Birds and Nature

This afternoon I spotted this juvenile Golden Eagle being harassed by 2 Red-tailed Hawks as the eagle apparently had trespassed into the hawks territory in Penrose (nearby small town). Unfortunately they were more than 400 feet away so even with my long lens and then cropping the pic to enlarge I couldn't get the birds any larger. The hawks, (presumably a pair) while considerably smaller than the eagle, were quite brazen diving at the eagle and coming very close to it. The eagle and the hawks engaged in some amazing acrobatics for a few minutes until the eagle could head out and get away from this pair. SeEtta

This female Long-tailed Duck was found by a local birder a few days ago. I got this pic yesterday but lost the media card for 24 hrs and just refound it. This species is pretty rare in my area with the last in 2012 that I found at Brush Hollow Res . The current Long-tailed Duck has less black on it's head than the one I found 2012. Interestingly that one was found only one day in January before this one. It is not easy to see and photograph this duck as this property is private. I photographed it from the public parking lot in front but quickly lost the duck as it swam on back where not visible from the public area. SeEtta

I spotted this adult Northern Goshawk this afternoon a few miles east of Canon City in a cactus grassland area as it flew across the road in front of me. While I couldn't see field marks as I was too distant it's flying very low to the ground got my attention. When it landed in a juniper shrub about 200 feet from me I stopped my car and saw it's white eyebrow in my binoculars so grabbed my camera and quickly got off a few shots in the short time before it flew off. As I only had about 30 seconds to get pics and there was no good place to pull off the road I had to take the pics with my car running (pulled to the side of the driving lane, fortunately no traffic came by) so that added to less than great shots. But these pics clearly show the salient field marks for adult Northern Goshawk: that big white supercilium (eyebrow stripe, dark stripe through eye, dark cap, long tail, bluish grey upperparts and some broad dark but inconspicuous bands on it's grey tail ...

While the Rufous-crowned Sparrow above looks disheveled it is only because it had just been bathing in some melted snow water and drying off in the sun (on a cool, upper 30's, but sunny day). The Rufous-crowned Sparrows that are resident in the Tunnel Drive area of Canon City associate with Canyon Towhees and the towhee below had just bathed also. SeEtta

I first spotted this black hawk over the week-end and from it's behavior and looks without binoculars thought it was a Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk. I has been very distant from the road when it perches so strained my long zoom and then cropping to get these pics. From it's whitish tail this is not one that I have seen here in recent weeks. It shows the black, rather than brown plumage found on Western Red-tails, a little white on it's face and most prominent is the whitish tail with dark tip. Interestingly there is a second Harlan's here that was perched several hundred yards from this one over fields. SeEtta

I found this Wilson's Snipe working in a drainage ditch (actually what is called 'return flow' ditch for return of excess irrigation water) on private property in the Canon City area. This was before our recent cold spell that froze much of the water in this ditch. SeEtta

Yesterday I found an unusually large flock of at least 20 but more likely 30 or more Eastern Bluebirds just east of Canon City. As we are right up next to the mountains where they are not found they are fairly uncommon in this area. However while we do usually get some of these in the winter it is generally 5-10. I found and photographed these on private property where they were coming down to drink from a canal that was mostly iced over. I followed the flock as it flew over to the Pathfinder Park where they appeared to be foraging in some Russian Olive trees that had good numbers of olive fruit on them and they were fairly small in size. SeEtta