Raptors

I'm notoriously bad at identifying raptors. Caracaras and the common vultures I get every time. Ospreys, too. Bald eagles -- the adults, at least -- are hard to miss. I can reliably make a kestrel, and I once saw a wild Aplomado falcon.

Many of the others, though, are just a jumble of talons and hooked beaks and barred-striped-spotted underparts. I'm pretty sure I've assigned many birds that didn't belong to the Red-tailed hawk clan, though I've likely misidentified far fewer Red-tailed hawks as something else.

Today at lunch I was sitting quietly at the table on our back porch, reading, when I heard a commotion at the bird feeder. I looked up to see a very noisy male cardinal. Nice. Then, I saw a grayish blur flutter across the back of the yard -- heard it too; White-winged dove, I assumed.

A minute or so later, a chunky bird landed on the fence just a dozen feet away. I glanced up, thought "dove," and went back to my book. Then it dawned on me: that was no dove. I look again, to find a smallish hawk peering back at me. The hawk sat on the fence for more than a minute, then hopped into the neighbor's photina bush, fluttered back to the top, peeked at me again, and then flew off.

The whole while I was intensely cataloguing: dark gray/black head and back, rusty barred chest, wide stripes on tail, dark beak, faint eyebrow stripe ....

As soon as the bird flew off, I dashed inside for the books. I turned first to the falcons, because of it's small size and longish tail -- and also the fact that it was hanging around my backyard. Nothing there fit the bill, so I started flipping through the pages.

As best I can tell, our visitor was a Sharp-shinned hawk, which looks much like a Cooper's hawk, only smaller. It's no surprise, then, that Sharp-shinned hawks -- winter visitors in this part of Texas -- primarily eat songbirds. I hope it doesn't too terribly often, but I'd be glad to see it again that close when I have a camera at hand.

Today's hawk was the second bird-eater to visit the neighborhood in recent weeks. Several weeks ago, on several different nights, a pair of Great horned owls held a hoot-off all across the back of the yard and into the greenbelt. It's mating season for Great-horned owls, and mating season is when they are the most vocal.

Great horned owls dine on their little cousins, Eastern screech owls, among other critters.

[Red-tailed hawk in flight, photo ©2006 Walter Siegmund, used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. Illustration of Sharp-shinned hawks in the public domain.]

Habitat #2362

You probably couldn't tell it by looking at our backyard today, on this shortest day of the year, but the little bit of work we did to modify what we inherited paid off.

In the mail a month or so ago we received a "Texas Wildscapes" Backyard Wildlife Habitat certification, a "Best of Texas Backyard Habitat" certificate of merit, and a National Wildlife Federation "Backyard Wildlife Habitat" certification.

That's a lot of paper.

It was a useful exercise, helping us think-through decisions about what to plant and where; what to take out and what to leave. But to answer my buddy Vince's question: No. There's no tax break, no monetary reward ... just the satisfaction of knowing we are deliberately inviting wildlife into our little patch of Texas.

As the winter here progresses in fits and starts, House sparrows have finally shown-up. My favorite orange-fronted woodpecker has been MIA the past few weeks, but the chickadees and titmice and doves and wrens are still about.

The maple trees dropped their leaves after a short but showy color change. The Red oak is still hanging on to its russet cover.

The newest mammal sighted in the backyard, Canis lupus familiaris (Pete, the dog), apparently has deterred ol' brer' 'possum. Ed and Maria next door are pretty happy about that.

Murder most fowl

Patrick really wants to believe it was an accident. The evidence says it was not.

There's the blood splatter: a dark stain on weathered wood, and oak leaves speckled with red.

There are the feathers: primary and secondary flight feathers and the sort of small, downy feathers found close to a plump breast.

There are the signs of a struggle: scuffed and gouged leaf litter, near the scene of the crime (Patrick's playhouse).

It appears to me that the victim was a white-winged dove, one of the dozen or so pass through the yard regularly and even roost in our oaks.

I'm no detective, but I've read plenty of mystery novels. I know that to solve this crime, I must consider three things: motive, means and opportunity.

Motive: there are a couple of possible motives; hunger is a good one, and a fat dove is a pretty tempting meal. Doves, as previously noted, also are the thugs of the perching bird world. I suppose it's possible another animal finally just got fed up and extracted bloody revenge. But let's go with the first possibility as the most likely.

Means: Dispatching a dove requires a certain quickness, as well as sharpness of both tooth and claw. It's possible the bird was caught on the roost, in which case some climbing might be involved. It's also possible that the bird was ambushed on the ground, in which case stillness and patience come into play.

Opportunity: Well, the doves are here pretty much 'round-the-clock. When they roost, they are not particularly observant. So it could have happened just about any time, but I'm betting it was under the cover of darkness.

After careful consideration, I'm ruling-out the neighbor cat. He doesn't seem particularly motivated, comes into our backyard only rarely and I've never seen him muster the energy to be interested in a bird.

The possums that visit our backyard certainly have the means and opportunity, but they too seem much more opportunistic than savage. They'd rather grub around in the ground and pick up leavings than actually hunt something.

That leaves the raccoons. Great climbers, and they usually show up in gangs, and they have excellent eyesight, sense of smell and climbing ability.

Opinions?