Big Birds

Cover photo credit: Heidi Pinkerton

Bird song is one of the delights Ely offers, especially on early summer mornings when a chorus of sparrows, thrushes, and warblers of dozens of species musically announce dawn’s arrival. Ornithologists will tell you they are protecting their nesting territory, but for anyone who has watched a bird sing for several minutes, pure joy seems to be part of it. There’s the trick—these little birds can be hard to spot, no matter how close they sound. For a novice bird watcher seeking to identify the tiny creatures by matching them to a picture in a field guide, this can be frustrating. Add binoculars and the frustration can build as the bird flits quickly from one hidden branch to another.

But we have birds that are much easier to spot. They may not be the most musical members of the avian chorus, and some sound more like a beginning bassoon player than an accomplished orchestra instrumentalist. But even a toddler can pick them out soaring along ridge tops or cruising through the red pines. Here are some facts about Ely’s big birds you’re most likely to see as you boat, bike, or hike.

Bald eagles are the national bird of the USA. Benjamin Franklin thought the wild turkey was much more worthy of this honor, objecting to the eagle’s opportunistic behavior of stealing a meal from a smaller bird. Eagles, and many other birds of prey, were once threatened species because DDT in the food chain caused their egg shells to be so weak that a brooding parent would break the egg before the chick could hatch. They have had a remarkable comeback, and now are a common sight perched in a big pine along shore or gliding on thermals high in the sky. Often you can recognize them by the white head and tail. Eagles with those markings are adults; younger individuals are more of a mottled brown with the distinctive white head and tail feathers appearing about age four. Another way to distinguish an eagle from other soaring birds is the width of their wings, which are broader than other species’ wings, allowing them to catch an easy ride on the thermal air currents that rise during summer days from the heated landscape. On some days you can watch them soar until your neck gets sore and never see a wing flap.

Eagle nests can often be seen from a lake—a bulky bunch of sticks in the crotch of a big white pine. The same eagles use the nest year after year until a storm eventually crashes it to the ground. Researchers investigating a long-used nest found that it weighed two tons! If you walk below a nest you’re likely to find fish bones and scales because fish make up most of an eagle’s diet, but they also eat carrion, reptiles, small mammals, and other birds, especially ducks and baby loons. Another nest’s contents reported by researchers—43 small collars. So don’t leave your little pets unattended where eagles fly.

Eagles are also often spotted at road kill sites where they share a feast with vultures and ravens. When you see a large bird on the wing being harassed by smaller birds, the large bird may be an eagle. Since they prey on smaller birds’ nests, taking eggs or fledglings, the parents chase the eagle mercilessly. It seems like the eagle could turn on the pesky bird and wipe it out easily, but that doesn’t happen. When you hear a loon tremolo call, look up and you’re likely to see an eagle. The loon is usually one with chicks warning its mate that an eagle is around and the chick needs protection. Occasionally you might see an eagle swimming. Chances are it has a fish in its talons and is too weighted down to take off. Or it might have missed its meal, but soaked its feathers and is too wet to fly.

When you see large birds soaring, it’s easy to mistake a vulture for an eagle initially, but as you observe the birds more closely you’ll notice some have a wobbly flight pattern and a more V-shaped wingspan. Those are turkey vultures. In flight they appear almost headless due to the lack of feathers on their heads. This pink bald pate looks ugly to us, but is useful to prevent feather fouling where the bird can’t groom itself after it scavenges food from inside the rotting carcasses of dead mammals. Unlike eagles, vultures don’t care for fish.

Vulture nests are minimal constructions usually on a cliff or in a cave. The adults and immature birds all look about the same. Do you know how a hot vulture cools down? It urinates on its legs! And it throws up its stomach contents if disturbed while eating, probably so it can fly off faster. Vultures are nearly mute, making a few grunts and groans as they work on their meal. Probably Ben Franklin didn’t consider these unappealing-to-people behaviors worthy of national bird status, even though vultures perform a valuable service to the ecosystem by cleaning up the forests and roadsides.

Turkey Vulture

Photo credit: Ken Hupila

A large bird you’re more likely to see wading than flying is a Great Blue Heron. Preying on frogs, crayfish, and minnows, the heron stands statue-still and ankle-deep. When it spies a meal, its head darts forward and its formidable bill grabs the hapless creature in an instant. With a wingspan of seven feet and weighing only five pounds, a heron can lift off nearly straight up. If you scare one away from its feeding spot as you paddle near, it will go just a short ways and set up for the hunt again. Often you may follow it as it flies off, lands, and flies off again and again.

At four feet in height, a great blue isn’t likely to be confused with another species. There just isn’t anything else like it. You are most likely to see it flying higher in the sky at evening as it heads to its roost around sunset. Unmistakable even in the sky, the great blue’s crooked neck and legs dangling behind resembles no other bird.

Great blue herons nest in rookeries with dozens of families living in bulky stick nests high up in red pines. The noise, smell, and underbrush create a unique setting in the northwoods. Cackling adults and begging hatchlings drop their excrement over the side of their nests, creating a rich habitat below that fills with nettles, elderberry, thistles, and other plants common to rich flood plains. Rookeries are used year after year, often eventually killing the pines.

Ospreys are another bird you’re most likely to see from a boat. Cruising up to 100’ above the lake as it searches for a meal of fresh fish, the osprey has a distinctive bent-elbow look like a gull or tern. The white underside and dark mask provide distinctive markings for identification. When it spots its prey, the osprey hovers over the water with a rapid wing beat. Then it plunges into the lake to grab its dinner, rising back up with a fish that could have been as much as three feet under the surface. This is the moment when an eagle may pester the osprey into dropping its fish, which the eagle then scoops up for its own meal.

Great Blue Heron

Photo credit: Ken Hupila

If you hear a raucous “kwuk-kwukkwuk-kwuk” while you’re in a mature forest, look for a pileated woodpecker. (The first syllable can be pronounced either as pill or pile.) Seeing one makes the connection between dinosaurs and birds seem obvious. A large, noisy, black and white bird, both male and female have a bright red crest and the male also has a red mustache. Dining almost exclusively on carpenter ants, pileateds excavate rectangular-shaped holes as large as a suitcase in ant infested trees that may look perfectly healthy. These feeding stations can be at ground level, but their nests, constructed with the same chiseling technique, are higher up to avoid predation. If you notice a large pile of wood chips at the base of a tree, chances are that’s the work of a pileated woodpecker.

Pileateds and other woodpeckers are the contractors of their ecosystems, building homes for many other residents from woodducks, owls, and chickadees to pine martens and bats. After nesting season, the pileateds still use the cavities they’ve made as roosting sites, but generally they create new nests each year, leaving the old excavations for other species. Old forests and dead standing trees are essential pileated habitat. You can help prevent the reduction of habitat that many boreal species need as you manage the land around your cabin by letting those large dead and dying pines and aspen stand. You may be surprised at how long they’ll remain upright and how much wildlife you’ll see using them.

Osprey

Photo credit: Ken Hupila

Pileated Woodpecker

Photo credit: Ken Hupila

Around Ely there are other large birds that are easy to see including gulls, owls, swans and geese, and loons. One that may surprise you is sandhill cranes, whose population is growing in this area. The Ely Public Library has an extensive collection of bird books to help you not just identify birds, but learn fascinating facts about their behaviors and adaptations. This is a good summer to get outside, check out the big birds, and share that time with whatever kids are in your life. You’ll never run out of subject matter!