Matt's Ten Birds part 2

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher [Tyrannus forficatus]

Photo from: http://www.birdsofoklahoma.net/Scissor-tail09.htm

The marriage of a Meadowlark and a Swallow-tailed kite might produce something like this bird, but that’s not the only reason I like it. The Scissor-tailed flycatcher is a passing migrant and stays just a week or so in October. I’ve been hawking for a month by then, so the bird is not a harbinger of fall to me but a welcome confirmation: You need proof down here that seasons change, and the Scissor-tail is mine.

The flycatchers appear suddenly on phone lines near pastures south of town. They look like monster mockingbirds from a distance. In groups of three and four, they make sorties over the field to catch the largest of our grasshoppers. A battle can follow a successful hunt, with two or more birds rising to meet the first in a fluttering, fantailed dogfight that looks more like a dance. But time must be tight for these travelers: They never fight for long and are gone too soon.

Cooper’s Hawk [Accipiter cooperii]

Photo from: http://www.ruraltech.org/projects/wildlife/forest_habitat_modeling/images/coopers_hawk.jpg

Here’s a popular hunting bird I know better as a wild hawk than a trained one. I’ve seen these difficult hawks flown well but failed to duplicate the feat myself. There’s no harder bird in falconry, I think, and I gladly leave them to the experts.

Anyway, the wild ones are much more interesting. After three years trapping and tagging and chasing them around, my respect for these hawks is enormous. They are hard workers. The male gets up before the sun and often kills the first bird he sees. If the hunting’s poor, he’ll make a public spectacle of himself and lure in mobbing Blue Jays for the slaughter. With a brood to feed, he keeps hunting without a break except for a short one in mid-day, spent riding thermals. Even then he’s probably on patrol. A few males literally work themselves to death, quietly falling off their evening roost after the last chick has fledged.

The females guard the young and late in the season bring them large meals. We found one nest site littered with the carcasses of eight cattle egrets---birds nearly as big as she who killed them. Another one dragged in a duck and dismembered it on the ground beneath the nest. They can kill young turkeys.

Cooper’s hawks nest in neighborhoods now, having come back strong from some unknown low in previous decades. Banning DDT probably helped them, but I think they’ve just adapted to us. You can track a Coop along a road and watch him hit the bird feeders, one by one.

Clapper Rail [Rallus longirostris]

Photo from: http://www.charliesbirdblog.com/~charlie/clapper14mar05/clapper_08.jpg

This is not a birder’s list of ten most beautiful! Most of those are too easy to love from afar. A spotting scope won’t help you to know this one. You need a closer look at any rail to see how fine they are. You have to chase one through warm, fetid, and grass-choked waters; catch it and eat it. Some mysteries are worth solving.

From In Season: “Rails are primitive and prototypical, drab and omnivorous and good runners like the first birds. They seem still unaccustomed to flight (though this one flew maybe a thousand miles to be here), coming up from cover with an oddly underpowered beating of little wings. Rails are unmistakable.

“They are also, from a falconer's perspective, the anti-blackbird. A rail's center of gravity and existence is low to the ground; they come alive and stay alive by running. Rails are as nimble in thick grass as minnows beneath a pier and as well concealed from the surface. They leap from a marsh or a meadow at considerable risk and at last resort. It is the leap of a flying fish.”

And a good, easy rail recipe here:

http://www.geocities.com/matthewmullenix/falconry/sixminutesora.html