botanizing

Neighborhood hawks

2 July

A hawk cries.  While this is not unusual in our neighborhood, the cries of hawks this summer have been nearly continuous.  The cry I hear as I arrive home from work comes from a hawk that soars high above the houses of the neighborhood.  Although Red-tailed Hawks commonly come to the neighborhood and yesterday high above three Northern Harriers soared in a tight cluster, the hawk I hear this evening is one of the neighborhood’s Swainson’s Hawks. 

Two years ago Swainson’s Hawks nested in a spruce about 50 yards behind our house, and they are in the same tree with a new nest this year.  I assume it’s the same family of Swainson’s Hawk, although it may not be.   The new nest is at the same level—about 60 feet above ground—as the old one.  The old nest, built on the west side of the tree, was blocked from my view by the tree’s trunk, but the new nest is on the east side of the tree, offering me a view.

I take tea and my binoculars to the deck to check the hawk nest.  The large, mother hawk stands on a branch behind the nest.  She looks shadowy, even in the warming evening light—both parents are dark morphs. 

The downy, white heads of the two young hawks bob in the nest.  The larger of the two, which is the size of a chicken, stands and arches his wings.  I call the larger of the two toddler hawks Pozzo and his smaller, meeker brother is named Lucky.

The mother hawk calls, ruffles her wings, and then preens, pulling at her chest and wing feathers.  Suddenly, she launches from the nest—flying behind thick-topped maples to the south.  I hear her call again, and there is a response from her partner.  Both parents shoot from behind the maple to land at the nest, where they are a dark confusion of feather and wing until, only moments later, in a broad flap of wings the smaller father hawk flies away.   

The mother hawk stands just behind the nest, where she rips with her beak prey that the male brought.  The two young, seated in the nest, extend their necks to their mother.  She pulls quickly at the food and stretches to the young, one and then the other, who take the food from her beak.  The father hawk soars around the neighborhood above the nest.

3 July

In the early morning light, I lie in bed listening to the cry of the young hawks; then a house wren begins to sing.  I get up to look for the birds.  The wren sings from the very top of spruce.  It sits with its back to the morning sun.   The hawk nest quiets.  Both young are nested, and the mother hawk stands guard on a branch.

 A few minutes later the mother flies low behind the maples to a row of tall shrubs between the Lutheran parsonage and the Mormon church.  The shrubs are the abode of crows.  The crows go crazy.  The hawk screams at the badgering crows and flies back to the nest, where she stands for only a moment before leaving again, flying up and around to soar over the neighborhood.

Sometime later, the mother hawk flies low and fast across our backyards with prey in her talons.  At the nest, the mother hawk rips the food apart and gives it to Pozzo while Lucky continues to lie in the nest.

In the afternoon, the crows are again after one of the parent hawks.  All are overhead—silhouetted by the sun.  The crows tail the hawk, which screams when one or the other crow accelerates at the hawk.  The hawk flaps its wings at the attack; it turns sharply, stalls, twists, and flaps again to evade the crows.  The attacks continue until the hawk beats hard and fast its wings and wheels upward gaining quickly crow-less sky to soar high above the neighborhood.  I watch the hawk wind downward until it perches in the sky, holding its position, body arched to hover, over the Lutheran church.

 4 July

Early in the morning, the mother hawk feeds the toddling Pozzo and Lucky.  The two young stand outside of the nest close to the mother, who is ripping pieces of food from prey.  Lucky, the smaller of the two young hawks, takes food from the mother’s beak.  Larger Pozzo pecks and rips at the prey on his own.  Each young hawk bobs backward his head as he swallows.

Although the mother hawk has been at the nest, standing on a branch beside it, except when she has gone to forage or meet her arriving mate, she has been at the nest only intermittently today.  I see her or the father or both soar throughout the day above the neighborhood.  The young cry—krie-ew, krie-ew, krie-ew.  Periodically, I hear one of the parents—as if to say, ‘I’m here—don’t worry’—call from flight, and I wonder whether the parents remain within listening distance of the toddlers (or whether they fly to escape the cries).

In the evening, both Pozzo and Lucky are outside of the nest.  Although Pozzo commonly moves around the branches close to the nest, Lucky is usually in the nest and is often lying down.  Tonight Pozzo sits on the west side of the trunk, where the parents stand at feeding to rip apart food.  Lucky lies against the trunk on the east side.  Pozzo stands periodically to stretch and rumple his wings.  The parents continue to soar above the neighborhood moving swiftly from western to eastern sky—their wings are steady, never beating.  I hear now, and have intermittently, through the evening, a distant ‘krie-ew’ called from one of the parents.

 5 July

This is the first day that I do not see the mother hawk sit at the nest site.  She comes only to feed Pozzo and Lucky, and then returns to flight.  Both parents continue to soar within sight of the nest throughout the day.

 6 July

Song birds sing and a dog barks.  I can hear traffic—the earliest workers of the day are out.  This early morning both mother and father hawk are screaming.  The father sits at the nest, but the mother is in the sky to the west, where two crows chase her.  She wheels swiftly and zips to the nest, and the crows are lost.  Only for the briefest moment are the two parents at the nest together.  The mother has hardly landed before the father leaps to wing and flies away.  The mother hawk begins to tear at food held at her feet.  Both Pozzo and Lucky are standing outside of the nest and both peck and rip at the prey. 

 7 July

About 6.00 am I take a cup of tea out to the deck.  The mother hawk stands in the morning sun on the south branch beside the nest.  She is still and her wings, held just slightly out from her body, appear like a cloak.  She looks like Rodin’s statue of the brooding Balzac.

Several minutes later, a lump rises in the nest.  The back of one young bird comes up, and then the youth stands.  It arches its wings and takes a couple of unsteady steps.  The young bird looks at me—his downy head is still mostly white but has peppery speckles.  He begins to preen—using his beak to pull at chest and wings feathers.  The young bird steps around the nest and cries.  He spreads again his dark, but white-spotted, wings.

By the time I finish my tea I still have not seen the second young hawk.  I worry about an accident—perhaps one of the young hawks has fallen from the nest or been taken by a crow or another raptor.  The preening young bird continues to walk around the periphery of the nest and then steps into it, where it stumbles slightly—and suddenly the second young hawk stands.  It is Lucky, who has been has been stepped-on by Pozzo.  Both of the young hawks now stand in the nest.  Pozzo picks about the nest for food.  Lucky stretches his wings and lies down again.  The mother hawk, seemingly oblivious to the antics, still stands statuesque in the sun at the side of the nest.

15 July

We have been gone for a week, and I wonder whether the young hawks will have flown away in our absence, but, when I check, they are still at the nest.  Pozzo stands on a branch beside the nest and preens.  As usual, Lucky sits in the nest, his back is shadowed and his head looks like a knob.  Lucky turns to face me and cries. Krie-ew . . . krie-ew . . . krie-ew.  I can see the pink of his cheeks.

Pozzo is now nearly as large as his father, and Lucky is only a little smaller.  They have lost the down from their heads, which are now smooth and brown, although they still have a little white at their cheeks and eyes.  Their bodies are a rufous brown although with a lattice of white on their backs and chests.

The mother hawk brings food to the nest and both young leap toward her.  Both Pozzo and Lucky reach aggressively with head and neck to the food.  Pozzo tears at the food, then turns to look at me, a ribbon of prey entrails hangs from his beak, and his head bobs back as he slurps the food into his mouth.

After the feeding, the mother hawk flies across the street to sit at the top of a spruce.  A pair of crows dive at her—one after the other—swooping up and curving down to sweep at the hawk’s head, but missing it by several feet.  The mother hawk dips her head at the dives of the crows until finally they give up.  The hawk remains in the tree and watches, turning her head from side to side.

This is the first day that they have not been continuously within view of the nest (at least as far as I can see).  I see the parents when they come to feed and periodically one will be soaring overhead, but they seem to be distancing themselves from the nest.

 16 July

Pozzo stands this afternoon halfway out a branch on the north side of the nest.  He begins to flap his wings—they are not fully extended, but nearly so—and I sense the power in his strokes.  He leaps up and gently, but quickly, flaps his wings twice and lands on the west branch close to Lucky, who stands in a shadow beside the tree’s trunk.  Pozzo next hops to the south branch with a shake of his wings.  Here he sits and preens for a few minutes until he hops back to the feeding spot on the west side of the trunk, where he picks at spots of food and tilts his head back as he swallows.  Pozzo hops again to the south branch, a spot where his mother has often stood to guard the nest as the young hawks were growing, and spreads his wings—holding them stiffly out in the sun. Krie-ew . . . krie-ew . . . krie-ew, he calls.  I watch his beak open with each call and feel that I can nearly see the sharp sound of his cries.  Restless Pozzo finally stills and stands motionless to stare at me.

 17 July

When the mother hawk brings food, Pozzo tumbles over Lucky, and the mother flees. Lucky disappears in Pozzo’s wings—I fear he has been speared by a talon.  The young hawks wrestle and roil like teenagers until, finally, Pozzo takes the food, leaving Lucky to sit.

18 July

Pozzo is ‘flying’ this evening from branch to branch around the nest.  He flaps and lifts off from the north branch to land on the west branch.  From the west branch he flies to the south branch.  From the south branch he returns to the west.  From the west branch he flies to the south, where he stands and screams.   Lucky stands beside the tree trunk.  Lucky has been about two days behind Pozzo in his development, but he generally has been less aggressive—spending much of his time lying in the nest or sitting by the tree trunk.  [He’s the sort of kid who will probably read novels instead of playing sports.]

19 July

I leave today for another trip, but I check the hawk nest before I go.  Both of the young hawks lie in the nest, and I can see only their shadowed backs.  It is a scene much like that two weeks ago when the young hawks were just becoming active and large enough to see.

Thirteen Blackbirds Look at a Man?

Washington State Magazine has a story about Nature Twice, the poetry exhibit that we have presented this fall in the Conner Museum of Natural History.  The story, written by DL, a friend and co-curator of the exhibit, focuses on our collaborations over the years that have bridged the divide in our university between the sciences and the arts.

 We had great fun at the photo-shoot for the article.  Designer John Paxson had picked up on Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and especially the poem “Thirteen Blackbirds Look at a Man” by R. S. Thomas as a set-up for photographs.   The two poems are among my favorites.

 Bob Hubner, the photographer, shot images of DL and me seated at a table in the museum, while I read from the exhibit guide.  Later we unscrewed the glass front of a museum case to remove some of the blackbirds.  Bob put the blackbirds on the table to make photographs of them.  The result, after some Photoshop work by John Paxson, was the photograph above, in which blackbirds look at DL and me reading about poetry.

The photograph is delightful, and its narrative (punning? poetic?) sense helps me to feel even more involved in two of my favorite poems.   

Neighborhood hawks

While seated on my deck a few weeks ago, one of the neighborhood hawks zipped twice overhead just above reach.  After the last pass, it caught air and curved upward to circle high above the neighborhood.  ‘Screee  . . .  screee,’ the hawk screamed.  I went in the house to get my binoculars.  Two Swainson’s Hawks have had a nest among the upper branches of a spruce that stands about 50 yards away.  After I swept my binoculars along with the hawk in flight, I focused on the nest, which was constructed on the far side of the tree and has been hard for me to see.  When I lowered the binoculars, I noticed a large nodule about the size of Jeffrey pine cone on the upper branch of the larch in my back yard. My near-sightedness didn’t allow me to resolve the nodule as anything more than a shadowy carbuncle, so I lifted the binoculars for a look.  What I saw was one of the Swainson’s Hawks, watching me with great scrutiny.  I was looking down the barrel of the hawk’s hooked beak.  It’s eyes were steady.

*

Through most of the summer I awakened early in the mornings to the ‘Screee  . . .  screee’ cries of the Swainson’s Hawks.  In the late afternoons when I came home from work, the hawks were often soaring above the neighborhood or I saw them fly from tree to tree, often with some other badgering bird about them.  Before evening, I again heard the hawks’ cries.  The shoulder-hunching cry inevitably made me look up.

*

In the past two weeks, I have not heard or seen the hawks. I have no idea whether the neighborhood mates had a successful nest—I travelled enough during the summer to have missed early flights of any young hawks that the nest might have produced.

The Swainson’s Hawks have most likely departed on their annual migration.  I hope they have good luck on their flight to Argentina.

Osprey

As we drove up the Selway River on Saturday, Adrian pointed out an Osprey on its nest.   The broad bowl-of-a-nest sat atop the thin point of a conifer snag that leaned ever-so-slightly over the river.  I think of those leaning snags, lost from the forest and bound eventually to meet the river, as composing the ‘Osprey zone’—the best spots from which to watch fish move in the water below.

The Osprey was chattering when I stepped from the truck to get a better look.  The bird looked up river and then down, up and then down, slowly and methodically.  The repetitive motion of the bird’s head shifted upriver when a hawk screamed—the Osprey focused quickly on the call of the other bird.

A light breeze above the river channel ran through the feathers of the Osprey’s head.  The loose feathers at the back, just below the bird’s crest, flipped in the wind.  They were yellow in the sun.

Bewick's Wren

There was a sharp dart, a brown zip, that landed in my Mahonia.   The dart, a bird, I realized as I focused my newly awake eyes, had a tail at a hard angle with its body.  A wren, I thought and reached for my glasses and then binoculars.  Magnified, I could see the bird had a band as pale as its belly above it eye.  A Bewick’s Wren, and, as I followed its movements, I discovered its nest. 

In early December one of our first winter storms brought heavy snow and wind that broke branches in the flowering crab in my front yard.  One broken branch fell across a lamp on a pole that stands in front of the house.  The lamp lost some glass in the mishap.  The Bewick’s Wren was now using the space of lost glass as an entrance and was building a nest in the lamp. 

I watched the nest building and quickly recognized that I had a mated pair of wrens at work.  When one would arrive at the lamp entrance with a stick, the other would fly out to gather more material.  They gathered sticks, leaves, and bark.  One would gather and then the other.  Inside the lamp, a dead white lightbulb stood, looking ever-so-much like the top of an egg in the growing nest. 

The nest has grown steadily this week, although I see the wrens at work only in the mornings.  This evening, when I arrived at home after work, the entrance to the lamp was covered by a loose gathering of leaves.  The lamp space looks full, and I wonder whether the time has arrived to lay eggs.

The raptor's stare

It was before 8.00 a.m. as I walked two weeks ago along the edge of the campus at the University of Colorado, where I was on my way to a meeting.  I sipped tea as I walked.  The morning sun, warm against the cool day, felt good on my face.  The sun heightened my senses.  The sun heightened the freshness of the morning. Birds chattered.  A mix of robins and sparrows foraged at the edge of a line of shrubs.  Then a charge hit, everything changed, and birds flew out like debitage from a hard struck stone.  The charge was gray, a streak from the sky, a raptor that pulled back and in its wings in the moment before it hit.   It hit talons first, grabbing tight a robin.  Feathers flew.  Screams and warning calls.  Sound and feathers followed the spray of escaping birds.  The robin—the held robin, the caught robin, the prey robin—twisted.  One of the robin’s wings extended and fluttered.  The gray raptor stared at me.  I stood ten feet from the bird and its prey.  I was as caught in the stare as the robin was in talons.  The sharp gaze did not lift.  The eyes bore at me down the curved beak that was still and glinting in sun.  When the feathers had settled, when the prey robin twisted less, the raptor flew—its wings bit the air in two quick beats—in a hop over the shrubs—sufficient distance from me—where the raptor landed and held still its talons tight around the robin. 

Bird chimes

There are wind chimes in the trees but no houses or people here where I walk near the end of a long, dry ridge.  I look in the trees for the chimes and find them.  They flutter at the tips of branches.  Irregular, sharp, and light, I begin to hear gyp gyp . . . gyp . . .  gyp, and those calls mix with the chaffing of wings against needles and scraping of toes against bark.  I have mistaken bird sounds for chimes.

A cone of a Douglas fir is tossed to the ground, where it crunches against the wiry, dry grasses.  I get my binoculars from my pack.

The birds are Red Crossbills at work harvesting seeds from the cones of a Douglas fir.  The crossbills maneuver at the tips of branches—there is a flash of wing and a body flips.  They slip upside down, sideways, head twisting at a cone as their bodies bob on the thinnest branches.  The birds poke and pull seeds.  When a cone comes loose, the crossbill tosses it away.

The flock flies—lifting nearly all at once—as I watch.  Hurried gyp gyp gyp from different quarters of the tree.  There is a flash of buff bellies, glints of red, orange, and yellowish green against the sun as they wheel and fly away.  It’s quiet now, except the wind—the chimes have flown.

Birding

Spotted Sandpipers are as common as the commas in my thoughts.  They twitter across the river and then come back.  Their short wings beat quickly, but the motion seems clipped, caught in steps of downstroke and up, as if the waves of the river created a stroboscopic effect.  The Sandpipers poke among the cobbles at the margin the Selway River.  They probe a few square inches of stones and then fly.

I walk up Meadow Creek, a wide tributary of the Selway River.  A Dipper does knee-bends on a tree trunk that has lodged midstream at the edge of a cascade.  Sure that the bird’s bobbing portends a dive into the cascade, I stop to watch.  The Dipper continues to bob.  I step back into a patch of shade and lean my chin on my hands at the top of my trekking pole.  The Dipper bobs and then preens, cleaning his wings and then under them.  A month ago on another tributary of the Selway I watched patiently as a Dipper bobbed for 15 minutes—I had hoped that bird would dive, but its knee dipping turned to nothing but preening, and I gave up.  I give up again as the Dipper on Meadow Creek preens its other wing.

The trail along Meadow Creek is crowded by thimbleberries that slap at my belly and bracken ferns that poke my chest.  I watch my steps in the green thicket—rattlesnakes are common in this area.  It is not a snake but the scramble and holler of small birds that gets my attention.  A mock orange stands high to my left and the debris of a fallen cedar lies to my right.   Small, dark birds fly among the mock orange and other shrubs.  They hop from branch to branch until they take reasonable vantages.  One sits in the mock orange just steps ahead on the left and another on a branch of the fallen tree on my right.  A third bird circles behind me, coming up on the right and down the trunk of the horizontal tree to land just behind the righthand bird.  Their alarm calls are loudly out of proportion for their tiny size.  They are wrens and almost solidly brown except for dark bands across their pertly upright tails.  I take my Sibley Guide from my pack to look at the possible wrens.  Winter Wrens—a new bird for me.  I love to see new birds.

In the late afternoon, I return to the Selway River to camp.  I sit about 20 feet from the river, which has a high, cacophonous roar, holding the whoosh of tons of water and the clatter of the flow against midstream boulders, and, yet as I listen, I can hear the softer lap of little marginal waves against shore stones.   I sit under western red cedar, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine to read but a flock of small birds fluttering from branch to branch and tree to tree distracts me.  I twist in my seat to follow the birds—following their songs.  They sound like squeaky wheels.  Six squeaky wheels surround me, and I search the branches to locate the birds.  They are quick.  I fumble my binoculars.  Can’t get them focused.  Try one eye.  Focus on a branch.  Search for the bird.  The squeaky wheel moves.  Try another.  It moves.  I give up on the binoculars.  The birds are small—only four or five inches from beak to tail tip—and sleek.  Gray and unmarked to my nearly naked myopic eyes.  I guess they might be Bushtits but hardly feel satisfied with this.

I sit again, thinking I’ll read and ignore the squeaky wheels.  Crows converse on the opposite shore.  The Bushtit problem keeps my reading unfocused.  I catch a dark flight to a low branch near the river.  The bird settles and stays, and I reach for the binoculars.  A Varied Thrush.  What a damn good bird—it sits unmoving on the branch as I focus the binoculars and shows me a strong, steady profile as I watch.  If only all birds had the steadiness of the Varied Thrush!

Red Riding

A Redwing Blackbird rode a Red-Tailed Hawk.  This was in today’s wind gusts.  The hawk had flown from a tree and was gliding, wings stiff and straight, across a field.  The blackbird was behind and above the hawk—a nuisance bird of the sort that tails hawks.  This blackbird, fast over the hawk and flitting back and forth—its red wingbars flashing—slowed and settled on the back of the Red-Tail.  I watched its wings fold as it sat on the hawk’s back.  The hawk batted—tilting right and left—and the blackbird lifted—up a foot or two on quick wings—and just as quickly the blackbird settled again on the hawk’s back.  The blackbird seemed less interested in pestering the hawk than in catching a ride.

Dinner

As I came into the mountains along the North Fork of the Clearwater River, I saw movement on a rock beside the water.  Using binoculars through the windshield, I could see that it was a large bird.  I continued up the road in the truck, stopping nearly opposite the bird to look through the space of the lowered side window.   It was an Osprey on a broad, flat-topped boulder that angled to the river.   The Osprey was perched on a cutthroat trout.  The bird and the now headless fish were nearly the same length.  The stone had splatters of blood and bits of meat, and a pink stripe extended down the boulder from the fish’s tail. I imagine the Osprey let the fish hit hard on the stone and then dragged it a few inches to a more suitable spot for dinner.  The Osprey stood watchful for a few moments after I arrived and then went back to its dinner. It would tilt its head down and twist it to the pink meat of the fish’s shoulders. The bird tugged and then lifted its head; its beak was full of pink fish.  Sun shined on the yellow flank of the fish.

I camped along the river, setting up my canvas chair to face the water a few miles beyond the Osprey. For dinner, I had Bombay potatoes with chickpeas and an orange with a cold, Belgian-inspired ale. My plant press served as a table, and I leaned from my low seat to the bowl of spicy potatoes and chickpeas. I sopped the brown gravy with a multigrain bagel, and a few brown drops fell on the plant press.  After dinner, I heated water for tea on my backpacking stove, which sat in the sand at arm’s reach from the chair. Kingfishers flying from mid river stones to low, shoreline branches made blue flashes.