Remember that gull we rescued last week? After my husband took it to Native Animal Rescue here in Santa Cruz it was transferred up to International Bird Rescue‘s San Francisco Bay Area center in Fairfield. I e-mailed and asked how the gull was doing and whether I’d be able to witness its release back to…
Birds
A good deed
This is the time of year when whales visit Monterey Bay and often come quite close to shore. Humpbacks, in particular, are commonly seen from beaches in the fall. Earlier in the summer they are out over the Monterey Canyon feeding on krill. In the late summer and early fall they switch to feeding on…
Gulls
Earlier this week I accidentally came upon a baby bird. I was on my way out to the cliff at the marine lab to dispose of a corpse (a fish that died of natural causes) when I noticed a western gull perched on the fence railing and allowing me to get unusually close. It was…
Dinner time!
The red-tailed hawk parents across the canyon are being kept busy by their hungry chicks. This year they have a trio of youngsters to feed–last year they successfully fledged two chicks–but apparently they’ve not had any trouble finding enough food for all three of them. If I had the luxury of staying home all day…
The oldest and most powerful skill of all
For as long as sentient humans have walked across the surface of the planet, they have observed the world around them. Quite often these observations had direct life-or-death consequences, as most of survival had to do with finding food while not becoming someone else’s dinner. Fast forward a few million years and we find ourselves…
An afternoon not wasted
At this time of year low tides occur in the afternoon. Later in the spring they will shift to mornings. There are a few reasons that I really prefer morning low tides to those that occur in the afternoon: (1) the time of the low gets about 50 minutes later every day, so as the…
Birds on the brain
This past weekend I participated for the first time in the Audubon Society’s Great Backyard Bird Count, in which ordinary folks spend at least 15 minutes observing birds in their own yards. Turns out you can also observe in other sites, but I opted to watch birds from my back deck. As my house backs…
And we have fledged!
Yesterday afternoon when I got home I checked out the red-tailed hawk nest across the canyon and didn’t see anybody home. Then I started scanning the trees on both sides of the canyon to see if the parents were around. While I was looking the dad flew in with prey and perched on the top…
Almost branchers
Our red-tailed hawk chicks are sooo close to fledging now! I’ve been told that the tree-nesting raptors usually first leave the nest to hop around on branches; hence they’re called “branchers.” This afternoon I watched the chicks and was able to catch some of the maneuvering, which included hopping around the edge of the nest….
Practice makes perfect
The red-tailed hawk chicks across the canyon from us continue to practice their flapping, preparing to take their eventual first flights. We frequently see one of the chicks standing up in the nest, flapping away and whacking its sibling in the head. They’re too big now for both to be flapping at the same time….