Monday, February 8, 2010 - 3:35pm to 4:05pm - A SNAKE OF A DAY!

[vdelauz]

Today's observation was pretty exciting for me, since I had not seen much activity in my last two visits to the nest. For the first 25 minutes, I observed the female standing on the edge of the nest facing in a southeasterly direction for most of the time. She would occasionally look down into the nest, but not bend down into the nest. During this time, she preened herself on two separate instances, each instance lasting roughly two minutes. As odd as it sounds, it actually looked to me as if she was bored. At exactly 4:00pm (five minutes before my 30-minute observation was to end), the male eagle flew in from the east past the nest, looped north, then flew back towards the east and landed on the western edge of the nest. What did he have with him? He had a black, three-foot snake in his grasp! He quickly placed the prey into the nest and flew off towards the west to roost atop a melaleuca tree. Since he flew in very quickly behind the trees, there was no way for me to get a good focus lock on the event with my camera, so I was unable to take any pictures of the snake, although I'm still kicking myself in the behind for not trying to capture something, however blurry it may have looked. Surprisingly, I thought that since the male had left the snake in the nest, the female would have begun to either eat, feed her chick(s) or done a little of both. She didn't do a thing. She just stood there in the same place she had been since I had arrived - looking bored.

The title of this post is "A Snake Of A Day!" because as I got home to tell my wife about my observation at the eagle's nest, she told me to grab my camera quickly because a Red-Tailed Hawk had just landed in a tree in our backyard with - you guessed it - A SNAKE!

Enjoy the pics...

THE MALE AND THE FEMALE TOGETHER AT THE NEST


RED-TAILED HAWK TEARING INTO A SNAKE. ONCE IT FINISHED WITH THE HEAD, IT SWALLOWED THE REST OF THE SNAKE'S BODY LIKE A SINGLE STRAND OF SPAGHETTI. IT WAS SOMETHING I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE AND AN EXPERIENCE TO WATCH.

[NewMexiKen]

Wow, Victor, what a day! Makes up for last time. You have an interesting back yard as well. (BTW, it is a Red-shouldered Hawk-- also a Buteo like Red-tailed. That NGS book you bought for your son must still be in the mail!)  

[vdelauz]

Ken,

Can you believe I actually went to Barnes & Noble and picked up the NGS Eastern book the day after you recommended it to me? Can you believe I actually tried to identify this hawk and STILL managed to get it wrong?  I swore I had it right this time, too. Oh, well, I guess I'll keep practicing! I have used the book on four occasions and I can tell you that some birds are easy to identify, but some of them look like others, which makes it tough for a positive identification.

Here's one I shot at work on Friday of a Loggerhead Shrike. It did just as described in the book. This one perched low on a pole's support wire and watched a cricket by the front door. The next thing I knew, it had flown down, caught the cricket, flew back up to the same place it had been on the wire and swallowed the cricket whole. I love watching birds do their thing. Enjoy the pic!

[NewMexiKen]

Splendid shot of that shrike!

Those "finches" are suddenly transmorgifying!

As a kid I found grasshoppers impaled on a barbed wire fence. I knew from my reading it had to be the work of a shrike ("butcher bird"). It took me a couple of weeks to finally see the bird.

[vdelauz]

Thank you for the compliment, but in all honesty, it posed for me while eyeballing his little cricket, so I didn't have to work hard to get the shot. At first glance, it looked like a raccoon bird, but the book helped me sort this one out!

Seriously, though, the book actually mentions the fact that these birds impale some of their prey, as you've pointed out. It's incredible how different birds seem to have their own ways of doing things.

Finally, getting back to identifying certain birds with the book, it's not that easy (at least for me). There's this little bird that visits the tree in our backyard at least once a day. It looks like a Palm Warbler, but I'd like for you to please have a look at it and tell me what your opinion is. Thank you!

[NewMexiKen]

Another nice photo, Victor! In trying to ID a bird, take note of its general shape, starting with the bill and work backward. Then note the color and plumage pattern. This is a small slim bird with a narrow pointed bill, designed to eat insects rather than cracking open seeds. This limits the field, as it is not a sparrow or finch, which would have a more conical bill. As you get used to looking at birds you will start to recognize its family on sight-- whether a warbler, a wren, a vireo, a tanager-- just by its general shape, size and bill.

Yes, it is a Palm Warbler. Note the bright yellow under the tail, the line over the eye and its habit of wagging its tail. Some of the yellow is on the rump, so you might mistake it for a Yellow-rumped Warbler, but note that in the latter species the yellow is even brighter and well-outlined. The Palm is also a lot more brown on top, often looking more like a sparrow. The Palm is also more apt to forage on or close to the ground than the Yellow-rump. Note that the Yellow-rumped Warbler is also an expert flycatcher, a behavior that may help identify it from a distance.. The calls of these two warblers, both common in Florida during winter, are also quite distinct.

I grew up in New Jersey, where the Palm Warblers were all very brightly colored, with bright reddish caps and very yellow breasts. Out to the west, the birds are quite dull, like this one. Relatively few of the Palm Warblers that winter here are of the Eastern "Yellow" race, so it's fun to see if you can find one among the many. I have only seen one this year. Its photo is below.

Shrikes have somewhat curved bills used as carving knives, like hawks' beaks. If shrikes could capture and hold prey with their claws, they would be classified as "raptors." They actually are in the "perching birds" group, and they sometimes use thorns and barbed wire to do the work of claws to hold the prey while they tear at it, as well as a storage place for future use.

BTW-- a tip-- use the Nabble resizing feature when you upload to make the whole photo fit the computer screen.

[Mike Fossler]

Great shot Victor! Here's a picture I took last year at Greynold's Park - same kind of hawk with a snake!

MF

[vdelauz]

Thank you for the pointers, Ken! They will certainly come in handy when I need to identify a bird. Your shot of the warbler with the red feathers on the head is one that I saw in the book. GREAT SHOT!!!

Also, I'm trying a different image size in Photoshop (smaller). I have a much larger calibrated monitor that I use for my photography at home, but I didn't realize how awkwardly large my uploaded images were until I went online at work and viewed them on a smaller monitor. Now I know what you mean by resizing...

[vdelauz]

Mike, that's a great shot! Thank you for sharing...