Tag: raptor

A Rare Visit From a Northern Neighbor

  • The Great Gray Owl is a rare sighting south of the U.S.-Canadian border. (Photo by Matt Victoria, Camillus, NY. www.fickity.net)

The Great Gray Owl usually lives deep in the northern forests of Canada. But due to scarce food, thousands of the big owls have drifted south. They’ve drifted into southern Ontario and Quebec, even crossing the border into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Last month, a Great Gray was spotted in New York, the first one documented there in almost a decade. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein was there when it
happened:

Transcript

The Great Gray Owl usually lives deep in the northern forests of Canada. But due to scarce food,
thousands of the big owls have drifted south. They’ve drifted into southern Ontario and Quebec,
even crossing the border into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Last month, a Great Gray
was spotted in New York, the first one documented there in almost a decade. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein was there when it happened:


Ornithologist Gerry Smith had invited me to see some of the best raptor habitat in northern New
York. We took off in his cluttered Saturn wagon.


“Here we go!…” (sound of engine turning on)


Gerry wears a beat up canvas hat, green sweatshirt, and always has one hand on his binoculars.
He started birdwatching when he was 13 as a sort of therapy.


“My father passed away when I was 15, but he was terminally ill, and I needed an escape, you
know, obviously as a 13 year-old kid I didn’t know that, but I got hooked, and the rest, as they
say, is history.”


More than 40 years later, he’s never had a job not related to birds. And he’s in his element
cruising the back roads of Upstate New York.


These farm fields are near the St. Lawrence River. They’re ideal for hawks and owls. They’re
grassy with occasional tree stands. And they don’t get as much snow as other parts of the state.
So birds can snag the mice and voles they live on all winter long.


In no time, Gerry’s spotting raptors. There’s a hawk perched in a twisted elm…


“Yep, it’s a Red-tailed Hawk and I think it’s got prey because it’s bending down like it’s eating.”


A rough-legged hawk soars above us, black and white plumage glowing in the sun.


“The bird was just lofting along.”


A Short-eared Owl glides past a farmhouse.


“Look how that is flying. It’s flying like a big fruit bat. Cutting left across the hay bales, coming
toward the house, above the house now, and drifting left.”


Smith’s also seen a snowy owl this year. But still no sign of the Great Gray owl.


The Great Gray usually lives in the far northern forests of Canada. But this year it has flown
south to the upper Great Lakes region by the thousands. Conservation biologist Jim Duncan is a
Great Gray Owl expert with the province of Manitoba. He says the phenomenon happens
cyclically, when the Great Gray’s main food source – the meadow vole – becomes scarce.


“It’s a regular migration. It’s like a robin migrating in response to food availability, except in the
case of the Great Gray Owl, it’s a longer period of time. It’s three to five years.”


Gerry Smith’s still waiting for the Great Gray in New York. It’s been spotted just across the St.
Lawrence River in Canada.


“There’s a single Great Gray Owl on Amherst Island, but not one, as far as we know, has made it
into northern New York despite the fact that a whole lot of us have been looking.”


Now, I know you’re going to call that easy foreshadowing. But believe it or not, just an hour
later, Gerry pulls the car over, grabs his binoculars, and peers at something big perched on a tree.


“We have the first Great Gray Owl that’s made it across the border. I’ll be a son of a gun. That is
so…Now I’m very enthusiastic. Hey, I’m gonna set up my scope.”


While Gerry unpacks the telescope, a raven flies to a branch just above the owl and tries to scare
it away. Birders call it “mobbing.”


“Now don’t you mob that owl, you fiend. I think that’s what he’s thinking of doing. Watch this.”


The owl holds its ground, and Gerry gets it in the telescope’s sights.


“That is so cool. It’s not facing us, it’s back is to us, but take a look, that shape is very
distinctive.”


It’s slate gray with some brown and white, round head, stocky body, as big or bigger than the
raven.


“This has been…oh, the owl just hooted. It’s a very low guttural hoot, something like a horned
owl, only deeper.”


Just then, the owl’s finally had enough. It takes flight and drifts slow and low to a stand of trees,
likely its roost. Gerry jots down the GPS coordinates and we get back in the car.


“Well, sir, we’ll finish the route and head back, but we have had undoubtedly the high point of
the day. That’s the high point of my winter.”


This Great Gray Owl migration is the biggest on record. Biologist Jim Duncan says it’s a chance
for all eager birders to help science.


“People have a real opportunity to contribute to our knowledge of the species, be they farmers,
housewives, commuters. They don’t have to be scientists.”


You do have to be respectful, though, if you want to report Great Gray sightings to wildlife
officials. Stay off private land, don’t make noise, and keep your distance. And enjoy a rare
opportunity to see a Great Gray visitor from the North.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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Eagle Soaring Off Endangered Species List

  • Researcher climbing up to the eagles’ nest. A pair of eaglets are nesting there. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

The American Bald Eagle is expected to come off the endangered species list soon. Once a victim of hunting and pollution, the eagles are rebounding, but scientists say monitoring must continue, for the sake of the eagles and the sake of the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

The American Bald Eagle is expected to come off the endangered species
list soon. Once a victim of hunting and pollution, the eagles are
rebounding, but scientists say monitoring must continue, for the sake
of the eagles and the sake of the environment. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:


If you’re looking at all, it’s hard to miss the bald eagles here. The
majestic birds glide overhead, or silently perch on a waterfront tree.
Their nests – made of branches – fill the treetops – sometimes ten feet
across, close to the lakes of Northern Minnesota’s Voyageurs National
Park.


Twenty years ago you might have been hard pressed to spot America’s
national symbol. Park Biologist Lee Grim says, it was obvious that
eagles were struggling.


“We saw how some of these birds were ill, and sick, and they had avian
pox and things. Something was keeping them from being healthy.”


An eagle found here in 1989 had the highest blood concentration ever
found of contaminants like the chemical PCB.


“So, we wanted to know why is that up here in Northern Minnesota, in
the middle of a beautiful, you know, almost wilderness area.”


It’s still a mystery how industrial chemicals like PCB’s get here, but
we do know what’s hurt the bald eagles in the past. The insecticide
DDT made bird eggs fragile – more likely to break under an eagles
weight than hatch. And Grim says DDT was all over the place. It was
sprayed on the region’s forests to kill insects like the spruce
budworm.


“DDT is pretty much everywhere, it has been, you know. And it’s a
pretty long lived chemical.”


At the top of the food chain, chemicals like DDT accumulate in the
eagle’s bodies. Sick eagles can indicate a poisoned environment. To
test the environment, you test the eagles.


(snd of climbing)


A naturalist is scaling 90-feet up one of the park’s White Pine trees
to the huge nest at the top. The parent eagles circle overhead –
noisily upset. There’s a pair of hatchlings – fuzzy, beaky, and
surprisingly big 8-week old bald eagles. They have bright yellow feet,
with shiny black, and what will become very dangerous talons. Soon,
one’s squirming in an orange bag, and lowered into the hands of
graduate students Faith Wiley and Katie Parmentier.


(snd of students talking about baby eagle)


In minutes, the young female is back up; short a few feathers for
mercury testing; and a little blood for other chemical tests. There’s
a pair of metal bands riveted around her ankles.


Bill Bowerman is an environmental toxicologist from Clemson University.
His testing proves that chemicals like DDT and PCB’s are slowly going
away, but chemicals were only part of the problems for bald eagles.
Man was another problem. It took decades to get people to stop
shooting eagles; or to catch them accidentally in beaver traps, but
it’s better now.


“It’s evident, when I go out to landowners that have eagle nests on
their property, that they know how to manage their eagles; how to keep
people away; and how to protect that eagle during that critical nesting
period.”


It’s believed there were once half a million bald eagles in North
America. As people spread, by the 1950’s, bald eagles nearly vanished.
In the lower 48 states, the last few hung on in places like the Great
Lakes.


In Voyageurs Park, bald eagle numbers have jumped from seven nesting
pairs in 1973, to 28 pairs today. There are more than 7-thousand
breeding pairs nation wide, but there are always new threats. One of
the nation’s first victim’s to West Nile disease was the bald eagle in
New York area zoos. Bowerman says several pair are missing now in
Michigan, and there are always new chemicals. Traces of poly
brominated flame retardants are doubling in the Great Lakes basin every
3 to 5 years. Bowerman says the chemical industry needs strict
monitoring.


“As long as we maintain our vigilance about the environmental toxicants
that are being created each year, we should be having the eagles
protected.”


Bowerman supports de-listing, but doesn’t want the birds in the
predicament they were twenty years ago. An official announcement of
the bald eagle’s de-listing is expected later this year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Kelleher.

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Birders Flock to Hawk Mountain

Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:

Transcript

Each fall, about thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles
in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand
people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer
look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:


“Those of you haven’t found the osprey, it’s over there at owl’s head, naked eye here to
the right.”


On a clear day, the view from atop Hawk Mountain stretches for more than fifty miles.
But on this particularly hazy Saturday afternoon, bird-watchers are pushing their
binoculars and telescopes to the limits.


“Well, we’re making them out there, they’re coming in. It’s like you just gotta wait ’til
they get a little closer than what they typically do. They’ve been popping out of clouds
and haze all day for us.”


Doug Wood is a volunteer at Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania. This afternoon,
he’s the official bird counter.


“We’re basically taking a lot of field information. Wind, weather, temperature, cloud
cover, wind direction. And then we’re basically monitoring the birds’ species, age, sex,
and recording it every hour.


“Look! An Osprey! And then fade to scene change.”


Researchers at Hawk Mountain have been keeping records of osprey and other migratory
raptors for more than seventy years, making it the oldest monitoring station in the world.


In the early twentieth century, hunters would shoot thousands of birds from the
mountainside each year. Today, people travel from all over the world to shoot birds with
their cameras.


Matt Wong came all the way from New Zealand to study at the sanctuary.


“Hawk Mountain is internationally renowned as a hawk watch site. And also a place
where big research actually happens. Now, not many of the locals around Pennsylvania
actually realize this, but it’s actually huge on the international scene. It’s world
recognized, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”


In Wong’s country, there are only two species of raptors. In America, he’s had a chance
to study dozens of varieties.


But even with so many different species populating North America, many people still
think of them as strangers or sometimes even as monsters.


“I still get, amazingly to me, a lot of people that think that these birds are out to get us.”


Volunteer Bob Owens has spent the last 20 years doing education programs at Hawk
Mountain.


“If you intrude into their territory when they have young in the nest, or something like
that, yeah, they’re probably going to chase you. As far as them killing babies and taking
them from baby carriages, this is all old wives tales. This just does not happen.”


Owens runs a small farm for a living, where he says hawks and barn owls help keep
rodents under control. But in a larger sense, Owens says there’s a lot people can learn
from these birds.


“Any three and a half pound bird that can apply four hundred pounds of pressure with its
talons is built to do what they’re doing. They are at the top of the food chain. And that’s
the other big thing that it shows us. It just opens up a door here as to all the reasons the
birds are either dropping or rising in population. What are we doing?”


Owens says in the seventy years researchers at Hawk Mountain have been counting birds,
they’ve seen populations rise and fall. Hawks and eagles are hardy birds. But even the
most successful predators can fall victim to environmental change.


Keith Bildstein is the sanctuary’s director of conservation programs. He says raptors are
like sensitive tools, telling researchers when something’s wrong with an ecosystem.


“Birds of prey are excellent biological indicators. In the middle of the last century they
told us that we were having a problem with our misuse of organochlorine pesticides,
specifically DDT. Today, they’re leading us in explorations of the spread of West Nile
Virus.”


Bildstein says because raptors are at the top of the food chain, when their numbers fall
it’s a pretty good sign that their food source is dwindling, their habitat could be
disappearing, or air quality might be suffering.


But for most of Hawk Mountain’s visitors, the birds are more than barometers of a
healthy ecosystem. According to birder Judy Higgs, they’re beautiful creatures,
especially when viewed from a great height.


“These birds are just majestic. And the other thing is that they go so far. You know,
some of these birds are going to South America!”


Higgs first climbed the mountain in 1970, when she was a student at nearby Kutztown
University. Before moving out of state, Higgs used to come to Hawk Mountain daily…
she stills visits on weekends whenever she can.


“I used to do work in the morning, come here in the afternoon, go home, and finish my
work at night so I could be here.”


By day’s end, Higgs and her fellow birdwatchers count more than 600 raptors. During
the fall season, as many as 70-thousand predatory birds, from vultures to falcons might
pass by on their way to distant points.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.

Biologist Fosters Bald Eagle’s Return

In the 1960’s, the bald eagle was in trouble. There were only about 4
hundred birds living in the U-S And in some states, pollution had wiped
them out altogether. But the bald eagle has made an impressive comeback.
The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced plans to remove it from
the endangered species list. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports, it’s good news for the scientists who fought to save this
bird: