Rough-legged Hawk

The rough-legged hawk is a large buteo found throughout much of the northern hemisphere.  Hawks are classified into one of two genus, Buteo and Accipiter. Buteo hawks are often referred to as soaring hawks. They have long broad wings and short tails which help them take advantage of wind currents and thermal air. Rough-legged hawks have longer thinner wings and longer tails compared to many other buteos.

 Rough-legged hawks are circumpolar. They nest in the Arctic and tundra regions of North America, Europe, and Asia. During the winter they migrate south into The US, Central Asia and Europe. In Europe and Asia they are called the rough-legged buzzard.

 The rough-legged hawk gets its name because it is one of two species of hawks that have feathers that run down to their feet. Rough-legged hawks also have a variety of different color morphs. All of the birds in this post are rough-legged hawks but th last photo is a light morph, the middle is a dark morph and the first is a more of a mixed morph.

Rough-legged Hawk

Rough-legged Hawk

The rough-legged hawk is a circumpolar species that is native to the Northern Hemisphere. They nest in the tundra and taiga regions of Alaska, Canada, Europe and Asia. During the winter they migrate south into central Asia, Europe and the United States. Even though they are the same species they are usually referred to as a rough-legged buzzard in Europe and Asia, as most buteos are called buzzards instead of hawks. Their common name is because they are one of only two species of North American hawks that have feathers that go all the way down to their feet, the other is the ferruginous hawk.

Rough-legged Hawk

Rough-legged Hawk

Today is the first day of Autumn. I love the fall with the warm sunny days and cool crisp nights. Fall also means that different birds are beginning to move into the area. One species of bird that has begum to show up is the rough-legged hawk. One has already been reported in the Twin Cities where it wintered last year. These photos where taken at Crex Meadows last fall.
Rough-legged hawks spend their summer in Canada north to the Arctic Circle. They get their name from the feathers that cover their legs down to their feet. The feet themselves are smaller the normal for a Buteo hawk because most places that they can perch in their summer habitat are very small. Rough-legged hawks come in two different color morphs. The dark morph, pictured in the first photo, is not as common as the light morph, second photo. There is also an amount of cross breading between the two morphs leading to different intermediate individuals.

Visitor from the North

Yesterday the sky finally cleared up so I decided head to head over to New Brighton, a northern suburb of the Twin Cities, after work. There have been reports for around a week or so about a rough-legged hawk that had been seen rather reliably in the area so I decided I would go take a look.

I followed the directions that I had, and parked on the side road that was indicated in the directions. There was a large snow covered field to the south of me with a large company building to the east of that. From where I was parked I could not see any sign of the hawk so after a few minutes I decided to drive back to the main road and head south along the field.

As I got about halfway down the block I finally spotted the rough-leg floating above the field. So I turned around and went back and parked on the side street. Since the hawk was to the south the light was very bad for taking pictures, so I threw on my boots and went for a walk. I walked south of where the bird was located so that the sun would be behind me and took these pictures as it hunted in the field.

Rough-legged hawks breed up in the tundra and tiaga regions of the north. These habitats do not have many trees and so the hawks have had to adapt. Instead of perching in trees looking for prey like that hawks in my area do, rough-legged hawks often hover in mid air so that they can search the ground under them for potential prey. These last three shots above are examples of the bird hover hunting.

The rough-legged hawk got its common name because its feathers extend down its legs all the way down to its toes. These feathers help insulate the legs from the cold temps that can be found up in the tundra and tiaga. The only other hawk in North America with feathers extending to its toes is the ferruginous hawk, although golden eagles are also booted raptors that can be found in North America.

A Visit to Crex Meadows.

The weather this weekend was superb so on Sunday I decided to head up to Crex Meadows. Crex Meadows is located in western Wisconsin about an hour north of the Twin Cities. Crex is one of my favorite places to go shoot because it is not too far away and you never know what you might see.

On this visit raptors were the order of the day. Since Crex is not too far from the St Croix River it is not surprising to find raptors that stop by while migrating down the Mississippi flyway. I spotted several eagles in the park, both adult and immature. The coots seemed mighty nervous when one of these big predators would fly over head.

What was really exciting though, were all of the rough-legged hawks that I saw in the park. These birds nest up in the Arctic Tundra and winter through out much of the United States.

There are two different color forms of rough-legged hawk. There is the light form, as in the picture below, which is the type that I have seen most often in the past, and the dark form, as in the picture above. This weekend I saw numerous examples of both forms up at Crex, as well as some birds which appear to be a cross between the two.

What is really cool about these birds is the way that they hunt. They will often sit and hover in mid-air and then drop straight down on their prey. They probably have developed this style of hunting do to breeding in a tundra or taiga habitat where there are not many trees from which they can ambush their prey.

I did also find a dragonfly, well sort of. Even though it has got up into the sixties for the past several days we have had a few nights that have gone below freezing. So I will probably have to wait until next year to photograph some more real dragons.

Crex Meadows

The last couple of days have been really nice. With temps in the 70s and 80s it has begun to feel like summer. Too bad I could not get today off, one of our crew had to go to Baltimore this week so the rest of us had to stick around, or I might have made my first run of the year up to Crex Meadows. Crex is a Wildlife Management Area located on the Minnesota and Wisconsin border on the Wisconsin side. It is one of the places where I like to spend a lot of time at during the warmer months but since it takes about an hour and a half to get there I usually only go on weekends or when I have a day off. My last trip to Crex was last October, 10-25 to be exact. It was one of those nice Indian summer days that we had right before it got cold. It was a pretty good day for birding also. This was the first northern shrike that I saw last fall.

A population of sandhill cranes lives in Crex through out the summer. On a few occasions we have even been lucky enough to see a sandhill pair out with its new colt, that is what baby sandhills are called.

In the fall the sandhill poulation grows as birds from all around the area converge on Crex and use it as a staging area for the fall migration. Soon after these pictures where taken these sandhills were on their way to some where warm like the New Mexico, south Texas or Florida.

Another visitor to the refuge during the fall are rough legged hawks. These birds nest up on the northern tundra of Alaska and Canada. Most spend their winter down in the lower 48 states. This one may have spent the winter at Crex or he might have just been stopping off to look for some lunch on his way further south.

One of the most common raptors found at Crex is the bald eagle. The abundance of water on the refuge and fish that are found in the water provide for numerous nesting pair in and around the park. During the winter these eagles will head south in search of open water and may end up a couple of hours south at Reeds Landing in southern Minnesota.

Answer 5: Rough-legged Hawk

The answer to number 5 (E) on the quiz, which may have been the hardest to identify was a rough legged hawk.
The reason why it was a bit more difficult then the others was the cloudiness at the top of the eye, as you can see here. This is the birds nictitating membrane.
This membrane is like a second eye lid which is partially transparent. The nictitating membrane helps to moisturize and protect the birds eye while still allowing it to some what see. All birds have a nictitating membrane as well as some mammals like cats. At one point man even had a nictitating membrane but since we did not have much use for it evolution took care of it and it is not a bunch of pink skin in the corner of our eye.
The rough-legged hawk gets its name from the fact that its feathers run all the way down its legs up to its feet. Most other hawks have scaly legs instead of feathers. The only other hawk with feathered legs that is found in North America is the ferruginous hawk, although golden eagles also have feathers down to their feet.

Rough-legged hawk spend their summers up in the conifer forests and tundra of northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia and northern Europe. During the winter they head south to more temperate climates where prey is more abundant.
Rough-legs are similar in size to red-tailed hawks but are usually easily identified by their feathered legs. In flight, when the legs may not be visible, the rough-leg can often be identified by the black wrist patch and the thick black band on the tail which is followed by white tips, although there are a variety of different color morphs for rough-legs.
Rough-legs hunt very similarly to red-tailed hawks. Often hunting from an elevated perch at the border of an open field or hovering in the air above the field. They are looking for small rodents just like the red-tails. During the summer this is not an issue because the breeding grounds of the rough-leg is further north but during the winter, when the rough-legs are spread through out most of the continental US, except the south east corner, there is competition between rough-legs and red-tails for food.
This bird, like many of the birds banded at Hawk Ridge, was adopted and then released back into the wild. Look at the face of someone releasing a bird and you can see the pure joy that this experience brings. There is nothing like holding one of these powerful and majestic raptors and then letting it go free back into the wild where it belongs.

Red Wing Christmas Bird Count

Last Saturday I participated in the Red Wing area Christmas Bird Count. This was my third CBC, the first two were the prior weekend in Duluth and Two Harbors. This was kind of different situation because this count circle had not been done since 1973, so we did not have any recent data and were not sure what to expect. Unfortunately the weather was not great for birding and even worse for taking pictures.

I had spoken with our group leader, Jim Ryan the night before and we decided that the three of us, Jim Gay was the other member of our group, would meet near my house and then car pool down in my truck. So we met at around 6:00 am and headed south to Red Wing to meet with the rest of the count group. The roads on the trip down were a bit slick but not to bad. The fog was another story. There was several occasions when we would be driving with fairly good visibility and then hit a wall of fog and I would need to slow down to about 10 mph because I could barely see the road in front of the truck hood. Despite the fun driving conditions we made it down to the rendezvous location on time and with out incident. At the rendezvous location we found out from Laura Coble, the Red Wing CBC coordinator, that several people had to cancel because many of the roads to the west of Red Wing were iced up and they could not get through safely. Since several areas in the count circle were left with out anyone to count in them we decided that we could cover a second area. So around 7:30 am or so we took of and headed to our first area.

Our first zone was south west of Red Wing and west of Frontenac. It consisted mainly of farm fields with a few roads running through, so we spent most of our time in the truck driving around. With a lot of farms and fields we spotted a lot of juncos, chickadees, tree sparrows, starlings, pheasants, and pigeons. We also spotted a few more interesting birds.

Red-tailed hawk

Rough-legged hawk

Northern shrike

We even got a bald eagle to pose for us in the lite snow

It snowed for quite a bit in the morning, the very wet snow flakes made it difficult to shoot, so my camera stayed packed most of the time until the snow stopped but I could not pass on these shots.

We completed our first zone around noon and then met back with the group at the afternoon rendezvous. By this time all the snow had stopped and the fog had lifted. It was still very overcast but the temps were fairly warm as we headed out to our second area.

The second zone covered the Frontenac area. It consisted of the small residential areas of Frontenac and as well as the state park. We started off touring through the residential areas, stopping to take a closer look at any of the active feeders. Near the feeders we saw juncos, cardinals, chickadees, gold finch and house finch.

We also saw American tree sparrows

blue jays

and pine siskin at some of the feeders.

Near one of the cemeteries we were excited to find a couple of brown creepers. They were the only 2 creepers that were found on the count.

In the Frontenac State Park we spotted another rough-legged hawk, a flock of nearly 100 robins over by the Villa Maria, and a couple bald eagles near the river. We even hiked out to sand point but we did not find much other then a hairy woodpecker.

When we finished the second area we headed back to Red Wing to meet for the compilation. I still had some holiday stuff to take care of plus we were all pretty beat so we did not stay long. According to an e-mail from Laura Coble the final numbers were 46 species found by 17 birders. The record for this count from 1905 to 1973 was 49 so considering the conditions I think that we did well. The more interesting sightings included:

2 Tufted Titmice (at two separate feeders; one of the feeders normally has 2)
2 Brown Creepers
8 Gray Partridges
14 Rough-legged Hawks
49 Pine Siskins
10 Snow Buntings
1 Belted Kingfisher
4 Ruffed Grouse
96 American Robins
60 Red-winged Blackbirds

Most of my birding has been alone or with my wife, so going out with other birders has been kind of a new experience for me. It has been fun and I am learning a lot. Hopefully I will get a chance to go out birding with Jim and/or Jim again in the future.