reason, without my written permission.

Big Boys Comin' to Town

'Tis the season here in the Rocky Mountain State...but not for the holidays.

The Big Boys

The Big Boys are back in town!



It's the season so many Coloradans look forward to: the Bighorn Sheep rut. No, we're not voyeurs out here in the Wild West, but we are looking forward to some action. It's time for some good, ol' fashioned, head-slamming, fun!

Throughout the warmer months of the year, the female Bighorn Sheep (ewes), along with their new lambs and older "teenagers" form herds and stay up in the high country. A ram may stay with them...or not. The females define the social structure of the flock and the rams don't play much of a part in it. The Ladies do have a hierarchy within their group and from watching several flocks over time, it also looks to me like certain ewes have specific jobs or positions within the flock.

Lead Ewe

Leader (right): The lead ewe appears to set the pace for the group and keeps watch on the front lines.



Rear Guard (below): Brings up the rear and watches for danger as the flock moves. This particular ewe made it a point to always stay between me and her flock, even though the flock was safely out of the way up the hill. Trust me, I didn't want to mess with her!

Rear Guard

Auntie: Watches out for lambs who aren't hers. Maybe she's not old enough to breed, or maybe her lamb died earlier in the summer. In any case, there are ewes without their own babies who seem to watch out for others' lambs.

Auntie with a lamb (not hers)

The male sheep (rams) either move off and are solitary, or stay together in small bachelor herds for the summer. Some may stay with a flock of ewes. But come November and early December, all of the Bighorn Sheep move down from the high country to lower elevations both to get out of the snow and cold, and to join together to create the next crop of baby Bighorns.



The rams come out of their bachelorhood for a few weeks and mingle with a flock or two in order to vie for attention from the Ladies. Watching a flock at this time of year can make you recall those days of being in a singles bar. The Boys prance, display, scuffle, and sometimes even fight for the privilege of going home with his chosen girl.

The ram on the right is trying to pick a fight.

The Ladies tend to stay off to the side, watching all of this while trying to look disinterested.



And this is where it gets exciting: sometimes all of that pent-up testosterone and parading around results in a serious challenge...the dreaded Head Butting!

The winner is usually the prime-age, bulky Ram with a good set of horns, like this bruiser:

And while the younger, smaller rams tend not to win these scuffles, it seems to be a great way for them to learn strategy and the proper head-butting technique.

Older rams, past their prime, might sneak off with a victory now and then, but they seems to be slower and more prone to injury.

While it seems like they might be angry with eachother, many Rams who smash heads will nuzzle up to eachother afterwards. It's almost as if they are checking to see if the other is OK, or perhaps apologizing for a late hit.

And at the end of the day, tired from all of the activity, the only thing that matters is getting a little shuteye.

All text and photos copyright Nancy Rynes, 2013. You may link to this page, but do not copy any content or images, for any reason, without my written permission.

Fire in the Western US - Lessons from Mesa Verde

As I write this, it's early July, 2013, another a year of more drought and fires in Colorado and the Southwestern US. Friends and former neighbors of mine in the Black Forest, near Colorado Springs, are recovering from damaged or destroyed homes during a recent human-caused fire. The Wolf Creek Fire Complex near Durango, ignited by lightning, still burns largely out-of-control, and sadly, 19 firefighters lost their lives in a monstrous blaze last week in Arizona. The Royal Gorge attraction in Canon City, CO, has been shut down due to a forest fire there several weeks ago. Fires burn in Nevada. It seems like the whole western US is up in flames.

I'm saddened at the loss of life, homes, and businesses in these and the other areas affected by fires this year. It's been a rough season already with a few more months of fire danger still to come.

Smoke from the Wolf Creek Fire darkening the canyons south of Mesa Verde.

But those of us in drought-prone areas also realize that naturally-caused fire is, and has been, a way of life here for centuries, if not millenia. As our human population grows and more people move west and want to live in the mountains and forests, we would do well to come to terms with and accept our surroundings. Perhaps even finding ways to adapt to them.

There's no doubt that we're in the middle of a regional drought here in the Southwest USA. Some areas are harder-hit than others which makes them more prone to wildfires. And the situation doesn't show any signs of going away any time soon. Drought here is cyclic and it's something we can't stop, much as we'd like. The Ancient inhabitants of this area knew this all too well. Cyclic water and resource depletion, due in part to drought, have negatively impacted the Ancient Pueblo People, the Aztecs, Hohokam, Mayans, and many other groups for at least 2,000 years (and probably more).

Draining the rivers to irrigate our fields, green our lawns, or fill our reservoirs doesn't solve the problem. Only Mother Nature can do that by delivering more rain and snow and cooler temperatures. When the rain and snow don't come, the risk of wildfire increases.

During this time of fires I took a trip to Mesa Verde, near Cortez and Durango, CO, a much more drought-prone area of the Colorado than where I live, near Boulder. Mesa Verde reminded me yet again that naturally-caused fire is a "normal" part of the cycle of forests here in the west.*

Mesa Verde has had a volatile record of droughts over the last 1000 or so years. Persistent drought may be one of the reasons that the Ancient Puebloans left these canyons over 800 years ago and moved south. Over that millenium, fire has been a recurring visitor to Mesa Verde.

Just looking at Mesa Verde teaches us that the forests will survive, the animals will return, and what we see happening now is really just a point in time in the natural cycle of life here in the Southwest US.

Mature pinyon and juniper forests gave Mesa Verde its Spanish name, "Green Table."

An unburned area of Mesa Verde National Park.

Mature pinyon and juniper trees near cliff dwellings.

Rainfall here is sparse but is enough to support a forest of pinyon, juniper, rabbitbrush, scrub oak, creosote bush, sage, and mountain mahogany. Native flowers include many species of penstemon, native sunflower, arrowleaf balsamroot, native buckwheats, and wild roses. 

But sometimes lightning from a dry thunderstorm sets off a blaze that consumes the forest and resets the cycle. Dead trees and shrubs, duff, and leaf litter are cleared.  Fires have consumed much of Mesa Verde's mature forests in the last 15 years. The large trees I saw in this National Park when I was a child have been mostly burned off since the late 1990s. 

Some burn areas are interrupted by stands of unburned trees, often due to the efforts of firefighters to contain the blaze:

Old growth pinyon and juniper (foreground) with a recent burn scar from 2005 in the middle ground, Mesa 

A recovering burn area. Large, burned trees are being replaced with shrubs such as oak and rabbitbrush.

After an area burns it's more prone to mudslides and flash floods. But this risk gives way as dormant seeds in the soil sprout and take root (see pic, above). These new plants send out roots that lock the soil in place and the frequency of floods and mudslides subsides.

And as with the Phoenix, with a forest fire comes eventual rebirth. Besides killing off live trees, the blaze clears off dead trees and shrubs, duff, and leaf litter that were blocking light and water from reaching the soil. Now that the soil has light and water, plants grow and flower from roots or dormant seeds, such as this penstemon blooming near Step House, Mesa Verde:

Some trees and shrubs, such as the Ponderosa Pine, Sequoia, and ceanothus, are naturally resistant to mild/moderate ground fires. Others, mainly conifers like the lodgepole and Bishop pines, need fire to force cones open to release their seeds. Without fire, these trees' seeds would never germinate.

From the human perspective, recent burns at Mesa Verde have done something pretty interesting for archaeologists and visitors to the park. Burned areas can give us an idea of what the region looked like when the Ancestral Puebloans lived here. At that time, around 1000-1300 AD, the mesa tops were cleared and planted with corn, beans, and squash. The landscape would have looked similar to the picture below, taken near the Long House ruin. The inhabitants of the area removed the trees in the canyons for firewood and building timbers, leaving the valleys relatively bare and clear:

A recent burn near Long House, showing what the area might have looked like 1100 AD.

But we know by just taking a look around Mesa Verde that, given a chance, the trees and shrubs do come back and the forest renews itself. We learn that  naturally-caused wildfires are part of the cycle of life here in the dry West. For Nature, fire isn't the end of the world, it's the start of the next cycle.

How do we humans deal with and perhaps even adapt to living with fire? More to come in my next post...

*Notice I write "naturally-caused" fire. I don't consider blazes like the one in the Black Forest, caused by humans, to be "natural," so this blog post does not apply to them. Human-caused fire is not really part of the natural cycle of a forest even if drought conditions were present at the start of the blaze. 

For more information, see: 

http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module11/FireandJackPine.htm

http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/live_w_fire.pdf

http://www.werc.usgs.gov/OLDsitedata/seki/pdfs/regeneration.pdf

http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/

Quiet Time on the Front Range

This is the time of year around Boulder, Colorado, where the bird life quiets down a bit. Spring migration is over. The birds that winter here have flown north for the summer to raise their young.

So right now we have mostly the local breeding birds, including: robins, jays, hawks, a few bluebirds, grackles, eagles, tanagers, flycatchers, phoebes, swallows, and more...

For me this is a time to take a breather and concentrate on other things. Painting, hiking, visiting Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, photographing other animals like Mountain Goats, Bighorn Sheep, and lizards. Lots of lizards.

The Indigenous cultures of North America included depictions of lizards in their art for thousands of years. Check out these petroglyphs from Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado:

Animals were (as far as we know to date) the first subject matter for North American art. Take a look at this recently-publicized site in Utah where we now have documented evidence of Ancient Americans creating rock art depicting mammoths and ancient, giant bison:

http://www.petroglyphs.us/article_Malotki-Wallace%202011%20RAR%20Mammoth%20paper.pdf

http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/upper-sand-island-mammoth-petroglyph.html

Amazing that this rock art survived over 10,000 years out in the open, and even more amazing that someone actually found it.

So as I take a break from bird photography this summer, I try to enjoy the calm that's come and try to imagine western North America as it once was 11,000 years ago...not a land of sand and dust storms and cactus, but a greenscape where Mammoths, giant bison, saber-tooth cats, cheetahs, and camels made their home alongside the ancestors of the modern day tribes of First Nations People.

The Human Need for Nature

I have a confession to make - I'm personally not much of a church-goer. From the time I was a small child going to Catholic mass on Sundays, I've always felt the church buildings too confining and too "human." I guess my thought was that if God made the Universe, He (or She) made it without buildings, right? Humans put the buildings in...the Creator built the mountains and forests and prairies and tundra. That's why I feel that Nature is my "church" - it's where I go to reflect, meditate, and ponder reality.

I suspect I'm not alone in this outlook...

This morning, a beautiful, sunny, Sunday morning, found me out communing with Nature in Loveland, Colorado. It was an odd little bit of nature - definitely "nature" with a small n - a man-made pond called Lower Hoffman Lake (or man-enhanced wetland, actually) on the eastern edge of town and surrounded by a hospital (McKee Medical Center) and upscale homes. Not your typical open space or parkland...no huge vistas of the Rockies, no rolling prairie. Just a town pond, mostly frozen over but with a little open water on the side nearest the hospital.

It doesn't take much open water this time of year to attract wildlife in Colorado, whether that open water is surrounded by buildings or out on the prairie with only the mountains and blue sky as a backdrop. And today, large numbers of geese and ducks crowded the this little bit of blue water amid the larger swath of white ice coating the lake. Along with those geese and ducks were two rare beauties - migrating Trumpeter Swans that settled here earlier this month.

Trumpter Swan, Canada Geese, and Coots

I made myself comfortable along the Nature Path at McKee Medical Center, finding a spot in the sun with a good view of the swans, geese, and ducks. The medical center has set aside their lakefront (or is it pondfront?) to be a small "wellness park" with benches, a walking path, and meditation space (complete with labyrinth). The focus of this space is to give patients, visitors, and staff a quiet, nature-centered, peaceful place to unwind, reflect, relax, and heal.

http://www.bannerhealth.com/Locations/Colorado/McKee+Medical+Center/Patients+and+Visitors/Spiritual+Care/Wellness+Walk.htm

It was Sunday, so the parking lot was nearly empty and I was the only person watching and photographing the swans. I loved that there was a little bit of Nature tucked in here next to the hospital - and that colorful, energetic birds converged here during the winter. Maybe patients in their rooms could look out a window and watch the daily comings and goings of animal life just a few feet away. I wouldn't blame them for preferring to watch the animals - they're a nice change of pace from watching the nurses come and go all day and night.

Adult and Juvenile Trumpeter Swans with Canada Geese, Coot, and Mallards

After about an hour, a gentleman of about 70 years old walked up and started asking me about the birds. He was joined by his daughter who looked to be in her early 40s. Both seemed tired and stressed, but they visibly relaxed as they started to watch the swans. I told them a little about the Trumpeters - how they'd just come in a week ago or so and that it was an adult and juvenile. They remarked how huge the swans looked in relation to all of the other birds on the pond - almost like an aircraft carrier sailing out of port accompanied by the fleet!



Then the gentleman told me he was here because his wife was very seriously ill, in ICU, and he and his daughter needed to think about something else for a while besides prognoses and tests and procedures and doctors. His daughter was nearly in tears as she listened to her father talk about her mother - but she still focused on the swans going about their morning, fascinated by this little bit of Nature next to the hospital. The woman didn't smile, but she did relax a little and seemed to de-stress for the 20 or so minutes she and her father stayed and watched the swans.

My heart went out to this man and his daughter. Seeing them put me in mind of the countless hours I spent visiting my father when he was in and out of the hospital for surgery, ICU stays, and chemo treatments. Hospital experiences can be horribly scary for the patient and stressful for family and friends - oddly enough, hospitals are not good places to truly heal. Anyone who's been admitted can attest to this! Even as a visitor I remember occasionally needing an escape  where I could just "be" - away from the medical smells and noises and people inside. A place where I didn't have to think or feel, just a space to unwind and realize that life was still going on no matter the turmoil my family was experiencing. I found an escape in the walking inner city neighborhoods near the hospital - it wasn't the best way to unwind, but it was better than nothing. I would have loved a healing garden or nature walk like this one, with plants and animals to focus on rather than white coats and IV lines.

Thankfully, hospitals like McKee Medical Center are beginning to recognize the benefits to humans of allowing Nature and medical facilities to coexist.

There is something about watching animals that takes my mind out of myself and my own life and problems for a while, and I doubt I'm alone in this. Just seeing what happened this morning reinforced how valuable Nature can be to us if we allow it space. Yes, Nature deserves to *be* for its own sake, but let's not forget that we need it in our lives as well.

I'm glad McKee Medical Center has seen the wisdom of bringing a little bit of Nature into the lives of its patients and visitors. It can't hurt and just might help provide a much-needed respite from the stress of hospital stays, both for patients and their famillies.

The (Un)Common Red-Tailed Hawk

Adult light morph (pale belly and tail; Lafayette, CO)

The Red-Tailed Hawk is our most common hawk here in North America, at least by numbers, but it's uncommonly beautiful in its variability. In this post, I just thought I'd share a few photos of the color variations in the Red Tails living around my home here in Colorado. This is by no means a definitive display of all of the color morphs I've seen, but simply the ones I have been able to photograph...

Adult light-morph (captive)

Adult light-morph (captive)

"Red-Tailed Hawk Study" Oil painting - Adult light morph (captive)

This gorgeous bird is a captive because of an injury that prevents it from living on its own in the wild. He is now an ambassador for his species and is cared for by the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.

Harlan's color variant (note pale tail and grayish streaking on the belly 

and underwing; Boulder, CO). Yes, this is a Red-Tailed Hawk even though its tail is a very light gray above and below. 

Another Harlan's variant (Weld County, CO)

Dark Harlan's (??) (near Firestone, CO)

Dark Morph (not Harlan's - note very red tail), adult (Erie, CO)

Juvenile light morph (Louisville, COO

Juvenile Light morph (note brown tail and pale eye) (Louisville, CO)

Adult light morph (Lafayette, CO)

Adult Light morph, bird from previous photo, in flight (Lafayette, CO)

Light Adult, Western morph (Louisville, CO)

Note the very buff-colored belly, dark "shoulders", and buff underwing coverts

I believe this is an Adult Light Harlan's (Weld County, CO)

And this poor adult light morph has some kind of skin condition - possibly mites - leading to a major loss of feathers on its head and belly. Note the poor condition of the skin around its eyes (near Erie, CO).

All photos and text are copyright Nancy Rynes, 2013

Winter Raptors in Colorado

A magical time has arrived in the Boulder area - it's the season of snow and cold weather, blizzards, chinooks, and crisp blue skies. And with the cold comes the birds of the north - overwintering birds of prey. Hawks, falcons, eagles, owls, and related birds from the far north make their appearance here for several months each year.

For many of these species, Colorado is their version of wintering in Palm Springs. It's hard to believe this when the thermometer here barely reaches the double-digits, but it's definitely warmer than spending the winter above the Arctic Circle.

Kestrel fluffed up against the cold

The species I look most forward to seeing each winter is the Rough-Legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus). While the plumage on Roughies isn't as variable as that on Red-Tailed Hawks, it does sport two very fetching and distinct color phases, light and dark, with gradations between. And while anecdotal evidence says that these birds tend to stay out on open farm and ranch land far clear of cities, I have regularly seen them soaring over towns and highways here near Boulder.

Juvenile Rough-Legged Hawk hunting near Louisville, CO

Light phase Roughies are quite distinctive both in flight and perched - short beak, feathered legs, and dark "wrist' patches under their wings are giveaways. Very dark belly-bands are typically present on the lighter birds, and hunting from a hover (similar to a kestrel) is another distinctive trait of these raptors.

In some years, winter can bring another beautiful visitor from the far north: Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus). A very large, diurnal owl (active during the daylight), Snowies are surprisingly difficult to spot after winter storms have dumped a foot of powder along the Front Range. While again tending to stay in more rural areas, Snowies will go where the food is: namely, small rodents. I have seen Snowies perched on fence posts in an active farm yard, on top of manure piles, garbage dumps, heavy construction machinery, road signs, and on the peaks of barns.

Snowy Owl on a pile of tires

Other raptors that winter in Colorado are more northern populations of  hawks, eagles, falcons, and owls.

Bald Eagle at Stearns Lake, Colorado

As with all wild animals, please take care when observing and photographing migrating birds of prey. Truly arctic birds like Rough-Legged Hawks and Snowy Owls come only as far south as they need in order to find food. If the rodent population is good to the north, few of these raptors come south into the lower 48. But if the rodent population has crashed that year, the birds won't have as much prey to eat so hunger will drive them south until they find food. By the time these Arctic birds reach Colorado, they're hungry, sometimes VERY hungry. Take care to disturb them as little as possible because their lives depend on their ability to capture food. On a cold day, too much human activity can cause them to expend a lot of precious energy avoiding us rather than tracking down and catching a much-needed meal.

Juvenile Bald Eagle feasting on a goose, Waneka Lake, CO

All text and photos copyright Nancy Rynes, 2013. You may link to this page, but please do not copy any text or pictures, for any reason, without my written permission.