Happy New Year to all and I trust you have enjoyed a terrific Christmas season. My photography New Years resolution was to get some decent shots of three owl species that we don’t often see in Southern Ontario…..a Snowy Owl, a Great Gray Owl and a Northern Hawk Owl. Fortunately I was able to cross the Northern Hawk Owl off the list after driving about an hour north of Oshawa last Friday morning. Leaving before sunrise I met up with my friend Arni – make sure you check out his website Nature’s Wonders in Pixels – and we were able to watch and photograph a Northern Hawk Owl for three or four hours.
The Northern Hawk Owl is a medium-sized owl (~16″ long with a 28″ wingspan) that typically lives in the Boreal Forest regions of Northern Canada where it feeds primarily on small mammals like mice and voles, however in the winter months when food becomes scarce they will also eat other birds. Although Northern Hawk Owls are non-migratory the lack of food availability during the winter months in the north displaces the owls southward which is what brings a few them to Southern Ontario this time of the year.
Northern Hawk Owls have amazing eye sight, being able to spot prey up to 800 meters away. They can also find and seize mice & voles under one foot of snow, which is truly remarkable. Northern Hawk Owls are monogamous and usually nest in tree cavities although they will take over nests of other large birds. They don’t construct their own nests. Both parents look after feeding the young however the male feeds the female for the week before she lays her eggs and for the 25-30 days she incubates them.
The Hawk Owl gets its name because it flies much like a hawk, low with quick shallow wing beats and gliding. It can also hover. Interestingly, they have the longest tails of any North American owl which gives them the look of a hawk.
Perhaps because Northern Hawk Owls live in the north and don’t see people very often, they show little fear of man and are surprisingly approachable. They seem to be very inquisitive and are birds with many different facial expressions which I’ve tried to illustrate in the following images.
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All of these images were taken with a 500/f4 lens with a 1.4 x TC for an effective focal length of 700mm. If you are interested in seeing other owls you can find them in the Owl Gallery
I trust you have had a wonderful Christmas Season and are looking forward to an exciting New Year. It’s hard to believe 2011 is upon us…..where has the time gone? It seems like yesterday we were all in a flap over Y2K!
From a birding point of view winter is a great time to be out with a camera as there are birds around that we can’t see any other time of the year. The Great Gray, Snowy and Northern Hawk Owls may be seen not too far from Oshawa and plenty of winter ducks & gulls can be seen along the shores of Lake Ontario.
The Great Blue Heron is not a bird normally seen after the weather cools and the ponds start freezing over as it makes hunting for their favourite food, which is fish, very difficult so they are forced to turn to small animals such as mice, voles and chipmunks. By this time of year most Herons have found their winter homes in Florida!
Here is a local straggler (taken at the Lynde Shores Conservation Area) gingerly walking on the ice looking for an opening to fish.
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Great Blue Herons are the largest North American Heron, and prefer wetlands, marshes & ponds to live in however they are also very popular around fisheries in the south which was originally thought to be a big problem for fish farmers. Interestingly, studies have shown that the Herons typically eat the sickly fish that swim near the surface and would not have been productive anyway. So the Great Blue Herons actually do the fish farmer a favour. Herons normally eat fairly small fish (as shown below), however they refuse to throw away any big catches they make and have actually been known to choke to death trying to swallow a large fish.
Great Blue Herons usually nest in large groups called Rookeries, or if exclusively Herons, Heronries. They breed annually and the female lays two or three eggs having a gestation time of about 28 days. Adult Herons feed their young regurgitated fish and when adults are feeding their young they ingest at least four times as much food as normal. Herons often pair for life and during breeding season they spend most of their time working on the nests and feeding the young ones.
Here is a nesting pair taken this past spring in Florida.
And a proud parent!
And finally an in flight shot, which is surprisingly easy to take as the Herons are slow fliers and often cruise along close to the water providing a nice pose. This portrait was taken standing at the end of our dock at the cottage and the Heron was actually below the level of the camera at a distance of about twenty feet.
Saturday was a great day to get out with the camera for a couple of hours and I was excited to find one of our smallest owls, the Northern Saw-Whet Owl whose scientific name is Aegolius acadicus. Acadicus is Latin for ‘from Acadia’ referring to the area in Canada where this little owl was first collected. Saw-Whets are quite small (20 cm in length) and very cute however they are aggressive hunters who although preferring voles & mice will also eat song birds, large insects and even amphibians. They often take more food than they can consume and store the extra in trees where it is frozen until needed. When hungry the Saw-Whet will ‘incubate’ the frozen food, just like it would an egg, to thaw it before eating.
Northern Saw-Whets are most commonly seen in South Eastern Ontario from October to early December and then again from February until mid-March. They are usually found relatively low down (6-12′) in heavily covered coniferous trees and almost always close to the trunk. For these reasons they are well hidden and its hard to spot them. From a photographic perspective they are usually very difficult to capture well because the view is normally obstructed and the light less than ideal.
Sleeping Beauty
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The next image is included to show how relatively large the feet & talons of the Saw-Whet are….an efficient hunter!
Owls cough up pellets that contain the indigestible parts of their prey (usually bones and fur or feather bits). I was fortunate enough to capture this Saw-Whet getting rid of a pellet.
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If you would like to see some more owls, you can find them in the Owl Gallery
Here are a couple of other birds from last Saturday, a Northern Cardinal and a Black Capped Chickadee.
Now that the recent website changes have been for the most part completed, we can finally start posting some new photographic material!
The Fox Sparrow, Passerella iliaca, is so named because of its rich reddish-brown colour and is one of our largest sparrows 17-19 cm in length. In these south-eastern parts of Ontario the Fox Sparrow is only seen for a week or two every fall as it is heading to the very Northern reaches of the province to nest. It’s a hard to bird to see, not only because it doesn’t stay in this area very long, but it prefers lurking in impenetrable thick brushy habitat where it forages on the ground for seeds, berries and any invertebrates it may find. They are quite aggressive as they scrape the ground for food which is often a noisy process. That along with their unique song makes them one of those frustrating birds you often can hear but don’t see. The Fox Sparrow usually nests on the ground or low in a thick bush and the female lays three to four eggs which she then incubates for about twelve days before they hatch.
The following images of a Fox Sparrow were taken about two weeks ago and I was very pleased to find these birds out in the open and even sitting on a perch. I did include two shots of a Fox Sparrow in their typical position on the ground. When shooting birds on the ground it is very important to get the camera down at the birds level, which often means lying down & getting dirty however the nice low angle makes for a much better image. Of the two ground shots below, one was taken kneeling down while the other was taken lying down. Have a close look at the two shots and you will immediately see which is the better image. So next time you take a picture of anything that’s on the ground remember to get down low yourself. It may be hard work but it’s always worth the effort.
The migration to another software platform is proving to be a real challenge, however it is not yet an insurmountable one. The progress is slow but steady and there isn’t too much pressure as the old website remains online until the end of the month. The open source WordPress software is robust, giving full access to the code for developers and yet has relatively simple graphical interfaces for the neophytes like me to get up and running relatively quickly. I’ve also subscribed to Elegant Themes who have developed a vast array of web site & blog themes that provide lots of customization and great looks. WordPress also offers thousands of plug-ins and widgets that can make your website accomplish almost anything you want it to. It looks like the biggest hurdle yet to solve is development of the gallery, which will be a challenge as the number of images needing to be efficiently cataloged is huge and its not as simple as importing them from one website to another.
All this time spent in front of the computer today has reminded me that I should have paid more attention in those computer science classes many years ago. What meager skills I have are very rusty, which is a perfect segue to a couple of shots of a Rusty Blackbird taken last week at Cranberry Marsh. These birds are usually on the ground so it was a treat to actually get some shots of them perched.
After much investigation, I’ve decided to make a radical change to the website and blog in order to make them function more seamlessly together and also develop a more professional web presence. This change will take place over the next few weeks however as with all websites it will remain a work in progress as we continually strive to make it better. Although the appearance of the website will change dramatically, the ‘back end’ will change even more as we move to a new web hosting company, Bluehost, and re-write the website and blog using WordPress which is a big change from our old template driven flash site. Although the flash site had many advantages and was easy to set up, WordPress offers far more flexibility and the opportunity to build a comprehensive website to best showcase our photography. I stand at the bottom of a huge learning curve, but it is an exciting one. Please stand by as we transition to the new site and any suggestions or comments you may have are more than welcome.
This post is actually the first using WordPress, however all the posts from the old Blogger site have been successfully imported into the new blog….and now to switch gears and see if the image linking works I’d like to show you two little birds from last week’s trip down to Hall’s Road in Ajax. The first is a White Breasted Nuthatch which is a resident of the area who provided a classic Nuthatch pose.
The second shot is of a female Eastern Towhee which are only seen around this area for a week or so every spring & fall as they pass through during their migration.
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