One of the juvenile hawks has been hanging around Horsefeathers Farm and the neighbors. Just last week the young hawk landed on the railing of our deck, sending one of our cats into a chattering frenzy. Before that, the young bird was sitting on a fence post while I worked in the garden just a few yards away.
He or she has also been spotted frequently on the neighbor’s roof and in the mature second-growth Douglas firs and big-leaf maple trees that dominate the wooded pastures that surround us.
The bird has sat motionless in trees long enough for me to get out the binoculars and bird books to confirm the bird’s identity – the black bars with the white tips on the tail, which looks rounded in flight, the finely streaked chest turning to mostly white on the lower belly, the eyes set close to the front of the head, and the longer neck and bigger head than the bird it is most commonly confused with – sharp-shinned hawks.
I understand if the expert birders reading this aren’t convinced I have this bird’s identity right. After all, in my last written foray into the world of bird encounters, I wrote about juvenile peregrine falcons being spotted on Olympia’s west side when, in fact, they were juvenile Cooper’s hawks.
I know, I know – there’s no excuse for such a big birding blunder, especially when we had detailed pictures of one of the hawks, both perched and in flight.
Trouble is, I never saw the photos before they appeared in the newspaper. My account of the birds was based on observations by the neighbors who were seeing them, people who it turns out know just a little less about raptors than I do. Four birds were spotted in a west Olympia neighborhood just a few wing beats north of where four peregrine falcon chicks were hatched this year in a nest box on a Port of Olympia marine terminal crane. The team of journalists who wrote – that’s me – photographed and edited the story assumed way too much and fact-checked way too little.
I received several phone calls and email messages the morning the story appeared, reminding me of my bird-brained error. “Nice photos, but you need to get a bird book for the newsroom,” one caller said. Touché.
Back to the East Olympia hawk family. The neighbors have seen the adult pair gliding and circling in the thermals with their two young. It looks like they’re teaching them how to hunt and fly. We’ve discovered the nest in a thick stand of Douglas fir trees near our long gravel driveway and just a stone’s throw from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad line. The hawks must not mind the sound of freight train conductors blasting their whistles as the trains rumble through the East Olympia train crossing.
It also seems like the activity at our bird feeders has dropped off since the juvenile hawk and its parents made their presence known. I keep waiting for a bird feeder ambush from one of these stealthy hawks, swooping in through our heavily wooded front yard to snatch a chickadee or nuthatch with its talons.
One or two long-beaked common dolphins have extended an unusual visit to Budd Inlet that began in early June.
The lengthy stay of what appears to be one adult and one juvenile dolphin has been documented by waterfront residents, beach goers at Thurston County’s Burfoot Park, and kayakers and other boaters who for the most part have been keeping a respectful distance from the playful visitors.
This is a warm-water species that typically frequents the water off the coast from central California to Baja California. The only other documented sighting of this species of dolphin in South Sound occurred in September 2003. Climate change, anyone?
Their graceful leaps and tail slaps have been an inspiring sight to many of the onlookers.
Annie Douglas, a marine mammal scientist at Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, came across the adult dolphin Aug. 16 while kayaking in Budd Inlet. She said she’s not sure if the dolphin would feed on salmon, but the subtropical species does feed on small schooling fish in its normal habitat.
Cooper Point resident Travis Thornton sent me an email of the younger dolphin that he captured on film while kayaking in early August. Thornton posted the footage on YouTube for all to see. Check it out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jGaiAnK2Ko.
Anyone spotting the dolphins is asked to report their sightings to Cascadia Research at 360-943-7325.
John Dodge: 360-754-5444
jdodge@theolympian.com
