Snow Day Cold Case

It's a sort of "Whodunnit?" and most definitely still a cold case.

I doubt  that you would find this story in the mystery section of a bookstore though.

The victim was a mourning dove, whose feathers were sprawled over the freshly fallen snow on a property in Leesburg.

I discovered the scene while doing some animal tracking and of course, camera-trapping last week.

The mourning dove was probably picked off by bird, as there were no other tracks in the snow.

This could most likely rule our foxes, raccoons, bobcats, and coyotes, but who knows for sure.  Top suspects could be hawks, owls, or falcons.  I wish I had recorded the acrobatics of a bird of prey taking down this bird, but I was there a few hours too late.  Oh well.

As always, it's a fight to stay alive for wildlife, and in winter, things get even tougher.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Like two fat kids fighting over the last piece of pie, these two hawks were all about getting the last bite of a good meal.  This meal was that of a dead deer though, in Leesburg, VA.

The real point of putting the camera-trap over a deer body was to see if any coyotes were around.  They were not.

Black vultures, crows, ravens, and hawks filled up multiple SD cards here though with over 25,000 images taken over a period of three weeks.

Check out the hawk acrobatics below!

In usual "Brian Fashion" the time/date stamp was set incorrectly.

'Tis the Season

The fall rut has started in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties in Virginia.  What this means is that the deer are biologically ready to start mating and bucks are chasing does all day long.

What this also means is that deer are moving around a hell of a lot, and are getting creamed on the roads.  This deer was (at least I presume) hit by a car and dropped dead.  Of course I did the only thing I could think of, and put a camera-trap up to it.

Foxes, raccoons, and possums picked at it at night, and birds had their way with the meat during the day.

I really enjoy looking at images of hawks that scavenge on the dead deer, and was lucky enough to get images of them during this camera-trap stakeout.

Ignore those time/date stamps.  I forgot to set them correctly.

Enjoy!

Hawks can scavenge on carcasses during anytime of the year, but on my cameras, the show up a lot more on deer carcasses during the winter than on deer carcasses of the hot months.

'Tis the season for deer carcass cameras, birding, hunting, the deer rut, and winter sports.  We're in for it until April, folks.

Do Hawks Scavenge In Winter?

The simple answer to the title question is: Yes, hawks scavenge in winter.  In fact, winter is the only time that I have gotten camera-trap images of hawks scavenging.

I'm not saying that hawks don't ever scavenge in other times of the year, but I find it really interesting how often they do in the winter months.

This red-shouldered hawk is just absolutely beautiful.  It came up to a deer carcass and didn't seem to mind the crows that were also there.   The crows didn't seem to mind the hawk there, and they all ate without fighting at all.

The above picture is another red-shouldered hawk at a different camera that I put out.  These cameras were about a quarter mile apart.  Could this be the same hawk?

Here are a few other pictures of it.  The pictures are a bit blurry due to condensation on the lense.

Walmart Birding

"Walmart" and "birding" aren't two words usually put together in the same sentence, but that was different today.

In between periods of pushing my way through half-dressed shoppers and tripping over trash in the aisles, I noticed a bird in the rafters.

I identified it as a Cooper's Hawk.

 

It just proves that sometimes you don't have to go far to go birding.  I've also seen chickadees, sparrows, and grackles in this store.



Maybe next time I want to go birding, I'll go here instead of my favorite parks and nature preserves.

What birds have you seen in your local Walmart lately?