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I have a nemesis bird. OK, I have several, but one stands out from the others: Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA from here on, just because I’m lazy.) I may have seen one back in the late 80s in the extreme southwest part of Missouri, but I was a complete newbie to birding and I can’t remember enough details about the bird to claim it. So my goal has been to find and photograph an RLHA, but my success rate has equaled that of a certain coyote in his pursuit of a Roadrunner.
And truthfully, I’m at a disadvantage. RLHAs nest in the Arctic, far enough to the north that they’re probably native Inuktitut speakers, and come south to winter. Their winter range is essentially the northern half of the U.S., extending south into the Great Plains and Great Basin regions. Most range maps show the Ozarks as part of this range, but any birds that show up here are apparently lost or goofy in the head. A few are reported each winter, but they’re sporadic and hard to find. I suspect they avoid the Ozarks because they prefer open grasslands, which are nearly non-existent here.
This winter is the fourth that I’ve made a concerted effort to find and photograph an RLHA. I’ve struck out repeatedly and it’s not like I haven’t tried. My sister and I made a trip to eastern Kansas (we did see one bird that could conceivably have been an RLHA, but I didn’t get a great look and the photo was inconclusive), Dayna and I have made several trips west and north of Springfield, and I made a 700-mile loop through Columbia, Chillicothe, and Springfield, all with zilch to show for it. Hell, Dayna and I have even made two trips south of Jonesboro, Arkansas where a female RLHA has spent at least the last two winters. We saw a lot (a LOT) of Red-tails (and I got some really nice shots of those,) but we never even caught a glimpse of the RLHA.
Then a little serendipity happened (I love serendipity). There was a message on the ARBIRDS-L mailing list detailing a trip two gentlemen from NW Arkansas made into NE Oklahoma in mid-January. They began the trip at the Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, then worked the area to the north and west before heading home. And guess what they found? RHLAs, at least 5 of them. A trip to Oklahoma suddenly became a little more attractive.
I had a three-day weekend coming up and I talked a buddy (Hey Brock!) from work into heading west with me. It’s a near 6-hour drive, so we’d need to spend the night to make the trip worthwhile. Leaving Van Buren just before 7:00 a.m. left us arriving in Oklahoma in the early afternoon. Deciding to get a hotel later, we went north from Pawhuska to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, then worked our way west through Foraker to Highway 18, south to 60 and back to Pawhuska.
The weather wasn’t terribly cold—mid- to upper-30s—but there was a lovely 40 mph wind blowing constantly, which put a serious damper on bird activity. The Preserve was quiet, as dead as a possum on a freeway. There were the bison, of course (they have 2500 of them, after all,)
and a small Whitetail buck who was still clinging to one antler,
but I consider deer to be the mammal equivalent of weeds and bison are just glorified cows, so I wasn’t terribly excited by either of those.
We did find several Loggerhead Shrikes and Northern Harriers, none of which stayed for a photo, plus a flock of 30-ish Brewer’s Blackbirds,
a few Savannah Sparrows,
four Canada Geese doing a fly by,
and a single Northern Mockingbird.
Hawks were harder to come by. After leaving the Preserve and heading further west where there were a few more places for them to perch, we did begin seeing a few Red-tailed Hawks, but no RLHAs. Almost back to Pawhuska, we spotted a hawk hovering on the north side of the road. RLHAs are dedicated hover hunters, but we had already observed a couple of Red-tails using the stiff wind to pull off that maneuver. Still, we were checking everything, so we pulled to the shoulder and a quick look through the binoculars revealed a bird that was decidedly NOT a Red-tail.
The black, though indistinct, terminal band on the tail and the bold, black markings on the “elbows” left no doubt. By this point, I’m screaming “Roughie! Roughie!,” trying to get out of the car without unbuckling my seat belt and terrified that the bird would decide we were a threat and move out of range But he mostly just ignored us, continuing to hover cooperatively on the north side of the highway. But it was just before 5:00 p.m. with clouds coming and going, the light was horrendous and I was trying to hold a 600-mm lens in a 40-mph wind. Less than ideal conditions to be sure and I had to remove the lens hood to have any hope of holding the camera still, but I was able to cross the highway and climb the embankment to at least get a fair look (and about 300 photos.)
There was actually a second bird hovering further to the north, but that one was too distant to even think of a photo. Meanwhile, the first bird just kept hanging there, facing into the wind, which meant I was getting a head-on look only. Finally, he banked over and gave me a view of his underside.
We stayed and watched until the bird finally drifted away to the north. But I was stoked. I had finally found a Rough-Legged Hawk and gotten a photo. Not a great one, but one I’ll accept for my first opportunity. And we still had the next day to try again, a day that promised much more photography-friendly weather.
Shortly before sunrise, the full moon sets over the Current River in Van Buren, August 8, 2017. This is what I see on my way to work in the morning. How ’bout you?
Last night, just after 10:00, I took the dogs outside to do their thing one last time before we went to bed. While waiting for them to pee on things and eat a little rabbit poop, I heard a racket coming from the back of the house. We’ve been dealing with a raccoon getting into the trash, so I figured he was in the dumpster again. I shined the light over that way and could see that the lid was down, so he wasn’t in there. I realized that the noise was coming from closer to the house than I thought, which meant he was in the trash can we keep by Dayna’s car, finishing the chocolate-chip pancakes he’d started on the night before.
Not wanting to deal with a confrontation between my dogs and a coon, I rounded them up and herded them back in the house. Once they were inside, I headed around the house to chase the coon away, armed with a flashlight and a fly swat. I turned the corner of the house, stepping out of the light and realized there was a large, dark shape coming towards me. My night vision hadn’t recovered yet and I first thought was looking at a large dog. But as it moved closer and I had a better look, my second thought was “Oh F*ck! That’s a BEAR!!!”
I then did what any red-blooded American would do. I screamed like a little girl and ran for the house. Dayna tells me she could hear me yelling obscenities as I ran, but I don’t remember doing that. Running was the worst possible choice of actions since it could have triggered his predatory response—if he had been a mountain lion instead of a bear, running would have probably gotten me in big trouble—but there was absolutely no conscious thought involved. Just my fight-or-flight response kicking in, dialed all the way over to flight.
My next memory is actually slamming the door behind me, checking to see if I needed a clean pair of shorts (I didn’t) and yelling at Dayna that “there’s a f*cking bear in the yard.” I still had my flashlight and fly swat (lesson: don’t take a fly swat bear hunting! Unless you happen to be Chuck Norris, then you’re OK.) and we spent the next half hour walking around the house, shining the light out the windows. We didn’t catch even so much as another glimpse of the bear (I probably scared him as much as he did me) but did see a mama coon and three kittens in the back yard. The adrenaline finally wore off after a couple of hours, I crashed and went to bed.
I was texting my brother about the excitement this morning and found out that my closest neighbor, with whom my brother is close friends, has seen what is probably the same bear on a regular basis. He’s caught it on a game camera and has a cell phone photo taken in his yard.
Both photos © Tony Towner, 2017.
We think that’s the same bear in both photos and if it’s also the bear I encountered, he’s not as large as he seems in the game cam image. I’d guess him at 250-300 pounds—keep in mind this is the second bear I’ve ever seen in the wild, giving me vast experience judging their size—so I may well have outweighed him for all the good that did me. The photos also look a lot like the bear I saw and posted about back in June. That was less than two miles away as the crow flies, so it could easily be the same critter.
I was hoping he had stopped by the pond for a drink. The rest of the yard is bone dry and hard as rock, so the mud around the pond is the only place he could have left tracks. Sadly, he had drunk elsewhere, for there were no bear prints this morning, just a mess of coon tracks.
So after going 50 years without seeing a bear, I have two encounters within six weeks and one of them way more intimate than I cared for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m tickled shitless that bears are returning to the Ozarks, but I didn’t need to be surprised by one, literally within spitting distance and in the dark, thank you very much. I can tell you one thing though. The next time I hear something in the trash, I am NOT going to assume it’s a raccoon, that’s for damn sure.
Update: The day after I originally posted this, Dayna’s aunt, who lives 5 miles from us through the woods, posted photos of a bear to Facebook. He was cinnamon colored and looked to be about the same size, so it could easily be the same bear making another appearance. How many cinnamon-colored, 250 pound bears could there be in the area? It walked around her yard, completely carefree, while she shot photos and video from the house. During our encounter, he didn’t act in any way aggressively towards me, but he walked within 20′ of me and I know he could see me better than I could see him, so he clearly wasn’t afraid of me (though my screaming may have put the fear of God into him.) This bear seems entirely too comfortable around humans and I’m worried that he’s going to become a problem. I hope for his sake and whoever might run into him in the future that I’m wrong.
Usually, when parking myself in my lawn chair next to the pond, I end up with lots of photos of dragonflies. But one day a couple of weeks past, I had sat at the water’s edge for a few minutes when the bullfrogs began to emerge from the water. They always flee at my approach, generally quite noisily, and a few will return to show themselves, but not this many.
My pond is not very big, maybe fifty feet across at the widest, and I counted 14 bullfrogs at one point. And with all the cover available to them, I know I had to have missed at least a few.
So I’m sitting there watching the frogs, occasionally shooting a photo when there’s a large splash on the opposite bank. I figured it was yet another frog, but I couldn’t see one in the vicinity of the splash, but that was to be expected. Then something started moving underwater, disturbing the water shield that covers the pond as passed. And it was coming towards me!
duunnn dunnn… duuuunnnn duun… duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn dunnnn
I watched its progress as it continued to approach, still tracking it by the movement of the plant cover. It stopped moving about 10′ from me and I figured that would be the end of it. But then, very slowly, this emerged from the water.
I wasn’t surprised that there was a snapping turtle in the pond. After all, one came from there several years ago and laid eggs in the yard. I was surprised to see her, simply because she simply doesn’t show herself very often. I’m calling it a “her” because turtles are very long-lived and this could easily be the same turtle as the egg-layer.
She kept raising her head further and further out of the water. She only stopped when it seemed her neck would stretch no further, looking like a scaly periscope. Then she abruptly pulled her head back underwater and began moving away towards the water-lily in the northwest end of the pond. Approaching the far side, she popped her head up again, parting and lifting the small pads of the water shield.
Apparently satisfied that there were no threats present, she dragged herself out of the water in the shallows near the edge.
Once there, she periscoped her head again, then quickly plunged it into the water.
Once there, she periscoped her head again, then quickly plunged it into the water.
She caught something; I could see that she was eating but frustratingly couldn’t make out what it was. Finishing her snack, she resumed her hunting posture.
She was still there when I left my seat. The frogs all went willy-nilly for the water when I moved, but she either couldn’t see me from that distance or simply ignored me. Hopefully, it’s not another five years before I see her again.
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