Category: birds

Golden Eagle – 2024

birds, wildlife, wildlife photography

Most of my outings over the recent holiday break were pretty slow. Probably due to the warmer winter season so far, finding birds of any sort has been problematic to say the least. I did have some fortune on a trip up to Pike County, Missouri on December 19th, when I found and got my best photos to date of a couple of Golden Eagles.

Immature Golden Eagle, December 2024

I am no expert in aging Golden Eagles and it seems to be a bit tricky even for those who are familiar. I believe this first bird would be considered an immature stage, likely between 1 and 3.5 years of age.

Another look at an immature Golden Eagle

This next bird I believe to be a full adult of at least five years.

Adult Golden Eagle

Here is the same adult Golden Eagle getting into it with a Bald Eagle. This is something I have seen on several occasions when observing the Golden Eagles in Pike County.

Adult Golden Eagle and adult Bald Eagle getting familiar

Sometime patience really pays off. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to visit some places on multiple occasions to increase my chances at an opportunity like this. Hopefully we’ll be getting some real winter weather that will stick around and be able to get more opportunities this season.

-OZB

New Peregrine Falcon at Clarence Cannon NWR

Bird Species of Conservation Concern, birds, Nesting Birds of Missouri, wildlife, wildlife photography

I had the opportunity to visit Clarence Cannon National Wildlife Refuge in Pike County a few times during my holiday break. During each visit, I encountered this first-year Peregrine Falcon in the same particular cottonwood tree that is usually popular with the area’s raptors.

“Wok Sape” a first-year Peregrine Falcon female

I was fortunate to get nice looks and photos that I could clearly see the band information on the left leg. Looking up the information on the Midwest Peregrine Society website, this appears to be a young female bird, named “Wok Sape.” She was hatched on May 21st of this year in Winona County, MN.

According to the Midwest Peregrine Society, the average dispersal distance of female falcons from their natal sites is 345 km (~214 miles). I am still waiting to hear back from the bander that the bird pictured here is indeed “Wok Sape.” If this is indeed the bird I found, then she has moved approximately 645 km (~400 miles) from her hatching location in about four months or so.

As raptors like to do, I watched as this young falcon was harassed a bit by a passing Northern Harrier as seen below.

A passing Northern Harrier passing close to young Wok Sape for close inspection. The Harrier tried to get as close as possible, attempting to land on a nearby branch, but eventually decided the falcon was too well concealed in the branches and left.

Bald Eagles of Lock and Dam #14

Bird Species of Conservation Concern, birds, Nesting Birds of Missouri, wildlife, wildlife photography

Still plugging away at making sure photos that I only posted to Facebook for a couple of years do get captured here on the blog. These photos were taken in January 2019 on one special and frigid day at Lock and Dam #14 along the Mississippi River near LeClaire, IA. I do mean it was a frigid day. I believe the high for this day might have reached 3 °F.

As High as a Kite

birds, wildlife, wildlife photography

The St. Louis birding community had quite a treat in late August and early September of this year. At Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, soaring among literally dozens of Mississippi Kites were a few Kites not like the others. Three Swallow-tailed Kites, a species that is most often found in southern-Atlantic and gulf coast states of the U.S., were visiting the area taking advantage of the abundant grasshoppers, dragonflies and annual cicadas in the skies above the grasslands and woods of the confluence area.

Swallow-tailed Kite

I was naive to the feeding habits of these large birds. In my limited experience with this species in states like Georgia and Texas, I had observed them feeding on larger vertebrate prey like snakes, lizards and small birds. Like their smaller relatives, the Mississippi Kite, this species primarily consumes larger flying insects like cicadas. During my three days of chasing these three birds, I found them eating mostly large grasshoppers.

Swallow-tailed Kite with grasshopper picked off on the wing.

Photographing these birds was unexpectedly frustrating for me and my friends. On the days we were there, the birds did not take to the air until temperatures were sufficiently high to have their insect prey in flight. This meant that we saw them mostly in the hours between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm when light was not ideal and heat distortion in the air would brought us severe frustrations. Although we often found the birds soaring fairly close over our heads, the heat distortion rendered most of our images with disappointing softness. Most of the thousands of images we took were destined for the recycle bins.

Soaring Swallow-tailed Kite
Swallow-tailed Kite with soon to be grasshopper meal
Swallow-tailed Kite tucking wings for quick dissent
Swallow-tailed Kite having a scratch

As I mentioned above, Mississippi Kites were found in abundance as well. They must have had a great nesting season as most of the birds I observed seemed to be juveniles. Here are a few of the images I was able to get of these guys.

This seems to have been an unprecedented year for Swallow-tailed Kites in Missouri. In addition to the three I mentioned here, birds of this species were found in other counties across the state. Hopefully this might be another species that we see more often in the future.