Porcupine Snoozing in the Sun © Gail Garber
No reproduction of any kind without written permission.

Now is the time to see porcupines in the bosque, before budding leaves make them virtually impossible to spot.

Snowy Owl in Washington © Doug Brown
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High numbers of Snowy Owls are being reported throughout the upper U.S. this winter. This irruption, not to be confused with an eruption, is not thought to be caused by a lack of food. Rather, an abundance of lemmings, one of the primary prey for the Snowy Owl in Arctic regions, led to the production of a bumper crop of young owls in the summer of 2011. These owls, not as skilled at hunting as their parents, have flown south in high numbers in search of winter food.

Two of our members traveled to parts north to photograph Snowies, David Powell to Montana, and Doug Brown to Washington. We thank them both for sharing their images of Snowy Owls. Watch for a blog post about Gail and Sam Sanborn’s successful northerly owl quest.

Snowy Owl in Montana © David Powell
No reproduction of any kind without written permission.

Links to Media Coverage on the Irruption:
Video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Time Magazine: Hedwig, Is That You? Snowy Owls Apparate into the U.S.
Huffington Post: Snowy Owl Migration: Birds Moving From Arctic to Central U.S. in Search of Food
The New York Times: Bird-Watchers Revel in Unusual Spike in Snowy Owl Sightings
Video from MSNBC: Snowy Owls Swoop in from the Arctic
NBC Chicago: Injured Snowy Owl Released Back into Wild

This sighting was on the December 9, 2011. The temp was 52 degrees at 0810 a.m. and I was approximately 100 miles from the Atlantic Coast in North Carolina. Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Juvenile raptors, particularly Northern Harriers, will ‘play’ with corn cob pieces in fields after the harvest. They are not eating the corn but will harry the field then drop down as if capturing a meadow vole, and go through behavior motor sequence of taloning, dispatching and biting. They will fly off with the piece, sometimes drop it and ‘recapture’ it. They seem to enjoy this behavior which is most common in the fall of the year. They select cobs that are broken in pieces about the size of a meadow vole.

This harrying-capture-kill motor sequence is, perhaps, part of a developmental phase as they perfect their hunting style or technique. Since animals learn adaptive strategies and also learn from one another, it is possible that they do this for fun at times when the prey base is sufficient and they can afford the metabolic cost….the act of practicing hunting skills outweighs the metabolic cost. It can easily look like the hawks are hunting and eating corn! We also have observed juvenile Cooper’s Hawk catching, killing, and shredding pine cones as they hone their hunting prowess.

Red-billed Gull © Charles Cummings
No reproduction of any kind without written permission.

Red-billed gull or tarāpunga (Larus novaehollandiae)

Variable Oystercatcher © Charles Cummings
No reproduction of any kind without written permission.

This variable oystercatcher/tōrea-pango (Haematopus unicolor) was photographed on Stewart Island, New Zealand. More on oystercatchers. Chatham Island oystercatchers.