Today started out slow, and we only had one snipe by 3:00. Most of the habitat was too dry, even though part of our township was a flooded lowland; we just didn't have any survey transects in that area. Waterfowl were abundant, mainly northern shovelers, gadwall, and mallards. We also saw more flocks of greater-white fronted geese today. On our second to last survey of the day, I started spotting individual snipe in a soybean field. They were just barely active, bobbing up and down, and blending in so well with their surroundings. Their activity almost went unnoticed with the breeze that was kicking up leaves, making their movement blend in. I had one snipe alone, and then three together, and a little further down, I spotted two in my binoculars. After focusing in on the area around them, the ground started to move with the stripes of other snipe, lurking from row to row, and sometimes darting from vegation line to the next, while grabbing a quick bite on the edge of water that was pooling in the ruts. When looking for snipe, you really have to tell yourself to focus on things that may not be what they seem. The stripes of a snipes back appear to be blades of grass or old crops, as does the beak when poking out from view, connected to what appears to be a lump of mud. The snipe slowly creeped about, feeding, while only a handfull were just resting. In total there were 39 snipe in this field, and 35 of them were in this last cluster on the low end of the field.
In the flooded area of our township, we found this nutria while turning around from an inaccesible road. He is no Punxatawney Phil, but I guess he will have to do for Groundhog's day. It was sunny, so I think he saw his shadow....
nutria...invasive but cute.
We also saw this juvenile Harlan's hawk, and this pair of red-tails, that watched us survey for awhile before fleeing.
juvenile Harlan's hawk
red-tailed hawks
On a sad note, we found this juvenile cooper's hawk dead on a telephone pole. For some reason, this pole is covered in mesh, and I suspect it had something to do with conducting electricity through the bird. Unfortunately his talons got caught in the mesh, and like 3 red-tails I saw in NE and KS, got stuck to the pole. This body looked to be at least a week old. If anyone knows why this pole is covered in mesh, I would be curious to know.
juvenile cooper's hawk
wire mesh
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Hi Anna,
ReplyDeleteI did a quick web search and found the following as a possible explanation for the mesh-covered pole:
"Wire mesh is the most widely-used method to prevent damage to utility poles caused by Woodpeckers."
Here's a link to the article:
http://www.ericlwalters.org/harnesswalters2004.pdf
Great blog posts! Hope your better luck continues.. and Congratulations on the AZ job!
Mark Markiewicz
Wow, I had no idea. The strange thing is, it was only on this one pole, in about 25 that we checked close to it. Woodpeckers will obviously just do damage to other nearby poles. Also, I think a persistent woodpecker would still try to peck holes in the wood. Who knows, maybe it was a test pole. I just emailed the power company for the area with questions about the mesh; I'll let you know what they say!
ReplyDelete