A Northwoods Almanac
for 9/18 – 31, 2015
Goshawks, Kayaks, and
Golden Retrievers
These three
utterly unrelated topics all came together in Manitowish Waters at the home of
Nancy Burns, my sister-in-law, on 9/1. That afternoon, Nancy walked out her
door and noticed a large hawk perched on her kayak paddle, some 25 feet from
her kitchen (see the photo). She emailed a photo of it to me, wondering what it
was, and just as I had finally determined it was a juvenile northern goshawk,
she called, frantic. The conversation went something like this: “I was just
chased around the yard by that hawk! If I didn’t have a lawn chair to protect
me, I don’t know what might have happened. It chased Tom right into his house –
he was running for his life! And now it’s attached to Wilson! What should I
do?”
Well . . .
first of all, Tom is Tom Freeman, Nancy’s next door neighbor, who had tried to
come to Nancy’s aid while she was being chased around her yard. Wilson is Tom’s
very sweet, passive, and somewhat overweight golden retriever.
My recall
of the whole conversation is jumbly, but the gist of it was that Nancy crept
outside to photograph the goshawk and apparently got a little too close,
whereupon the goshawk ran after her (goshawks are good runners as I’ll explain
later!). She yelled for Tom to help her, and Tom then approached the hawk. It
changed course and went after him, driving him back to his house. Then Wilson
tried to intervene, ambling over friendly-like, and the goshawk leapt onto his
chest, and was now dangling upside down from Wilson’s fur, with Wilson just
standing there patiently, not in any pain, waiting for whatever golden
retrievers wait for in such circumstances.
You know,
I’ve answered lots of phone calls over the years about lots of things, but this
one was not in my wheelhouse. I had no idea what to say about a goshawk
dangling from a golden retriever. So, I called two people who might know about
such things – first, Marge Gibson, the gifted wildlife rehabber at Raptor
Education Group in Antigo, but she wasn’t in. I then called Mark Naniot,
another highly experienced rehabber at Wild Instincts in Rhinelander. Mark
suggested we try spraying the hawk with a hose to see if it would release its
grip, or to try to get the dog to lie down so that the goshawk might also be
touching the ground and be more likely to let go.
By then
Nancy had called back, and said that Tom had covered the bird with a blanket (a
good move – darkness helps keep a bird calm), but he wasn’t able to get the
bird to let go of Wilson. Eventually, however, it did let go, and Tom took it
across the road, wrapped in the blanket, and tried to release it. But the bird
either wouldn’t take off, or it was too entangled in the blanket to get free.
Meanwhile,
Tom had called the Northwoods Wildlife Center in Minocqua, and they were on
their way to help. Amanda Knoll, the assistant director of rehabilitation and
someone experienced in handling raptors, was able to release the goshawk from
the blanket (see photo), but it was too weak to take off. Fearing it was
injured, she then transported it to Wildlife Center for examination.
The bird
turned out to be extremely emaciated, was unable to perch, and had to be
tube-fed for multiple days. I contacted Amanda Walsh, the director of
rehabilitation, on 9/14, and she noted that the goshawk “has recently begun to
eat on her own, and we moved her to an outside aviary, where she has already
attempted to fly. She was seen by our sponsoring veterinarian last week. At
that time her left eye was having trouble dilating, and she was unable to see
from that eye. We will continue to work with her and test her with live
prey as she becomes comfortable flying around her aviary. Because of her
eye issue, the possibility is still very real that she will be non-releasable
due to her depth perception being damaged.”
Given the
young goshawk’s poor vision, I suspect it had recently fledged but was now
starving, unable to effectively hunt. Kudos to Nancy, Tom, and the Wildlife
Center for likely saving this bird.
As for
northern goshawk’s penchant for running, here’s two stories from E. H. Forbush,
a noted ornithologist in 1927, “Dr. William Wood of East Windsor Hill,
Connecticut, told of a goshawk that followed a hen into a kitchen and seized
her on the kitchen floor in the very presence of an old man and his daughter.
The father beat off the hawk with a cane, while the daughter closed the door
and finally killed the bold bird. Mr. J. A. Farley relates a similar tale from
Lambert Lake, Maine. A goshawk caught a half-grown hen. The hen, escaping, ran
under a woman’s skirt. The hawk followed right up to the skirt but was killed.”
Arthur Bent
in his classic book Life Histories of
North American Birds of Prey quotes W. E. Cram who followed the tracks of a
goshawk through the woods on the snow: “At times it followed in the tracks of
rabbits for some distance. I have often known them to do this, and am inclined
to think that they occasionally hunt rabbits in this manner where the
under-brush is too dense to allow them to fly through it easily”.
More recent
scientific studies have echoed these stories. Cornell’s definitive Birds of North America says goshawks “may
stalk prey on foot, using vegetation and topography for concealment . . . A goshawk
chased a snowshoe hare along a hedgerow for 45–60 min before the hare finally
ran across an opening and was captured.” They’re even known to “wade into
shallow water after prey such as ducklings.”
Goshawks
can outfly just about anything, too. Audubon wrote in 1840: “At times he passes
like a meteor through the underwood, where he secures squirrels and hares with
ease.”
Goshawks have been prized by
falconers for centuries. They’ve been carried on the fists of Japanese shoguns and
by medieval falconers in Europe. A goshawk even adorned the helmet of Attila
the Hun.
I’ll provide an update on the
condition of this goshawk in my next column.
Spruce Grouse and
Boreal Chickadees!
One
Northwoods bird that has eluded me over the years is the spruce grouse, a
protected species in Wisconsin since 1929, and a rather rare denizen typically
of black spruce bogs. Well, thanks to the North Lakeland Discovery Center’s
Bird Club, and hike leaders Jim and Cynthia Krakowski, I finally got to see
one. We walked into a relatively dry black spruce swamp just northeast of
Conover, an area that none of us would have found without Jim and Cynthia’s
guidance. A male grouse kicked up in front of Jim and landed 20 feet up in a
tree that was just off the trail. It sat tight for perhaps ten minutes, giving
all of us excellent views. Amy Sheldon was able to get some fine photos, which
she was kind enough to share with me for this column.
We also
were treated to hearing and seeing several boreal chickadees, another very
uncommon bird found mostly in spruce/tamarack bogs. Boreal chickadees have a
brown cap and brownish flanks, and sound like a very wheezy black-capped
chickadee, perhaps one with a serious head cold. I’ve only seen them on two
other occasions, one of those times in Minnesota, so seeing both a spruce
grouse and a boreal chickadee certainly made my day! I should also add that the
excellent camaraderie of the bird club members added to the fine morning. If
you’re looking to learn about birds with a very genial, nice group of folks,
you might want to give the NLDC Bird Club a try. They head out every Thursday
morning looking in a new area for birds.
Hawk Ridge
The raptor flight over Duluth’s
Hawk Ridge is heating up. On 9/11, 5,859 raptors soared by, while on 9/12, another
3,845 raptors flew over the ridge, of which 3,548 were broad-winged hawks. The
counters also observed 5,887 blue jays passing over the ridge on 9/12, down
from their count on 9/11 of 6,009, and their record count on 9/10 of 10,812.
Most people think blue jays don’t migrate, but in fact they do!
More On Honeydew
Callie and I hiked last week on one
of the WinMan trails, and at times, we were overwhelmed/almost sickened by the
sweet smell that permeated the woods. I broke off the branches of several
smaller trees and found the culprits – Lecanium scale insects.
I wouldn’t
have known what they were if it wasn’t for an email from Linda Williams, the Forest
Health Specialist for WDNR’s Northeast Region. She had written in one of her
monthly forest health updates that “very heavy populations of Lecanium scale were
being observed in many areas of Vilas and Oneida Counties . . . At this time of
year, the dome-shaped scale is the dry husk of the female insect with lots of
eggs underneath the shell. If you pop off one of the shells a white ]powder]
falls out, which is the eggs. There can be over 1000 eggs under there! The eggs
hatch and the crawlers (baby scales) move to the new twigs of the tree and
begin sucking sap. Heaviest populations in the north are on oaks . . . Multiple
years of heavy scale populations can cause
branch dieback, so what should
you
do?
“Landowners should
let
nature handle it. Ladybug larvae
and other predators are at work, as
are
tiny parasitic wasps (1mm in
size) and fungal diseases. In some
areas,
particularly in Door and
Kewaunee County, nearly half of the scales appear to
be infected with fungi, and additional scales are parasitized. Northern
counties still have fairly healthy scale populations but we may see parasitoid
and fungal action yet this summer.”
Contact Linda a Linda.Williams@wi.gov if you want more information,
or go to http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/ForestHealth/
to view her monthly newsletter.
Celestial Events – Autumn
Equinox!
I love autumn – cool
temperatures, gorgeous colors, and no mosquitoes make for great hiking. But I
must admit I don’t look forward to autumn equinox, because it means more dark
than light for the next six months. Nevertheless, here it comes on 9/23.
While we lose more light, we can gain better
understanding of directions. The equinox is a good day for finding due east and
due west from your yard. Just go outside around sunset or sunrise and notice
the location of the sun on the horizon with respect to familiar landmarks. If
you do this, you’ll be able to use those landmarks to find those cardinal directions
in the weeks and months ahead, long after the Earth has moved on in its orbit
around the sun.
