While I’ve been keeping an eye on the progress of the red-shouldered hawk chicks, I’ve been having difficulty recording it due to a lack of free time concurrent with decent weather – we’ve had way too much rain for my liking. Yesterday I finally got it together, and the hawks were happy to oblige me.
The chicks are getting quite sizable now, able to move about with almost the same agility as the adults and often seen standing upright near the edge of the nest. The baby down is giving way to the flight feathers in the wings and tail, but the main body feathers (called ‘coverts’) have yet to appear, which means the parents still hover over them on wet or chilly days. The body feathers are primary protection against the elements, forming both a water-resistant barrier and an outer layer that can trap their own body heat within; lacking these, they will rely on the parents for a while longer. Yet the growing surety of their movements and the alertness with which they view their surroundings is a marked change from just a week ago, not to mention that they’re surprisingly close to the adults in size now. I haven’t watched them for a long enough period to determine exactly how much they’re eating, but it certainly isn’t trivial.
From the previous observation of their behavior, it appeared that the fledglings were starting to feed themselves, and they confirmed this during a shooting session yesterday morning. A parent appeared and dropped a small snake into the nest, not bothering to try and carve it up; to be honest, I’m not sure they even had the opportunity. Both younguns immediately seized it by either end and started a fierce tug-of-war that was delightful to watch. In the image above, the adult is to the left, one fledgling to the right, with the other just visible between them – the dark snake is easy to spot, but if you look close, you can see that the middle fledgling has a grip as well; the pale sharp curve of the lower beak can be made out just underneath the stretched body of the snake, right under the parent’s breast. I said it before: I would love to have a better view, but it’s not going to happen. I boosted ISO for this session to allow for a smaller, sharper aperture and a little better shutter speed, and the hit to image quality can be seen. This is almost full-resolution, a tight crop from the original frame.
While the beaks and talons are likely well-enough developed to chop up something as easy as a snake, the young have an instinct to gulp as much as they can before their sibling does, so biting through the snake would have worked against this. Instead, they simply tried swallowing everything they could while pulling it away from the other, and here I caught the back one in mid-gulp. But hey, I can do even better than this.
When the action started I simply held the shutter release down and let the frames crank out. Later on, I took fourteen consecutive frames and edited them into this animated gif (pronounced “gorbachev”) because it shows the amusing struggle much better. Yes, video would be even better – drop me a donation through that ‘Feed the gator’ widget to the right and we’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, we’ll carry on with the still photos.
(Has it occurred to you that if the snake had suddenly separated, at least one of them might have been flailing madly trying not to fall out of the nest? It certainly occurred to me.) Through it all, the parent simply watched impassively, probably ready to help out if the young still needed their meat cut up for them, but otherwise secure in the idea that they had little to do except provide. There’s no chance for an adult to play favorites now; the game is all about who grabs what first.
But the day wasn’t over yet. I was about to remark that the morning wasn’t even over yet, but looking at the timestamp on the next photos, I find that it was just barely after noon, so…
I had taken a break myself after the young polished off the small snake, but came back out to my post when the cries of the adults came rushing through the tree canopy. I was able to see both of them wheeling along the same flight paths, and vaguely suspected that I was seeing a territorial dispute with an interloper. However, the lead hawk alighted on a perch about half as distant to me as the nest, and within sight, too; moving the tripod by less than a meter afforded me a quite-clear view of the adult.
It’s obvious that the parent had yet another snake, this one markedly larger than the previous, and the hawk was intent on ensuring that the snake was dead – not at all surprising, since this one was big enough to make an escape if dropped live into the nest. From close examination of the photos I identify this as a black rat snake, and we pause briefly here for taxonomic trivia. Formerly known as Elaphe obsoleta (obsoleta,) the nomenclature has changed, but there isn’t a universal agreement on this yet. Overall, the species is now considered Pantherophis obsoletus, but there is some dispute over whether three separate regional species can be recognized; if so, that would likely make this Pantherophis alleghaniensis. Whatever – this particular one is hawk food any way you slice it.
The other adult seemed agitated by this whole behavior, perhaps because it disapproved of any dicking around that delayed food getting to the young, perhaps because it did not trust the other to deliver the food rather than keeping it for itself; I suspected this myself when I saw the hawk in possession avoiding the nest, as well as avoiding the other parent when they came crashing down on an adjoining perch. The second parent returned to the nest empty-taloned after the first flew off out of immediate sight, but this didn’t last long. Within another minute, the snake was delivered to the nest where the young had been watching the dance of the adults. And in fact, it took another close examination of my photos to ensure that the snake really had been brought in, since the young simply stared at it, perhaps too full to contemplate another bite right now, perhaps a little overwhelmed at the size which would prevent easily slamming it down; this one was going to have to be carved up first.
It’s safe to say that these fledglings are not suffering from neglect in the slightest, and also that the local snake population is being visibly reduced. That decline isn’t likely to drop off in the next couple of weeks as the young start flying and collecting their own meals, but it might eventually spread further out as they leave (or are driven from) the area to avoid competition. Before then, I’m hoping to capture a lot of images as they start to learn how to fly; once again, we’ll see what happens.
It seemed like any other day where I’d been neglecting my photo sorting duties and thus facing the daunting task of going through hundreds of images, but as they say, things can seem perfectly normal (if slightly guilty) yet suddenly turn dark and ominous. And of course, since I’d been putting this off, how much time has passed that could have made a bigger difference? How much farther along in an undoubtedly sinister plan have we been carried, due to my neglect? Or are we in the nick of time, now aware of something that might easily have passed, quite literally, under our noses?
The hatched Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) that I posted about earlier – and near-perpetually on this blog, really – have spread out across the front yard to some fairly remote locations; remote, at least, for something that measures 10mm in body length. Above, one stalks among the leaves of a creeping jenny plant, while at left another peers suspiciously at a glimpse of activity from the opposite side of its day lily leaf, apparently unaware that a sibling was perched there. They are, if nothing else, getting plenty of water, since we haven’t gone three days without rain since they’ve hatched, but as yet I haven’t seen them with any prey, related or otherwise. This doesn’t mean much – I have only seen mantids with prey a handful of times, but I’ve watched them grow huge in the meantime, so they’re obviously not waiting until I’m present.
Many of these photos look like they were taken at night, which is generally not the case. The cause is the camera settings: at these magnifications the range of sharp focus is very short, so I opt for a small aperture, usually f16, to increase depth of field. Camera shake can also be an issue, so I shoot at 1/200 second shutter speed, and count on the flash to provide the light that allows both of these to be functional; without it, the images would be drastically underexposed. And in fact, they are – but only for the backgrounds where the flash doesn’t reach, dispersed by the softbox attachment. There are two ways to combat this: have the background very close so that it can be illuminated by the flash too (this usually means an added leaf or something,) or have a secondary light that illuminates the background at the same time. This can be done, but it’s awkward, and changing position means the light has to be moved too, which obviously limits the spontaneity and grabbing the brief but compelling action of the ambulatory subject. What I usually aim to do is have something that can sit immediately behind the subject, like a nearby leaf, but otherwise not worry about the rest. As you can see, it’s easy to have one’s subject framed against pure blackness, which only works for some subjects – darker ones, naturally, can nearly disappear in such conditions, so I’m often picky about my shooting angle, and won’t even bother with some shots because I know they won’t turn out very well.
By the way, The Girlfriend was present for this session, unlike most other times, and she provided a bit of scale by putting her fingertip in the path of one of the newborns as it made a circuit of the same planter that held the egg case. Had she moved her finger towards the mantis, it would have shied off in alarm, but leaving her finger in place while the mantis approached was just fine; shame I missed the focus. In my defense, their movement will bring them into and out of focus in a moment, and this was the only frame where the fingertip appeared – it serves its purpose here, crap though it is. We’ll need this impression (about size, I mean) as we go in even closer.
One of the two resident common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) was peeking out of the water while I was around, one of the very few times I’ve seen this – their shyness is way out of proportion to their reputation and even just their appearance, but the ‘expression’ in this particular image is up for interpretation; I can see a lot of different possibilities, and I’m betting you could too if I were to merely suggest them to you, but I’d rather you take a good look on your own without the impressions. I liked the faintly eye-bending effect of the water’s distortion, where the portions above the surface look normal but everything below gets shifted in perspective and reshapes the turtle’s head – for a more natural view 
In contrast to the startled appearance of the anole at top, this American five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) watched us creeping closer with little apparent concern, at times seeming to drift off into slumber. Eventually, we got close enough that it figured concealment was called for and it slipped into a crack in the rock sculpture that you see here, but not before we got a fine selection of images. It’s all about going slow, and getting the shots you can before you try to get closer. Not everything that you get is going to be a keeper, but it’s better to get an okay shot from a short distance than to try and get close enough for the best pics and scare the subject away instead, ending up with nothing at all.
While the skink was drifting off, this one was almost certainly well beyond that point. This red-bellied water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster) was sitting in plain sight right alongside the raised walkway, never even twitching as we leaned in close. Even with frequent exposure to humans, I find it hard to believe the snake was that conditioned to close approaches, but here’s the crucial factor: snakes have no eyelids. Basking as it was in a patch of bright sunlight, this one most likely was fast asleep, and our slow approach without throwing a shadow across its face wasn’t enough to trigger any protective response. Add in the raised walkway we were on the entire time, preventing us from producing any vibrations that the snake could feel (they don’t have ears, either,) and you get a distinct possibility that the snake was deep in Dreamland, or whatever passes for such with a snake (Carl Sagan’s book The Dragons of Eden gives some interesting speculations about how reptile brains actually work, if you have the interest – dreaming seems relatively unlikely.)
Remember when I said that it would be interesting to see if the fishing spider managed to 
There’s a limit, however. When a friend comes to visit, one who has been shooting longer than I have, that routinely visits places like Belize and the Alps, and her most treasured travel accoutrement is a selfie-stick… well, it’s hard to keep the bile from rising.
To say that the front garden is loaded with baby mantises now is selling it short – it looks like an invasion, and one does not have to look hard to find them anymore. In fact, it’s a challenge to find a plant that doesn’t have one on it, including a potted flower on the steps, which is an indication that some of them had to cross the steps to get there, making me even more self-conscious of where I walk. But at the same time, a lot of arthropod species reproduce in vast numbers because the loss rate is high, the newborns being too vulnerable to survive on average. If each offspring has a 5% chance of survival to adulthood but 100 are produced in a brood, this means five will (again, on average) make it through. I’ve seen several hatchings now, and despite the large numbers at first, by the time egg-laying season rolls around I can only find two or three at best.
While I’m still on the subject of motherhood, I’ll just throw this one out there. The fishing spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus) that I first introduced a month ago disappeared for a while, only to be found again a few nights back. Just this evening I photographed her again, and suspected that she looked a bit smaller in the abdomen than before; 
