Wet & Thirsty Raptors

A number of raptors drink, bathe, and hunt in the same pools where the bears do their thing.

Not everyday, like Steller and scrub jays, but now and then.

I have a hunch that the birds seen here use several different pools on different creeks.

Screech owls were by far the most frequent users.

This video covers about 5 months of clips from several pools.

Back to the ranch

11:08PM -- "Hornly" the resident hooter confronts brazen plastic imposter.

It was good to get back to 'the Chimineas'.

Nearly 7 months has passed since my last visit, and a lot happened during the long winter.

More than once the storms had reclaimed the ranch's roads as gullies and washes.

Then it would dry up a bit, and thinking the worse was over Cowman Ross would start to grade --  until another storm rolled in with vengeance.

When spring halfheartedly arrived Craig and the team camera trapped the accessible areas near the ranch house.  

We spent the first night reviewing a grant proposal, transferring backlogged photo files, and checking cameras (3 more were out of commission).

For dinner we threw together a clam pasta prepared by the redhead.

Craig observed that it didn't taste much like clams, and I had to agree, though I'll allow that  a second beer might have compromised my ability to discern the delicate essence of bivalves.

We turned in early, but as for the coyote serenade, I have nothing to report. It was too cold to sleep with the door and windows open.

We set cameras the next morning in a new canyon and found a fairly large sandstone cave.

That afternoon RandonTruth and Craig's assistant Heather rolled in, and we enjoyed our reunion over grilled chicken burritos.

I was ready to test my automatic owl caller in the field, but  the 15 minute cycle of the  3 v motor (a lavatory air freshener donated by neighbor Richard) wasn't performing as it had the day before.

The plunger on the air freshener didn't start the CD player.

This was a disappointment, as the local pair of great horned owls (GHOs) had just fledged their young within walking distance of the ranch house.

Fortunately RandomTruth is a man of the modern era.

He quickly copied the owl calls from my CD to his IPod, inserted pauses, and it worked like a charm.

The modern owl caller (left) and my Rube Goldberg owl caller.  

After dinner we wired my hooter decoy to a stump near the nest tree, hid the IPod and speaker beneath it, and set up a couple of cameras nearby.

My cam was also on the fritz, but fortunately RandomTruth's home brewed camera trap caught the action-- thanks Ken.

Here's what happened with his photos.

The resident GHO, presumably the male (who we will call Hornly) arrived at the stump at 11:08 PM -- 2 hours after the decoy boldly announced its intrusion into the breeding territory.

With cocked tail and wings a-hanging he had a rather ruffled if not disturbed presence.

And perhaps he noticed that the puny offender had an uncanny ventriloquistic ability.

11:10 PM -- Hornly looks in the direction of the call. 

There were no photos of an aerial strike or a wing-flapping attempt to mount, but 50 minutes later Hornly felled the brazen imposter.

12:45 AM -- after Hornly's first strike.

The vanquished hooter however refused to retreat  and continued to announce its presence as if nothing had happened.

Hornly apparently struck again and the camera captured him hooting in victory.

1:36 AM -- Tail up and head bowed -- Hornly is probably hooting in victory over his plastic foe.

And so begins another promising season of camera trapping on the Chimineas.

If we get our grant, we will start a new experiment to test survey methodology.

And one last thing, as I packed up the morning of my departure I found a can of clams in my grocery bag.

I immediately recalled Craig's wistful observation about the unclammy flavor of the clam sauce, and laughed uproariously .

And you won't believe this, but it is true.

When I carried the Rube Goldberg owl caller to the car it started to play.

The lesson of an anonymous camera bumper and 3 hooters

When something jars your camera trap it usually ruins the set that you so painstakingly composed.

Consider set # 394 at the Chimineas ranch last month.

My colleagues made the set to capture thirsty carnivores at one end of the pond, and they did a commendable job.

Besides the pleasing image of the buck and doe, the camera also captured one frame of this great horned owl, which I have cropped.

On day 19 of the set something bumped into the camera, and the frame changed from this:

to this:

The camera was then viewing a completely different and limited part of the pond.

This kind of thing has been known to evoke some rather colorful language.

In this case however we discovered that two other species of hooters were visiting the pool in the area less trafficked by deer and coyotes.

There was a single image of the barn owl,

and a western screech owl buzzed about and left 6 images.

It stands to reason that not all species use the same area of the pond.

A peaceful pubescent hooter

Last week was rendezvous at Chimineas.

It takes a grueling 7 hours, mostly on depressing Interstate-5 to get there, and if any of you remember the Carol Burnett show and Tim Conway's rendition of The Geriatric Fireman, well that's what I looked like when we arrived and I unloaded the car.

In a few minutes the scenery and a scolding kingbird were magically restoring me, and I paused to look up into the cottonwood next to the ranch house.

About 40 feet up there is a tangle of sticks, and six weeks ago it was crowned with the ear tufts of an incubating Great Horned she-owl.

When the wind tossed the branches, she would rise up majestically and peer out like an inscrutable Ahab weathering the storm.

On this visit I was expecting to see a lot of owl traffic and one or two pubescent hooters, but when I binocularized the nest it was empty. 

How could it be? If my calculations were right the youngsters should have been "branchers" by now.

Craig said the owls were delivering cottontails to the nest last week, but evidently they had flown the nest.  Damn!

This abrupt departure was a bit irritating, but not out of character.

The owls had denied me other pleasures of my second childhood. Though I have searched beneath their nest and neighboring trees I never found a single owl pellet or discarded bits of rabbit anatomy.

But I am grateful that the hooters nested smack in the middle of ranch headquarters, which is an oasis for cottontails and songbirds.

Cliff swallows under the eaves of the ranch house.

Tractor, ATV and car traffic didn't affect them, and their hooting has lulled me to sleep.

Nesting horned owls are forbearing birds.

Some 80 years ago a soldier by the name of L.L. Gardner found a horned owl nest at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Though the nest was 43 feet up a hickory tree Gardner could see everything from the rimrock above, and made regular observations until, in Garner's words . . .

"Two soldiers casually riding by on horseback along the rim rock espied the young now grown large and bold and sitting up prominently on the nest.

"One of them ascended the tree, threw one of the Owls to the ground, tore the nest out of the tree and carried the other fledgling down clinging to his coat sleeve.

"Having photographed the pair they were about to dispatch them, when by an extraordinarily fortuitous chance the only other officer, Major C.C. Hillman, to whom I had shown the nest, rode by and rescued them.

"He brought them in to me and I hastened out to the tree nest in an effort to rehabilitate the family."

The nest was beyond repair, so Gardner located a large hawk's nest nearby, bundled it with cord and lashed it into the owls' nest tree.

"During this time the two nestlings sat on the ground beneath the tree and watched the entire procedure interestedly with their great yellow orbs fastened on the nest.  Occasionally they stretched their wings in a contented manner or walked around slowly."

"There was no protest on the rough passage up but immediately on being replaced in their new home rewarded this kindness by thankless hissing and aggressive hostility."

That night the parents visited the ersatz eyrie and fed the young, but they disposed of the dry grass with which Gardner had caringly crafted the nest.

So where did these pictures of the pubescent hooter come from?

At the end of the third day of fieldwork we rolled up to the ranch house, and RandomTruth spotted the young owl roosting peacefully.

We rushed for our cameras and looked like crazed paparazzi, but the bird was as serene as a monk. 

References

Fitch, H.S. 1947. Predation by owls in the Sierran foothills of California. Condor, 49:137-151.

Gardner, L.L. 1929. The nesting of the Great Horned Owl. The Auk, 46:58-69. 

Visitors of the great pool-Part 2

Surely there are dickey birds that bathe and drink from the big pool, but Rich's cam photographed only the big birds, like the band-tailed pigeon and a raven that was a little too blurry to post.

The red-shouldered hawk was there to bathe.



And so was the great-horned owl. Rich says, "The owl looks like it could be young or a molting adult. There were two shots of it, one up higher on the rocks, then a couple minutes later this one at pool level. It was last Friday at 2:30 PM, which was a hot day all over the area."