Predators of the Wetlands

 A primordial soup filled with twisting limbs and rotting carcasses, a mosquito-infested swampland more likened to the time of the dinosaurs than modern-day Kitchener and only a few minutes away from my home. What could be more inviting!

The carcasses that I am referring to are of course the rotting tree trunks that still stand in the waterlogged ground, compelled to reach skyward until their demise. The Wetlands are far from dead though, they are brimming with life, which attracts me and also predators.


Hawks are suited to open woodland, and in the morning that I decided to go to the Wetlands, I was lucky enough to have two to choose from.


These large predators are energy conscious. Why waste energy needlessly. All you need to do is watch from a high enough vantage point and wait.


Wait for the right moment, then swoop down on your unsuspecting target.


Red-tailed hawks can see colours as we do, but their vision is much sharper than ours and they have the added advantage of perceiving colours in the ultraviolet range, enabling them to spot traces of urine left by rodents etc.


They are wonderfully adapted predators. 

And what were the red-tailed hawks pursuing? Just about anything that was moving. They even dived at a group of mallards that were dabbling in the water. 

From young blue jays.

To eastern kingbirds.

To great-crested flycatchers.

To a family of cedar waxwings.

Then a group of solitary sandpipers.

And finally, to their favourite target of all, the northern flickers, of which there were many dotted around the open expanse of the wetlands.

I did not observe the hawks with a catch, although they did come close with a solitary sandpiper before they moved off into the tall stands of trees that edge the water.

Red-tailed hawks are not the only birds of prey to visit the wetlands though. There are also scavengers and falcons. 



Copyright © scottswildencounters.blogspot.com 2020 Scott Atkinson All Rights Reserved.
Location: Kitchener, ON, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Sign of Warmer Weather

Image
The months of January and February have been bitterly cold in Kitchener. The last areas of free-running water were confined to the faster-moving water flowing from the Wetlands. Shallow areas that attracted song sparrows to plodge in the small trickling streams as they searched for fallen seeds. And then came the cold!  With the ground completely covered in snow and the water frozen song sparrows were left to feed on what seeds they could find on the remaining flowering stems of plants that had long withered away. American tree sparrows, with their rusty crest and bicolored bill, were also on the search for seeds. They were seen briefly, flitting from branch to branch. Redpolls appeared utterly oblivious to the freezing conditions. A female redpoll is pictured below feeding on the seeds of a goldenrod plant. When the goldenrod seeds were exhausted, the redpoll's main food source was still in good supply. The seeds of Alder trees are available only to those with a specific skillset.
Read more

A Breezy start to 2022

Image
Winter has come and almost gone in no time at all. I can easily recount how many times I've endured the cold by traversing the frozen expanse of the Wetlands. An invitation to the inevitable frozen fingers that come from hovering over the shutter for just too long, holding out for that perfect photo of a black-capped chickadee on a fluffy cattail. Or one of the many white-chested nuthatches, creeping, scouring every inch of bark they could find. I resigned myself (for the most part) to birdwatching from the comfort and warmth of our home, where the bitter frozen fruit of one of our trees proved popular with a group of cedar waxwings. It was quite surprising to watch them swallow the frozen berries whole! A cast-iron frying pan acted as a watering hole for many of our neighbourhood birds when the temperature rose above zero, and it attracted a close relative of the white-breasted nuthatch. One that I tried and failed to photograph in the fall of last year, but a return of the red-br
Read more

Hooded Mergansers

Image
How many hooded mergansers can you fit on a tree stump? It's, I'm sure, a question that has puzzled us all at some point. The answer is, of course, three. Three hooded mergansers can comfortably fit on a dead tree stump. The real question is, why on earth are ducks so interested in dead tree stumps? Hooded mergansers are fish eaters, after all. Their long serrated bill has a sharp hook at the end.  That bill has evolved with the need to grasp hold of fish who would prefer not to be captured.  Mergansers are just as adept at swimming under the water as they are flying through the air. And it was their repetitive flying that drew my attention to their fascination with trees. For no apparent reason, the mergansers, male and female, would take off, performing laps around the wetlands.  They would circle round and round. Then, curiously, the female would disappear among the stands of trees on the far side of the water. That presented me with lots of opportunities for photos of the m
Read more