Silhouttes of birds: other physical traits

As I mentioned in my posts regarding identifying birds by their silhouette, there are many things to watch for which will allow you to do so.  In the first post on this subject I touched briefly on the shape of wings and tail.   These are very important physical characteristics that I would like to elaborate on here.  Some birds have broad tails, some have long tails, such as the Magpie for instance.  Others have tails that are rounded at the tip or straight edged, and some have tails that are notched with a "V" like that of a Tree Swallow, or  shaped much like an arrow head like the tail of the Common Grackle. 

Red Tailed Hawk

Raven

Common Grackle

As you can see from the pictures above, the shape of a bird's tail can differ dramatically from one bird to the next.  Notice the Red Tail hawk's broad, short tail when compared to the Raven's long, wedge shaped tail.  What a difference.   Now take a look at the long tail of the Goshawk below and compare it to the tail of the Red Tailed Hawk above.  Again there is a remarkable difference and this difference can be applied when attempting to identify all birds, whether in silhouette or not.

Juvenile Goshawk

The shape and length of a bird's wings can also be a very distinguishing feature.  Notice how the Red Tailed hawk above has very broad wings.  Again, the shape of the wing varies greatly along with the length. 

Osprey wings spread

Merlin

Merlin speed of a bullet

When you compare the wings of an Osprey to that of the Red Tailed Hawk for example, you will notice that the Osprey's wings are broad and long; quite a bit longer than his body, and taper to a point, whereas the Red Tailed hawk's wings are broad along the entire length, and somewhat more rounded at the tip.  The Merlin however, just above has wings that are broad near the shoulder but then taper sharply to a point in the middle, which is why falcons have such a distinct flight silhouette.  Then there is the little Sandpiper in flight below, who displays long, narrow and pointed wings, which become somewhat wider just near the tip.

Sandpiper in flight

Tree Swallow

The Tree Swallow, on the other hand, just above, has wings that are so long that they cover most of it's tail, making the tail appear to be very short, when in fact it is not, and their wings are actually fairly wide.

Red Tailed Hawk close to the sun

Cooper's Hawk in flight

In the picture directly above, I was lucky to catch sight of this Cooper's Hawk in flight one day as I was stepping out of my driveway.  As it happens, this Cooper's Hawk provides a perfect view of itself from below giving an excellent view of it's characteristic long tail and short broad wings.  Clearly you can see the sharp contrast to the same view of the Red Tailed Hawk above him.  I just love it when I happen to get the same view and angle of different birds in a picture, as I'm sure you can well imagine.

In my last post on this particular topic, I covered the head, bill and body shape of a bird, but what about a bird's neck?  This is another physical trait which will help you separate one bird from the next, or at least identify the species of bird you are looking at when you see them in silhouette.  Is the neck long and slender, or long and thick.  Does the bird have a neck shaped like an hourglass and easily distinguishable, or does it seem like it has no neck at all?

Shore bird

Rock Pigeon

Chickadee

Take a look at the pictures just above.  The shore bird has a neck that is presented much like an hour glass while the Rock Pigeon's neck is thick and long, getting wider when it meets the body.   On the right, the Chickadee's head seems to be directly attached to his back and belly, and below him the neck of the nuthatch also appears to be almost non-existent.

Nuthatch

Swan

American Coot

The Swan above has a very long neck and it keeps it stretched out in flight.  However, sometimes the shape of a bird's neck seems to be determined by the birds head.  Take a close look at the American Coot directly above.  Does it not seem like it's head is a part of it's neck?

Blue Heron

The Blue Heron, who also has a very long neck but seldom stretches it out, even in flight, unless he is hunting fish in a pond, and so is very distinctive because it seems to have a permanent curve or fold.  I sincerely hope this post helps you more accurately identify birds in silhouette.

As always enjoy,

Susan

How so wonderfully liberating...just imagine!

Why, sometimes, I've believed as many

as six impossible things before breakfast.

- Lewis Caroll (Alice in Wonderland)

 

We couldn't drive past this old building in Calgary, a couple of weeks ago, without going back 'round the block to take a pic of this sign. How true it is, we need more such determined "specialists" in this world!  

But, how does one "specialize in the impossible"?

I'm convinced that it is in the willingness "to suspend doubt and disbelief".

We do hold on tight to such things, don't we. Whether it's about the possibility of world peace, the benefits of less meat and more veggies and whole grains, the energy in chia, running without shoes, completing a marathon, learning to roll a kayak - it all boils down to whether or not we are willing to suspend our doubt and disbelief. And it may just have to be for a moment or two.

Doubt and disbelief lock down the possibility of exploration and discovery. They cause us to cease to grow and wonder and dream. Suspending our strange loyalty to doubt and disbelief, however, opens wide the doors to unimaginable opportunity.

How so wonderfully liberating - just imagine! How so worth investigation.

How could one not resist the idea? :-)

Goshawk: A Surprising Visitation

The universe seems determined to surprise me.  Not that I'm complaining.  I am in fact delighted and very grateful, especially since these surprises bring me such joy, but let me explain.... I  often stop at one of the parks I frequent before work, both of which have ponds.  I do this both to catch sight of wildlife and to relax a little before diving into the day.

Since I have moved, one of these parks has become somewhat inconvenient to visit before work, although not any other time. As a result, I have been spending more time at the other, where just this past summer I spotted an Osprey.  I didn't expect to see anything on this day since the pond had been, well, very quiet and still, with only a couple mallard females and their brood floating on it.  These females had been caught late in the breeding season and were waiting for the brood to mature before migration could take place for them.  So it was a sweet surprise to me when I stopped at this little park and was literally visited by a Goshawk just as I was getting ready to leave.  In fact she flew in behind me, just as I was in the act of turning off my camera to tuck away into it's case.  Needless to say the camera was immediately put back to work.

Missing tail feathers

Flying up

The most wonderful thing about this encounter is that the Goshawk didn't seem to care that I was there and perched, first on the concrete, and then on the railing of the observation deck at one end of the pond.  It seemed to me that she was very hungry.  She was in fact making the strangest, distressed sounds as she scanned the bushes next to the railing for birds, her usual prey.  This was a second year hawk just coming into her adult plumage, as you can tell by her tail, which is displaying only one or two feathers of slate gray while, the rest is juvenile brown, and her eyes which were already quite redish orange in color.

Goshawk spotted me

I honestly don't know why I keep referring to this bird as "she", since I have no idea if it is female or male.  It just seems appropriate, because it was so big, and I know that the female is naturally larger than the male.  However, I have never seen a male and female Goshawk together, so I can't say the bird was definitely a female.  In fact, I have only ever seen Goshawks in the distance and in flight.   In any case, this bird stayed perched where she was for quite some time, scanning the area for prey and didn't fly off  until I simply moved too close to her for her comfort in my efforts to get the best possible photos.

Goshawks are not typically city birds.  They prefer  forest to hunt in. In fact they excel at hunting in and amongst the trees, but it was the beginning of the fall migration season, and I imagine she was just passing through, although as I understand it Goshawks do not migrate very far.  Now juvenile Goshawks are very similar in appearance to juvenile Cooper's Hawks.  To distinguish between the two hawks, look for the Goshawk's broad, rather aggressive eyebrow which you can clearly see in the picture just above, if you click to enlarge it.

Goshawks are also much larger and broader in body structure and have heavier streaking through the chest area.   Goshawks are the largest of the accipiter family of hawks, so that there is usually no problems distinguishing an adult from other similar hawks, such as the Cooper's hawk, unless you have never seen one of course, and have no point of comparison.

Because I so rarely see Goshawks, and had never seen one up close, I was naturally excited and very much surprised.  So much so, that my photos all suffered a little due to camera shake; something that is unavoidable I'm afraid under those circumstances.  I also felt blessed, since this was the third such wonderful surprise I had experienced in this birdwatching season and have no vehicle to get out to those places were I would have a better chance of spotting birds such as this, or any other that I have yet to see.  I sincerely hope you have the same experience on your bird watching excursions.  There is nothing quite like it.

If you wish to learn more about this the Goshawk or similar species, just follow the links below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Goshawk
http://talkaboutwildlife.ca/profile/index.php?s=65
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Hawk
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/coopers_hawk/id

Enjoy,

Susan

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Could it be that we are becoming flaccid, febrile, and feckless? Can you feel it?

From a newspaper ad in 1890...

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, and safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."

From near the Canmore Nordic Centre, last Monday

There were 5000 responses to this ad placed by explorer Ernest Shackleton for the first Antarctic expedition. 5000 responses.

Between the very cold weather we experienced in Alberta earlier this week, and the foot of wet snow we returned to here on Vancouver Island, we have not run all week. After reading the above ad, which I had quoted in a paper a few years ago, I began to question our, um, "sense of adventure".

And then there are these words, written by Mark Jenkins in the July, 1999 edition of Outside Magazine:

"Two million years of running naked across the veld, hardwired us for life in the wilderness. Keep humans inside a cage, physical or psychological, and like every other creature on the good earth we become flaccid, febrile, and feckless."

Are we, indeed, spending too much time in "cages"? Indoors? Safe, content, warm, and secure? Tethered to our digital world? Are we losing our connections with the world "outside"? Are we losing our nerve? Are we losing our...selves?

Mark goes on to suggest...

"On the inside, whether you can still feel it or not, your soul is trying to claw its way out."

Can you feel it?

I know I can.

Duncan.

Winter's awesome surprises

little forest in winter

I must confess that I am not very fond of winter.  That is the first thing that I learned when I arrived in Canada way back when.  The country that I come from has relatively mild weather, with the temperature never dipping much below the minus mark.  Snowfall was rare.

But I also learned that staying indoors for months at a time is not conducive to my well being and so on those days when it isn't too cold, I do go for walks.  We've had a fairly mild winter compared to most this year.  So I headed out when I heard Owl calls in the neighborhood last week, for the first time ever with the express purpose of doing some birdwatching.  I decided to go to the little forest just down the road from my house, since it was the only place I could think of that the Owl might be roosting.

Mountain ash berries

As I  may have mentioned,  I do not see very many birds in winter, mainly because I don't look for them when I'm bundled up against the cold and also because I typically see the same species of sparrow and chickadee almost all the time.  So I was caught totally by surprise by the number of birds I did see.  Starting with this little flock above me in the sky, in  the picture just below.

Flock of birds

It isn't that I didn't expect to see birds at all that surprised me so much as the variety of birds that I saw.  In the hour or so that I spent in the little forest I saw at least six species of birds, and there was no doubt more that I missed because I didn't stay longer.  I was absolutely delighted by that fact of course, and amazed by the sheer advantages that winter provided me in terms of sight.  There are, after all, far fewer places for birds to conceal themselves and their color stands out more against the snow and winter sky.

White breasted nuthatch

Nuthatch

I think that at least one of the species was new to me, but I will have to do some careful research to be sure.

Birds in the tree top

A splash of red

Little Red-head

I admit that I wasn't truly prepared for this outing, as you can no doubt tell by the quality of these pictures.  I didn't take my good camera out for one thing, since I haven't figured out how to protect my equipment from the cold and damp, or how to keep the camera lens from fogging up, and I really didn't expect to see much in the way of birds aside from chickadees and the owl that I was hoping to see.  Although, unfortunately, I never did see the Owl.

The most delightful surprise of this outing, however, was this little Merlin just below.  I was, until now, unaware that Merlin's do not migrate and so again I will have to do a little research to learn more about this species of falcon.  This is of course never a bad thing, since I do enjoy learning new things especially when they involve birds and wildlife.

Small hawk

Merlin

Looking up at a Merlin

Of course, as I am not always totally oblivious to birds in winter, I have seen Prairie Hawks during the season and this past November in the midst of our first snowfall, in the middle of the month, I also saw a Harlan's Hawk, a sub-species of Red-tail, flying overhead.  A late migrant no doubt, I thought at the time.

In any case, needless to say, since my winter outing turned out to be such an awesome surprise, and very rewarding, I will be heading out more often.  Well, as soon as this current cold snap we are experiencing is over anyway.  This bird watch has made me realize that I have definitely been limiting my birdwatching experiences by confining myself indoors in winter. After all, who knows just what I might discover.

Enjoy,

Susan