Chukars of Antelope Island

 The Chukar, also known as the Chukar Partridge, is a species first introduced into North America from India in 1893.  Since then they have flourished, particularly in the Great Basin of the American west where the largely feed on the seeds and leaves of cheat grass.  Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake provides perfect habitat for them and they abound there.    Chukar calling In the springtime there are times when the hillsides sound like the island has been overrun by domestic chickens from the calling of the Chukars.      Preening on a rock perch Chukars are very prone to perch on rocks – especially in the spring.  While there they call to other birds and preen.  Sentinel birds of a flock also prefer elevated perches while on lookout, which of course is ideal for the bird photographer.      Parent with chicks And here’s one of the reasons there’s so many Chukars on Antelope Island – the breed prodigiously.  Clutch size can be up to 21 eggs!     Chukar covey on boulder In late summer and fall Chukars often congregate in large groups.  These coveys tend to consist of adults and their offspring but several family groups may mix together.      Preparing to jump off the rock Like some other upland game birds, Chukars are often reluctant to fly.  They will typically jump down from their perch and scurry through the vegetation to hide.  They are very fast runners and easily outrun a human on foot.     Rock hopping  I’m often tempted to call these birds “rockhoppers” because of their tendency…

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Northern Harrier Struggling to Expel a Pellet

  Except for owls, all raptors have a crop for excess food storage.  The parts of the prey that are indigestible are formed into a pellet in the gizzard and then regurgitated out of the mouth.  These pellets contain hair, feathers, exoskeletons and sometimes (in the case of owls especially) the bones of their prey.  I’ve noticed with many raptor species that expelling a pellet can be a difficult process, bordering on traumatic.  Such was the case with this juvenile male Northern Harrier. I was watching this bird through my lens but not planning on getting any quality photos because the bird was strongly side-lit.   But when he began trying to expel a pellet I couldn’t resist clicking away.  Because of the side-lighting and relatively soft focus the images are not of high quality but I thought the behavior was interesting enough for a blog post anyway.  All of the photos in this series are posted in the order that they were taken.    The beginning of the struggle to expel the pellet    Here the harrier is shaking his head from side to side to try to dislodge the pellet   But with the effort he begins to lose his balance on the perch    And almost falls  over backward    He begins to recover    And then falls forward    Begins to recover again    Still recovering    Recovered, but still with the pellet stuck in his mouth    And finally the pellet has been expelled.  As luck would have it my buffer had filled up and I missed…

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Horned Larks Blowin’ in the Wind

 I have particularly fond memories of Horned Larks from growing up on our northwestern Montana family farm near Cut Bank, Montana.  The fallow barley fields and adjacent short grass prairies abounded with them.  But since I began photographing birds I’ve had very few opportunities with them here in Utah – until last week when had a grand time with multiple cooperative larks in the foothills of the Stansbury Mountains.   And yes, the wind was blowing briskly – a perfect situation to remind me of those Montana larks!    Singing in the wind The  wind seemed to inspire the males to sing as they all seemed to be singing up a storm on this day, despite the early February date.      Blown off the perch While it may look like this male is taking flight, in reality it was being blown off the perch by a sudden gust of wind.  If it had been taking off, both wings would be extended.       Wind- disheveled  feathers  In this photo, the wind updraft from the rock perch blew a perfect semicircle of his upper chest feathers into his black neck ring, making him look pretty silly.      Very obvious “horns” This photo shows the “horns” (occipital feather tufts) that are characteristic of the species.  The horns are found on both sexes but they are much less obvious in the female and rarely erected.  This frontal view of the head shows the horns most distinctly when they are raised.     Horns laying almost flat At times the horns are laid flat against the…

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Bald Eagle Eating a Fish in Mid-air

I’ve often seen Bald Eagles carrying fish but never one actually consuming the meal while flying.  Until yesterday, when I got some photos of the behavior.  Thanks to Mia for calling my attention to it or I may have missed the whole thing.   Eating carp in flight At first I wondered if this eagle was only killing the carp with a lethal bite as I have seen other raptors do in-flight, but then I remembered that it was already dead when it was picked up by the eagle.  These fish were killed by refuge personnel (they use rotenone) in order to prevent damage to the wetlands done by these invasive fish.      Falling fish scales  The four photos in this sequence are in the order that they happened.  Here you can see scales and debris falling from the carp as the eagles very sharp bill does its damage.     Part of the head, including gill flap (operculum) being torn off  I suspect that the reason this eagle chose to consume at least part of its meal in flight has to do with competition.  There weren’t many fish available and lots of hungry gulls and eagles to squabble over them.  If an eagle tried to eat a fish on the ice (the ponds were mostly frozen) other birds would usually challenge them for the meal.  Even gulls were at times very aggressive toward the eagles.  On several occasions I observed gulls biting the tails of the eagles while both were in flight.  Perhaps this eagle figured it had…

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Handedness in Short-eared Owls

Last summer Mia and I spent four days photographing a family of Short-eared Owls in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  There were two baby owls in a nest under a sagebrush guarded over constantly by the female while the male hunted and brought in food.   That food in every instance that we saw was a vole (mouse-like rodent).  Many of the photos I took were of the male in flight, returning to the area of the nest with a vole in his talons. Male with vole It wasn’t until I returned home and began processing the images that I began to notice that the male always seemed to carry the vole in its left foot.  This piqued my curiosity about something I’d never considered – do some birds show “handedness” – the preference of using one limb as opposed to the other?  Could this male owl, or perhaps all Short-eared Owls, be left-“handed”?   Once again, carrying the vole in the left foot So I decided to do an inventory of my images of these birds to see what would turn up.  After culling my photos of these owls from this trip I had 271 photos to go through.  Most of those were flight shots of the male and in more than half of them he was carrying a vole.  My goal was to try to determine how many “sorties” he made with a vole that I had photographed (I often got multiple shots of the male with the same vole in the same sortie) and determine what percentage of the time he…

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The Bald Eagle and the Fish Hook

  Last week while looking for Golden Eagles to photograph in the Promontory area at the north end of the Great Salt Lake we came across a group of adult and juvenile Bald Eagles feeding on a sheep carcass.  The light angle was bad for photography but we couldn’t resist taking a few shots anyway.    Bald Eagle with fish hook in bill We were quite close to one adult and when it flew off I instinctively fired off a few shots, despite the poor light.  When I got home and looked carefully at those images I could clearly see this gold fish hook embedded in the base of the eagle’s bill.  This bird was apparently feeding normally and I suspect that the hook will not cause it significant problems while it’s in Utah for the winter feeding on carrion.  However I am concerned that, because of the position of the hook in front of the eyes, the hook will interfere with effective forward vision for fishing after it heads north in March.  I hope it falls out or rusts off before that although I’m not sure if “gold” fish hooks rust at all. An internet search shows that fish hooks are an ongoing problem for both Bald Eagles and Ospreys.  Ron

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