Thieving Swainson's Hawks

When on a cross country road trip with an owl, a person needs to provide for their traveling companion. Usually I will just pick up some of the fresher road kills that I find for him. However, when Cecil gets exceptionally hungry, I am not above allowing the more suicidal ground squirrels to get hit by my own truck. Today it was of particular importance that Cecil got a bit of a snack, and for some reason there was absolutely no roadkill along the highways of Saskatchewan. It was several hours of driving before something finally came along. A ground squirrel ran under my tires of it's own volition on a gravel range road. Relieved, I had something to give my irritable owl, I backed up my truck. Before I could get out and pick up my prey, a Swainson's Hawk, chased by several blackbirds, swooped in and napped the recently killed ground squirrel. I guess this explains the mostly spotless Saskatchewan roads.

Why the hawks are wary

It's not just the hawks that need to be wary

I found this newspaper in a nearby small town -

I guess I better start taking Cecil a little more seriously.

16 hour work days. 18 hour work days. 20 hour work days. Last day off 23 days ago. Sure I have pictures and stories, but I would rather 8 hours of sleep.

My Roommate

A Change of Opinion

Our bosses came to visit this past week, the PhD student who will make Ferruginous Hawks into her degree and her advisor. With them around we have gotten a chance to hear more about the research and start to get the chance to appreciate the job and the birds a little more. Are FEHAs a truly endangered animal? Maybe not, but the study and observation of patterns in wild populations of any creature has value.

Soon we are going to be starting on the satellite tracking portion of the study. I am looking forward to it. We already have a new owlish roommate named Cecil living in our basement. He shall function as our hawk attractant for when the time comes to catch hawks.

Strange Occurrences

The other day while walking towards one of the Ferruginous Hawk nests we have been monitoring, I saw a small yellow thing pop out and scurry away along the ground. It took a moment to register what I was looking at. This yellow object escaping into the grass was a fuzzy, peeping gosling. It didn't make much sense. Had this little goose just escaped shocking narrow miss from being a hawk breakfast?

I went ahead and peered into the hawk's nest only to find that there too was another downy gosling and three goose eggs. The mother hawk circled above me, maternally protecting what she viewed to be her nest. After I got back into my truck, the hawk promptly re-settled herself upon her nest and returned to her very confused home-life. I can only imagine her attempts at feeding her supposed young.

It reminded me of this truly beautiful short film I had seen: The Owl that Married a Goose