Now there are four or more hawks joining in the hunt. They dive bomb the feeder and obviously want the bluejays to fly. Some always do and the nimble hawks pursue them right through the limbs of the trees nearby. Other jays just refuse to take wing.
The jays will return to the birdfeeder immediately after each attack which come every five or six seconds from one or more of the hawks. Incredibly the bluejays will land in the feeder even when the hawks are perched on limbs only 10-15 feet away.
All the little birds such as goldfinches, purple finches, nuthatches and chickadees have vanished.
To my amazement, however, a group of ruffed grouse pecked away in the yard with the air war taking place nearly over their heads.
Go figure!
I have now suspended the feeding operation until the hawks move on.
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Sharpshinned hawk sits on branch mere feet away from feeder full of jays |
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| Back view shows square tail that IDs Sharpie, not rounded like Coopers hawk |
2 comments:
Dan,
As I've been following your climate change conversation, and as I follow the weather up there daily, I have to ask: What about this year?
Red Lake experienced near record lows the entire winter. From Mid Nov- Mid Feb, the needle never north of 0 C. There was no Spring- On May 5 there was ice and it was near 25 degrees C and those temps seemed to stay steady or climb a bit. Huge fires all around the NW with little rain until July. Now that Sept is here- there was no fall. Aug 14th week we were in shorts and it hit 31 degrees. There were 2-3 weeks or so in the 20's, but now it's been around 7-10 degrees for the past 2 weeks and continues to look that way. They had a hard frost last night (-3)...
In 1 year Red Lake had near record lows, broke the all time high and now is in low/average period again. At least I'd assume the Lake Trout will spawn well this year.
Is this weather or is this climate change? How does one differentiate the two and "know" for sure?
Neil
I've heard meteorologists answer this question. They say what we experienced today, yesterday and even over the past year is considered weather but the pattern over a longer period is seen as evidence of climate change. At the same time climatologists have predicted that climate change will make our weather ever-more volatile. So, more extremes like extended heat waves but also more extended cold spells. The atmosphere is so hot now that the jet stream no longer behaves the way it used to. it has always mainly been a long belt that extends from the west coast to the east and moves north in the summer and south in the winter. No longer. Now it undulates far south, then far north and then repeats before getting clear of the continent. This brings warm weather to parts of the Arctic and frigid temperatures to places like Northwestern Ontario and the U.S. Midwest. Did this happen before climate change too? Probably but it would have been a rare event. It seems the norm now.
More obvious examples of climate change are the extreme precipitation events everybody is experiencing. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture than before and leads to the cataclysmic rains that wash away roads and homes. We used to have terms like 500-year flood and 100-year flood for storms like these because they were so infrequent. Today we can experience 500-year floods every other year. That is a big change.
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