Is that Bird Wearing a T-Shirt?…by Brad Marks

It is ironic that most of the time here I am complaining about how fast the year is progressing, but now that I wouldn’t mind the minutes rolling by more rapidly…it seems like everything has slowed to a crawl. Such is fate I guess. Actually this is a good week at Intrigued. Brad and Jan have wrapped up everything related to the annual St. Jude charity run and on their recovery phase, Home Depot FINALLY released this year’s Halloween offerings yesterday (at 5am) and tomorrow my stitches come out. Fingers crossed that leads to better night’s sleep! It also officially marks the halfway point for the 6 week no-weight segment. Looking back I have to applaud myself for being the “good” patient (got a lot of people ready to drop the hammer on me if I don’t) and looking forward, well, “holy hell, get me out of here”. Thankfully there are plenty of pictures to process, Halloween props to wire, haunt tutorials to make and posts to keep my eyes off the clock. Speaking of all things haunt, a curious reader brought to our attention that we missed the post quota last month (we have some demanding readers ha) – turns out they missed my 2024 tombstone review on the Mothership (Boy’s Got Some Stones link here). Feel free to take a look if you are curious how those turned out. While I mentally prepare for thread being pulled out of my ankle, please enjoy another adventure from Brad and Jan.

Take it away Brad…

Jan and I first saw this bird at the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Preserve (RFNWP) a couple of years ago.  However, one of my rules for publishing photos is that the image must be usable if I have to resort to severe cropping.  I am always saying, “I don’t want a 6-pixel image of a backlit dark object.”  Well, with our new cameras, that may have increased to a minimum 60-pixel image.  But still, who wants to look at dark fuzzy thing on the screen and try to guess what it is.  With my years of experience photographing wildlife (all couple of years of it), I don’t even try for those photos any longer.  Not taking them saves time sorting and editing later as well as saving clicks on my camera shutters.  That 250k mark on the shutter assembly rolls around quickly enough as is.

On our semi-annual Wildlife Intrigued Rocky Mountain editorial staff visit with our daughter Allyson, Jan and I went to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge (RMANWP).  One of the perks of visiting is that we get to use her Honda CR-V to drive all over the place while she is working her primary job.  RMANWP is a very large park at nearly 16,000 acres.  The park is large enough to have an 11-mile, mainly square-shaped, Wildlife Drive embedded within it, plus a couple of miles of road on either end.  Visitors enter the one-way Drive by crossing a set of bison guards embedded in the road and then driving anti-clockwise around the Drive.  For those not familiar with a bison guard, or cattle guard, it is a series of horizontally mounted rails or pipes embedded over an empty space in the roads.  The theory, and reality, being that hooved animals will not want to cross the guard; therefore, no actual gates are needed over the roadway.  This means easy access for vehicles while keeping livestock inside, or outside depending on which way you are travelling.  Fencing is obviously required up to the edge of the gates in the roads and beyond.

At the end of the 11-mile wildlife drive, just before the final set of bison guards in the road, a dark object flew through the sky and landed in a tree less than 50 feet from us.  Since it was far larger than 60 pixels, Jan and I wanted to begin taking photos.

Now what do we have here, hit the jump to learn more about this spiffy looking Hawk.

Nearly instantly I applied the brakes (nearly slamming them on is a more appropriate description) and began to raise my camera.  Think of the scene in the movie The Big Year when Steve Martin’s character sees and photographs a Pine Grosbeak at the beginning of his Big Year.  Yes, I was driving, but the car was safely in Park by this time.  We ended up angled across the road facing the trees to our left.  There was certainly enough room for other cars to safely maneuver around us if they wanted to.  Yes, I had been carrying the camera in my lap, making steering a challenge at anything above the posted 15MPH speed limit.  For those of you who have visited RMANWP know that visitors are not allowed to leave their cars once they enter Wildlife Drive past the bison guard.  My camera was positioned out the driver’s window, propped up with my elbow on the window frame.  I started shooting, er, photographing out the car window.  (Do I really need to be that precise on a photography blog?)  Jan had already unbelted and was leaning outside the passenger window looking over the roof of the car.  No, she had NOT exited the car, here feet and legs were still inside and she was NOT standing on the ground.  This is completely unlike the person we saw earlier who not only got out of his souped-up 4WD truck with out of state plates, he walked to the other side of the road with the driver’s door still open on the truck.  Yes, I have photos.  No, I’m not going to post them . . . yet.

The stare of this Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni) is very intense.  I would really hate to be anything small and tasty within its visual range.

This bird, that looks like it’s wearing a dark T-shirt, at least it does to me, landed near the top the tree.  Its partner had landed on a post across the road, with a morning snack in its talons.  While the Prairie Dog alert system was working at top efficiency that morning, one of them clearly wasn’t listening very carefully moments earlier as the Swainson’s circled overhead.

The hawk had shifted its gaze to be squarely on Jan hanging out of the car window.  It seems she has this effect on raptors (see here) when carrying a large lens.  Maybe it’s the reflection from the front glass.  The hawk must have felt like it was on the red carpet at some paparazzi event.  Its gaze shifted ever so slightly from my camera to Jan’s camera and back again as if it were trying to give everyone a good view.

Remember, Jan was NOT outside of the car and most of her was still inside the car, supporting the spirit of the safety rules.  Plus, there were no bison visible within a few hundred yards near the bison gates.  I also couldn’t have opened the moon-roof with Allyson’s car carrier mounted on top anyway. 

We sat in the car taking as many photos as the hawk would let us, hoping not to ruffle its feathers.

We had a gloriously sunny day with a slight breeze.  From time to time there would be a gust of wind.  After all, we were in a mountain air environment, the air is never quite settled even on calm days.   RMANWP is situated several miles east of where the Rockies rise sharply from the plains of eastern Colorado.  This means that clear skies are not necessarily calm skies.  Remember this when flying into Denver airport in a regional jet (the Intrigued corporate jet was unavailable for this trip).  While I think Jan enjoys the occasional wild ride into Denver airport; it seems I always keep a tight grip on the arm rests when landing here.

A Swainson’s Hawk will feed primarily on rodents, rabbits and reptiles during the breeding season, then switch to insects when not breeding.  Truthfully, they will eat anything they can catch on the wing or by chasing a meal while running on the ground.

A mating pair of Swainson’s Hawks will raise 1-5 eggs per season.  Incubation takes about 34 days, with the chicks needing care for the next three weeks.  They have been known to very aggressively defend their nest, whether currently being used or not, by chasing off much larger birds.  Thankfully, photographers are normally tolerated based on our experience and what I’ve read, but not always.

Swainson’s Hawks have been known to create a flock that can reach up to 10,000 birds on the way to their wintering grounds in South America.  These flocks are called a “kettle,” not to be confused with a “kettle of fish”.  Swainson’s often mingle in with Turkey Vultures, Broad-winged Hawks and kites in these fantastic migration displays.  Not nearly as dynamic as a murmuration of European Starlings, but impressive nonetheless.

Suddenly, this Swainson’s had had enough of the paparazzi and off it went.  We quickly looked around for its partner, but it was nowhere to be seen either.  I helped Jan scootch back inside the car window and off we went.  Lunch was calling at In-N-Out Burger a few miles away.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Swainson’s Hawk photos, please visit here.

Credits

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for many of the photos in this article.