Belted Kingfishers

These large-headed, short-necked, heavy-billed, robust-bodied, short-legged birds with spiked hairdos are a constant resident of our parts. And they are exceedingly difficult to capture a decent image of. At least that's been true of my attempts to do so over the years.

Such failures on my part notwithstanding, these are one of my most favorite birds because they never fail to cause my face to instantly contract into a smile the moment I hear or see them. And hearing their machine-gun rat-a-tat-tat call is virtually always how I become aware of their presence somewhere in my vicinity. If I'm lucky, I may then spot one off in the distance.

So why do I always smile when I hear them? Because an image of them with their over-sized head and spiked crest on a small body, like the male on the right in my photo here from yesterday, invariably reminds me of an cupcake-fueled 6-year-old whippersnapper with a pomaded tomahawk hairdo charging down a grocery store aisle while excitedly jabbering away a mile-a-minute about whatever it was that was so animating him at the time.

Such a vision, whether I happen upon it in a grocery store or while walking along Big Dry Creek, which is where I mostly hear and sometimes spot these energetic critters, never fails to cause me to smile.

Here's hoping one of these balls of energy, either the grocery store or fish-eating kind, soon brings a grin to your face too.

Cheers!

Walter "Ski" Szymanski

 

Pampas Hawk

On some cool early morning in the coming weeks, the chestnut-colored bibbed raptor you see here in my photo will lift off its north metro perch and begin a two-month, 3,000-mile voyage to its wintering grounds in the fertile low grasslands of Argentina and Uruguay. Along the way it will stop for foraging, resting, and waiting out harsh weather conditions. It'll also meet up with anywhere from 300,000 to a half million or more of its cousins who are doing the same resettling.

Swainson's Hawks, who's eponymous common name should be changed to reflect their grasslands habitat, that is, Pampas Hawks, are buteos of open spaces and each year they migrate to and from the plains of North America to the plains of Argentina. That's 12,000 miles and four months of flying for each year they're alive. And during those epic migrations they subsist primarily on eating grasshoppers, crickets, and such that they catch on the ground and in the air. Insects are also their primary food base during their stays at their winter destinations. Based on analysis of their cast-off pellets, each Pampas Hawk consumes around 100 grasshoppers a day. Multiply that by the total number of these long-distance migrators and the aggregate number of grasshoppers, etc., consumed by all of them during their annual migrations and wintering is…just astounding.

During their breeding season in our mid-western and western grasslands, though, they're not running down little grasshoppers and other insects on the ground or in the air to bring to their babies. Of efficiency and nutritional demands, they modify their foraging to include warm-blooded mammals and cold-blooded reptiles to meet the dietary needs of the females and their voracious and rapidly growing young.

Overall, these buteos are about the same size as Red-tailed Hawks, which are large hawks, but they do have a bit longer wingspan than the red tails.

Hope everyone gets a chance to observe a Pampas Hawk or two before they leave!

Cheers, and good birding to all!

Walter "Ski" Szymanski