I needed to write this.

An Obituary for our Friend “Coop”

Hawk, Cooper’s- Taken suddenly from this life on Saturday, March 20, 2010 in his first year. Beloved feathered friend of bird watchers and bird lovers everywhere. Coop was well known and loved for his silly front-yard antics. His favourite hobbies included hanging out in the shrubs and bushes, strutting his stuff across the porch and lawn and playing hide and seek with House Sparrows in the brush pile. Coop provided us with a close up view of his life and habits and we would like to thank him for that. Dear friend, you are missed. We hope you are soaring high in sunny skies somewhere.

Other updates/news

The Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk returned on Thursday last week and again on the weekend. He perches in the trees quite close to the house, so we get a good look at him. He waits there and waits there and all the smaller birds will work their way back to the feeders and the trees and don't seem to mind him too much. However, the squirrels will definitely freeze in spot. In fact, on Saturday, we managed to get a picture of a squirrel frozen on the same tree the hawk choose to land!







Then, on Saturday we were doing some yard clean up and I was raking up some leaves while Dave checked out and cleaned up all the nesting boxes. Starlings have been making a show of going in and out of the boxes, so we wanted to make sure they weren't building any nests. All of the boxes were empty, so we think it must be displays of territory etc on the part of the Starlings.

Anyway, as I was raking, I pulled up a black/greyish lump of fur. My first thought- could it be an owl pellet??? I called Dave over and I felt around for bones etc that I knew should be in it. Well, deep in the middle of the pellet, there were the bones! A small jaw bone and then what might be some miscellaneous bones. I'm not sure if the entire pellet is composed of one meal or multiple meals. It was pretty cool and exciting to know that at some point there's been an owl in the tree, probably sitting quietly, throwing up pellets. Maybe that's not the most romantic description, but we like it! We haven't heard/seen any Great Horned Owls this year and we usually do in Jan/Feb. We may have just missed them. It's hard to say as this seems to be an off year for many of the winter birds.






Last night we were invited to attend the Bird Study Group of the Hamilton and area Naturalist Club. It was a very informative meeting and we met some very nice people. We plan to take out a membership for the fall (there is only one more meeting this year). We were able to connect with George Holland and sign up for the Chimney Swift monitoring program (SwiftWatch Ontario), so we're excited to participate in the training for that and then the monitoring process. Yay! It is a very large and active group, with many events going on. I think we will learn quite a bit from joining.

http://www.hamiltonnature.org/birds/birdstudygroup.htm

Tonight Dave and I are receiving recognition from Oakville Green and the Oakville Mayor for pictures we submitted to the Oakville Green photography contest. We're excited to attend tonight's event as well. I submitted a few pics from each of us, so I'm not actually sure what the winning photos are.

And finally, the MNR officer is coming out to collect the Cooper's Hawk from us tomorrow. I hope to have more information to share on that soon.

Project Feeder Watch Tallies for the last two weeks.

I'm starting with the March 20th count as that was much more exciting than the week before. The first day of spring greeted us with 27 species! Not all were at the feeders, so they are not all submitted with the count. A few we observed flying above the house- including Canada Goose, Pileated Woodpecker, and Killdeer. We also heard, but did not see, the Northern Flicker.


March 20, 2010
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Mourning Dove 8
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
Downy Woodpecker 3
Hairy Woodpecker 3
Northern Shrike 1
Blue Jay 4
American Crow 2
Black-capped Chickadee 5
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 3
Brown Creeper 1
American Robin 2
European Starling 7
American Tree Sparrow 2
Song Sparrow 2
Dark-eyed Junco 3
Northern Cardinal 6
Red-winged Blackbird 35
Common Grackle 10
Brown-headed Cowbird 17
House Finch 3
American Goldfinch 13
House Sparrow 9






From top to bottom: A Grackle all puffed out, a Song Sparrow (first of the season!), Male Red-Winged Blackbirds, a Northern Shrike (which we are told is a very nice find in our area this time of year).

March 13, 2010
Canada Goose 5
Cooper's Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Mourning Dove 9
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
Downy Woodpecker 3
Hairy Woodpecker 0
Blue Jay 3
American Crow 4
Black-capped Chickadee 5
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
American Robin 2
European Starling 18
Dark-eyed Junco 6
Northern Cardinal 5
Red-winged Blackbird 28
Common Grackle 21
Brown-headed Cowbird 6
House Finch 6
American Goldfinch 45
House Sparrow 12

RIP Coper's Hawk

Terrible news. Today, Dave and I found a MURDERED Cooper's Hawk. Yes, it looks like he's been shot in the chest. I called the MNR and they are coming to investigate. We took pictures, collected his remains and they will be here tomorrow. An otherwise fanastic birding weekend has been overshadowed by the loss of one of our favourites. We had just remarked earlier this morning that we hadn't seen our Coop yesterday and now we know why. I don't understand why someone would hurt an innocent bird this way. Words are just not enough.



Scroll down for pics, but they aren't pretty...

Owl Cam

Visit this link to watch the action: http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox



http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/story/San-Marcos-barn-owl-Molly-webcam/cXJDolwqv0embaRYeB1yeQ.cspx

Expectant Owl in San Marcos is World Famous

Reported by: San Diego 6 News Team Last Update: 3/17 2:43 pm

SAN MARCOS, CA - A worldwide audience is watching an owl in San Marcos as she tends to six eggs that are about to hatch in her nest.

Molly, the barn owl, is attracting an audience of thousands who are watching via a Webcam mounted near her nest.

Carlos and Donna Royal say more than 100,000 people have visited their Web site to watch Molly tend to her soon-to-be chicks.

The Royal family blogs about what the owl is doing and answers questions from people, mostly about what she eats.

Comments from people watching the feed sometimes are so numerous they fly by before there is time to read them.

One moment that created a lot of excitement was when Molly's mate, McGee, brought her dinner into the nest.

It was a rabbit.

"I thought my kids would freak, but they loved it," said one viewer.

"My kids were really quiet," said another.

A meter at the bottom of the live video shows viewers how many other people are also watching at the moment. It was 4,184 viewers as of this writing.

My best hawk pics to date!

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day! A hawk landed in the tree and I was able to get quite a few pictures of it (mostly from the back, which was helpful in getting shots of the tail to help make an ID). It then moved to another tree that was even closer and was facing me so I could get pictures of the chest, which is another key to making an ID. At first I thought it might be a Cooper's Hawk, but it seemed a bit too big for that and it had too much white on it's chest. I really wasn't sure what it was. I sent some pics to Dave and he thought it might be a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. I posted the pics on whatbird.com to ask for help and help arrived! It's such a great site with so many friendly and helpful people. Final consensus?? Dave was correct. A juvenile Red-tailed hawk!
http://www.whatbird.com/forums/forums/thread/143900.aspx

So how was I able to get such great pics without having the hawk take off? Well, it was an accident on my part. I just happened to see it land in the tree. The only reason it moved closer was because I was near it's possible lunch. We have a trap set up to catch House Sparrows and it's placed on the front lawn, in the shade, near a shrub. Sometimes other birds get in there (it's a live trap, so no innocent birds get hurt. We check it regularly and release them accordingly). Anyway, a male cardinal was in there, so the hawk was moving closer and was probably trying to figure out when to make his move. I went over to the trap and the hawk moved up a few branches. I let the cardinal out and he flew off to safety.

While we see Red-taileds quite often, it was pretty exciting to get some nice clear shots and to have a juvenile in the yard for so long.

The last known Wolverine is no longer with us.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/22844519/detail.html

Only Michigan Wolverine Found Dead
Hikers Found Wolverine Dead In Ditch

POSTED: Monday, March 15, 2010 UPDATED: 2:08 pm EDT March 15, 2010

SANILAC COUNTY, Mich. -- Michigan's only known wolverine was found dead Saturday in Sanilac County, near where it was first spotted in 2004.

A pair of hikers found the female wolverine in a ditch near a beaver dam in the Minden City State Game Area.

A Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment said it appeared to have died of natural causes, but a necropsy will be performed at a DNRE lab at Michigan University.

The Department has said it plans to eventually mount the animal for display in the Bay City State Game Area.

A group of coyote hunters initially spotted the animal in Ubly, about 90 miles north of Detroit in February 2004 -- nearly 200 years after the species was last seen in the state that uses the small but ferocious animal as its unofficial nickname.

The wolverine, a member of the weasel family that grows to about 25 pounds but is fierce enough to fight off bears and wolves, once ranged across the northern and western United States. It is now limited mostly to northern Canada, Idaho and Alaska, with sightings in a few other states, but its last confirmed sightings in Michigan were by fur traders in the late 1700s and early 1800s.