Dale Matson
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3rd Chick
As the month of April ended and May
began to unfold, these white fuzzy chicks continued to grow and change color as
the surrounding fields changed from green to brown.
But there was something, something
not quite right, about the development of these three chicks. Why was the runt
changing to a darker color before the other two chicks? Shouldn’t the other
chicks be changing color sooner? Additionally, the runt seemed to have the most
energy. He was walking around the nest while the other siblings slept most of
the time. The runt also had a rounder head and much smaller beak.
I continued to hope before each
visit that there would be three chicks in the nest. Could this little bird
survive or would the chick starve or be eaten by the siblings?
By mid-May I began to realize that
we were not looking at an eagle chick at all. If this was the case, then that
opened up the original mystery once again. Where did this chick come from? By
the following week, we had identified the chick as a Red-Tailed Hawk. I went on
the internet and found a case of a hawk being raised by Bald Eagles on
Vancouver Island. Well, how did that hawk get in the eagle nest? The experts
there agreed that the best theory was that a hawk nest had been raided by a
bald eagle and two chicks had been brought back to the eagle nest. One
“disappeared” and the other was raised by the eagles along with their three
chicks. That must have been a lot of ‘groceries’.
Maybe, hopefully, that would be the
case with this chick. The chick seemed to be doing fine and getting along with
the eagle chicks. They often slept together in one big pile. However, the hawk
chick did stand apart from the other two quite often.
I could always tell when a parent
was about to fly-by because all three chicks would look up in the same
direction. I had to be reminded that even eagle and hawk chicks have eagle and
hawk eyes. They saw the parent before we did even when we used our 10 power
binoculars. The birds also watched us as we sat watching them. It was a kind of
mutual observation experience.
As these chicks continued to
develop and grow, the eagles were pretty much on a sleep/eat cycle with
occasional walks around the nest. The hawk was the hyperactive child moving
around quite a bit with lots of head bobbing. The hawk began to do a lot of
wing flapping too as the eagle chicks looked on in a detached way. The chicks
in this nest were probably about the same age and hawks fledge in about 45 days
while the goldens fledge in about 65 days. If all went well the hawk would
fledge before one of his siblings ate him. I continued to hope that mom and pop
continued to bring lots of food to the nest.
This was turning into quite an
experience. Not only were Sharon and I watching these eagles develop, we were
watching something previously undocumented. This is not to shortchange the
eagle chicks which were also massively beautiful.
We were also concerned that to
publicize this too soon could lead to an army of visitors that might cause the
adults to abandon the nest. It is always a question in any wildlife research of
how much observation and what kind of operation is adequate. How close is too
close and how many visits are too many visits. Remember, we were watching
eagles who know you are coming an hour before you get there. My hope was that
at some point one of the adults would bring food to the nest while we were
there. Until then, we would make our visits as short and infrequent as
possible.
I once photographed a mule deer in
Kings Canyon National Park near Reflection Lake with two collars (both a radio
collar and GPS collar). Case in point, I wrote an article about this on my blog
in 2014. http://midsierramusing.blogspot.com/2014/09/wildlife-research.html
All Sleeping Together
Adult Fly By
Color Contrast
Adult Fly By
The Deer Were Curious Also
Hawk Fledge Practice
My question at this point was:
"Would this hawk make it to fledge?" Stay tuned for Part 4.
Here is the YouTube video of this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_d2KGmJAs
Here is the YouTube video of this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_d2KGmJAs
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