Raptor sightings soar in winter
Winter is prime time for viewing raptors. With a little effort and insight, we can find a range of owls, eagles, and hawks across Southwestern Ontario.
Snowy owls can be seen through to March. These birds like treeless, snow-covered expanses that resemble tundra. During the past week, I have seen snowies along Egremont Drive between School Road and Seed Road near Strathroy.
Seeing a great horned owl is again a slam dunk in London. One of these owls is now incubating eggs in the same willow tree in Gibbons Park that has been a nest site for years.
Eastern screech-owls might also be spotted peeking out of nest boxes or knot holes. Although northern saw-whet owls are uncommon in the city, London birder Pat RobertsonCorner saw one of these surprisingly petite birds in her yard in the west end of London in January.
Bald eagles are seen frequently across Southwestern Ontario. In Brantford, they can be seen cruising along the Grand River looking for a meal or simply resting in a tree.
Golden eagles continue to be reported in southwestern Ontario as well. These majestic birds have settled in for the winter just west of Glencoe. For most recent sighting co-ordinates birders can mine the data in eBird. The golden eagle is a winter-only bird for us.
Winter hawks also can steal the show. Two accipiters, the sharp-shinned hawk and the Cooper’s hawk, also can be seen through the winter. These birds are notoriously difficult to tell apart. Remember that the sharpshinned hawk has a small head and a small white terminal band at the end of a square tail. The Cooper’s hawk’s tail is more curved.
I am partial to rough-legged hawks. This species breeds in our far north but they overwinter in southern Canada and the northern U.S. This hawk is in the buteo family. Its size and shape are more or less like the more familiar red-tailed hawk. The roughie however typically has dark wrists visible against a white wing when the bird is in flight. Look, as well, for a dark belly and a less pronounced beak than the red-tail’s.
Red-tailed hawks are yearround neighbours for us and their numbers are relatively high, so be on the lookout for them.
The Northern harrier can be seen through the winter. The male is mostly grey and the female’s plumage is brown but both have a distinctive owl-like facial disk and a white rump that can be seen when they are on the wing. The harrier also has a long tail. These large raptors fly low over fields with their wings held in a V-shape while hunting for mammals.
Late last month, I was on the country roads south-west of Melbourne and I spotted harrier, rough-legged, and redtailed hawks plus a bald eagle.
Three falcons might also be seen in the region through the winter months, the Peregrine falcon, merlin, and American kestrel. The kestrel is the smallest and most colourful of these three. Watch for this bird perched on a wire by a country road.
Any good field guide will provide satisfactory information about our raptors. The Cornell laboratory of ornithology’s allaboutbirds.org web site is another great resource. If you want more in-depth reading, I recommend Chris Earley’s Hawks and Owls of the Great Lakes Region and A Field Guide to the Migrating Raptors of Hawk Cliff.
Nature notes
• Raptor lovers and NFLloving bird fanatics may be cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles during this weekend’s Super Bowl LII. Interestingly, the team’s nickname and logo only reference the magnificent raptor indirectly. When the football club was established in the early 1930s, they plucked their identity from the insignia of the National Recovery Administration which in turn was part of the “New Deal” program.
• The free Nature in the City lecture series continues Tuesday at downtown London’s Wolf Performance Hall. Andrew
Judge will speak about reviving Indigenous knowledge in interacting with our natural world. Judge is an Anishinaabe and
Irish scholar has a great depth of experience in traditional ecological knowledge. See naturelondon. com