AMB Class #12: Raptors

Oh Raptor Day!  Callooh!  Callay!  (All due apologies to Lewis Carroll.)

Our first post-holiday-break unit in the AMB program is Raptors, and boy is it timely.  On my last CBC (Christmas Bird Count) in the Barr Lake area, we had tons of raptors.  Tons!  Er, I mean, Tens!  

But with birds this large, it may be easy to see how their numbers might seem uber-large.

And the problem (well, MY problem) has always been how to call a large soaring bird anything other than Red-tailed Hawk?

Various friends - mentors, friends, well-meaning neighbors, etc. - have been trying to help me out by pointing out features of these large birds for some time, but the distinctions have not been sticking.  Maybe now, through the AMB program, I can get it.

One can only hope.

During class on January 6th, our raptor expert is Jeff Birek.  He's an Outreach Biologist for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory (maybe one day we can talk more about this organization, but for now, I'll just echo what Jeff told us:  it was founded in 1988 and has 45 FTEs and roughly 75 seasonal hires.  This seems like a grand thing to me:  all these people working on bird conservation issues, in addition to all the people who volunteer for RMBO).

And, like all our speakers, Jeff is clearly an expert in his field.  I am, as always, blown away by the quality of speakers this program serves up.

Jeff's first job is to define "raptor".  In the context of this unit, it means birds with hooked bills, powerful talons, and keen eyesight or good hearing.  The focus of the unit is diurnal raptors (diurnal, for people new to birdspeak, means "active during daylight hours"), so for now, we'll exclude owls.  We'll also exclude ravens, since they have pointed - not hooked - bills, and perching legs.  We'll also exclude vultures, as they may have the keen eyesight and hooked bill, but lack the powerful talons (after all, those talons aren't so necessary when your prey is served up dead).

Magnificent Frigatebird.  Sadly, not in Colorado.

After the introductory stuff - including not only the descriptions above, plus great factoids (raptors typically soar on thermal updrafts, and in the soaring, they use less energy than I use sitting here typing out a blog entry;  raptors don't migrate over water because you don't get thermals over water - with the exception of Swallow-tailed Kites who somehow *do* find thermals over water;  Magnificent Frigatebirds are the birds with the lowest wing loading of all birds, so they soar effortlessly) - we get into the meat of the thing: specific ways to ID raptors in the field.  That's a good thing, as our Saturday field trip is exactly on that point:  identifying raptors in the field.

After the lecture, to drive home the point of how difficult raptors can be to ID (it would be tough enough just to differentiate species if they did *not* have such variations as dark and light morphs), I have my own solo difficult-ID experience between our class session and our field trip.  I'm in Denver, but birding in an area that's a little sketchy - the Platte River at Globeville, where a Red-breasted Merganser has been reported.

And there, standing in the middle of the river, under an overpass, is a hawk.

I'm amazed.  This seems like crazy behavior, so I try to get around the bird for a better look but by the time I find it, it's flown and landed in a tree (more where I would expect it).


What the heck is it?  

I'm hoping for something less "usual" than a Red-tailed Hawk, so I check out every field mark I can identify.  The back has a lot of white, there is not a red tail, and there's no distinctive belly band - at least not one that i see until I later download my photos.

But still, I can't make it into anything else (try as hard as I might), and finally I send my photos off to an expert birder friend for ID.

It's a young Red-tailed Hawk.

On one hand, I'm disappointed that I didn't find something a little more rare, but on the other hand, I'm thrilled that this was the ID that I had guessed.  I'll have to wait for our field trip the coming Saturday to see a raptor that is not a Red-tailed Hawk.

And in the meantime, I'll have to keep looking for that Red-breasted Merganser.