Dark Morph Red-tailed Hawk with the Gallery Gang

Because of a chain of sad events in our close family plus some serious wind damage to our house, I had no real drive to write blog posts lately. But life goes on and most of it is good. Like a visit of my photographer friends from the Gallery Gang plus artist friend Mary Lee who all came to see our famous 'Dark Female'. They all stopped by on May 6 early in the morning. A spectacular Red Tail Hawk has been raising her brood not far from our house for nearly 10 years now.

I checked the previous day - the chicks had grown quite a bit but were still sitting quietly high on top of the nest. Mom was vigilantly screaming from her favorite saguaro perch nearby.

But when the 'Gang' walked out early on Friday morning, the hawk chose an aerial display instead. My friends had exactly the right cameras for the occasion and the sound of so may rapid-fire motor drives sounded a little ominous.

From my friends' photos, I gained a completely new very personal view of  'our Dark Female' whom I've now watched for nearly 10 years.  Ned, who specializes in Raptor photography and has contributed his work to several books on that topic called her the most magnificent dark morph RT hawk that he has seen.

Ned and Tom with their heavy duty 'guns'

Tom and Lois in action. Doris' photo even brings the Tortollitas and Catalinas close

Her beauty was slightly marred by a broken tail feather. Incubation and rearing two fast growing chicks takes a lot out of a bird.

The kids are very close to fledgling now. We believe that this time, one of them has inherited mom's rare coloration. The one on the right is definitely much darker than its sibling. The left one shows already a pattern similar to that of the male (who never showed up during our visit).

Kestrels, Night Hawks and Desert Iguanas had also been high on everyone's wish list, but they all did not show themselves to my friends. Of course a day before our photo excursion and the very next morning when it was just me and the dogs, all of them posed very nicely.

The resident Kestrel pair has fledglings to guard, too. Their sississississi calls betray their location, but the young ones are already acrobatic flyers and can avoid most danger (as long as they stay away from the Chainfruit Chollas

Lesser Night Hawks are very active at dusk and dawn. Their purring sound can be heard from our patio and mated pairs glide close to the ground and loop through the ironwoods along the washes

This big Desert Iguana was around a day before and right after the visit of the photographers. They would have loved him! (Her?)

5 days after our group visit, the Dark Female had shifted the center of her attention about two thirds of a mile westwards. When Randy and I inspected the empty nest she still dutifully came over to screech, but soon flew back to where the chicks were probably resting from one of their first flights.

Around the nesting saguaro, big swatches of white wash on the ground still told the story of the fledged former occupants. In other years, I have seen RT hawk chicks come back to the nest to spend the night for a couple of weeks. The parents will still be around their keening offspring for a couple of months. It's a very stressful, hot and dry time in the desert. It will be a hard test for the survival skills of the young hawks. Some birds migrate to cooler mountains for the summer, but I have seen our Dark Female around at any time of the year. And next year hopefully at the nest again!

For the photos of the Hawk in flight and the close-ups of the chicks I thank Doris, Lois, Tom, and Ned!

Dark Female

If you have seen the movie 'Pale Male', about the light colored Red-tail that was the first of his kind to breed in New York's Central Park, you have an idea of what I mean if I say that our raptor here is exactly the opposite of that hawk: our Red-tail is very dark, very unused to humans, and lives under extremely harsh conditions. For all I know, she may be female. But she also seems to be a pioneer, just like Pale Male.

Around our house we have a breeding pair of American Kestrels, a group of Harris Hawks, many Cooper's Hawks, a hunting Peregrine Falcon, a visiting Prairie Falcon, and a wintering silver gray Northern Harrier. They share the habitat with formidable and dangerous competition: there's always a pair of Great Horned Owls around. And there is neither water and nor a supply of feral pigeons.
There are Red-tail nests along the Santa Cruz River and in lusher parts of Saguaro National Park, and the hawks come through our part of the desert regularly, but I've never seen the aerial shows of mating pairs here.

The first indication that  Red-tails were moving in was an abandoned nest in a saguaro with no sign that it was ever occupied. We checked ever now and then, but nothing changed: no fresh twigs, no whitewash....

Only once in late January I caught a glimpse of a pair of Red-tails on the power line at the far side of the 400-acre state land.

 Then a dark silhouette appeared a couple of times high above us while we were walking our dogs. When the tail caught the sunlight it flashed in striking, bright orange contrast to the clear blue desert sky. But nothing ever happened at the old nest. The bird seemed protective of the area though, and we mostly stayed away.

On this fresh cool morning (after a spell of near 100 degrees) we were going to give our dogs a special treat - a long walk through the state land. No hawks in the sky yet. The dogs watched Zebra-tail Lizards scramble out from under a thin cover of sand and scurry away, dug feverishly for squirrels, looked longingly for traces of cattle ....We passed the empty old nest, picked up some trash, collected some nice rocks, and inadvertently stepped over a rattler who completely ignored two shoes and eight paws coming within inches of his low-profile coil.

When I looked up, Randy was standing next to a saguaro, and right over his head the shape of two or three small hawks in a big nest were outlined and back-lit by the rising sun. They stood completely still, and so did we. Two of the nearly grown chicks had  light chest feathers. Harris Hawk or Red-tail? We memorized the location and rushed home to get cameras and our friend Frank who wouldn't want to miss this.

 Returning a little later we were discovered by the dark hawk. She circled. Banked right above our heads. Screamed at us. She is definitely not used to people walking her territory, and let us know her displeasure long before we came close to the nest.

Staying at a fair distance, equipped with very long lenses, we walked in a wide circle to get the sun behind us. The nest is on the west side of the Saguaro, nestled in its massive arms. Until noon no possible angle would allow a clear view of the inhabitants without looking into the sun. I wonder why it's so exposed to the afternoon sun, the hottest around here. The wind blew sharply out of the west all day yesterday, as it often does. But the other, unused, nest has the same orientation.

 While we were there, the chicks never moved. They are tall and leggy and already have lost all of their downy  fluffiness. One is as dark as the parent, one has a light chest - did I only imagine a third one earlier?

 While  female hawks stay with the nest and the young while the chicks are small, leaving all the hunting to the male, both parents would be hunting to provide enough for the hungry beaks of chicks this big. I'm worried because there was only a single parent around. The urgent calls should have alerted the other partner. Shortly, the hawk was joined by another big soaring shape, but that one turned out to be a Turkey Vulture. Still no sign of another adult hawk, but time for us to leave them in peace.