Ice Age Respite

Sunshine on Perplexed Fauna                     20 April 2013

Sandhill Crane, patiently waiting...

For just a day, the sun is out and the April snowstorm is taking a deep breath. No wind last night, a crisp, cold dawn broke pushing orange sun into a cobalt blue sky.   Twenty degrees Fahrenheit didn't hold back the enthusiasm of birds eager to reach their breeding grounds, and new arrivals piled in on the heels of those who had halted with the snow.   Perhaps it is only the snow that prevents them from moving any further along in the journey.  Steadily, the number of birds using the sunflower seeds has been increasing.  

Dark-eyed Junco

Out in the bigger wilds, I have found a similar scenario.  Birds are eager to find open water, and birds that defend breeding territories in the sedge wetlands of this area have stumbled into Arctic winter visitors.   Great Horned Owls, so famous for nesting in the January snows, are rivaled in skill by this year's Bald Eagles, already incubating eggs.   Sandhill Cranes seem to be staring at ice and snow, willing it to melt away. Trumpeter Swans are strangely scarce.  Eagles are looking lean.  About a hundred miles south of us, there is no snow.  I imagine that a tremendous army of winged wildlife waits there, anxious to launch for the north.

Adult female Bald Eagle

Sandhill Crane

Sandhill Crane

Adult female Bald Eagle

Red-winged Blackbirds

We are living in a time of unpredictability.  Unusual climate change resonates in a foreign rhythm across the familiar and anticipated changes of the season.  Everything changes.  Change is the essence of biology, and there are always patterns within the patterns.  Dynamic Equilibrium.  Selection.  Nature reclaims life from destruction.  But now we must learn to deal with another less-understood layer--the anthropogenic ripples as they rock the phenology of our time.  It is a modern parallel to a time when humans sought to understand the wanderings of the moon and the tides that followed.  Patience... Hope... Spring?

The Arctic's Rough-legged Hawks are still here and congregating in large numbers across the frozen sedge meadows.   Their loitering is of some concern to Northern Harriers, arriving here recently to their usual breeding grounds.  This year, the bitter and extended winter is bringing to light a truth about Rough-legged Hawks and harriers.  They have the same ecological niche.  Now, so long as the Arctic birds are remaining, the harriers have fierce competition for their small mammal prey.   This stress is apparent, and harriers who catch voles have to be on the lookout for competing harriers, and, now, more aggressive cleptoparasitism from Rough-legged Hawks.

Rough-legged Hawk, a Winter visitor from the Arctic...Eats voles...

Northern Harrier, arriving on breeding territory... Eats voles...

Northern Harriers, brief competitive interaction...

At last light... A Rough-legged Hawk attempts to steal a vole from a harrier...

...gives chase...

...and succeeds. 

"Raptor" has its etymology in concepts of pirates, thieves, and risk-takers...

Red skies at night.  Sailor's delight.  It's what the old wisdom spoke of, but I know better.  We are living in different and unusual times.  Behind the veil of peace, pink skies, and no wind, I see mare's tails in the stratosphere, long waves of ice crystals that predict more snow for the 21st of April, and another day of Winter in Spring.

All images were made with a refurbished Canon 7D and prime Canon 300mm f4 L IS lens.  It was a day of "run and gun" photography with no tripod.  I hiked in snow all evening, some drifts as deep as 2 feet, and always 8 inches or more.  The "ice" on wild ponds was deceptive, a layer of steel-gray slush that gave way immediately underfoot.  "Ma" and "Pa", my trusty swans, were nowhere to be seen.  A Bald Eagle tried to catch a Canada Goose.  A Northern Shrike, perched on a lone alder, said, "Winter's still here, buddy."