Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 298, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1913 — BIRD THAT FIGHTS BURROWING PESTS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BIRD THAT FIGHTS BURROWING PESTS

HIS splendid bird Is undoubtedly the most powerful hawk met with In Montana, where it is usually x-— ||l called eagle, and Its carrying /y power Is remarkable, as the sequel wlll show. It does no harm, >3 - bat » on tbe contrar y> wa S es un ‘ f. 7 jijwV) ceasing warfare against such pests as prairie dogs, gophers and meadow mice, and should, therefore, be universally protect- - . ed; nevertheless it has unfortu4 nately become very scarce, excepting in one or two favored localities, where it is strictly preserved. Although a good deal has been written about the ferruginous rough-leg (Archibuteo ferruginous), I am not aware that it has, hitherto, been studied or photographed at the nest. Last summer Mr. W.. R. Felton kept four nests of this hawk under observation for me, and visited them whenever his work allowed him time, writes E. S. Cameron in Country Life. These four nests were within a radius of four miles from Mr. Felton’s headquarters at the Square Butte ranch in Chouteau county, and others were reported seven miles away. Besides the above, Mr. Felton found four disused, but well preserved, eyries—two of them within a quarter of a mile of an occupied nest. All eight nests were placed upon rocky j ledges or points. They were constructed of the same materials, which iconslsted of sage brush and greasewood sticks, with some soapweed intermixed, and lined with dry cow dung. As will be seen from the measurements, the loose pile of sticks made the new nests remarkably high, but they settled considerably before the young had flown. A brief history gs one of these nests condensed from Mr. Felton’s notes is as follows: The nest was only two miles north of the Square Butte ranch, easily visible from there through powerful binoculars, and was visited almost every day. This parficu-

tar nest was picturesquely situated on a rocky point of the “Chalk Cliffs” northeast of the geologically famous “Square Butte,” which, despite its modest name, is an immense rock constituting an isolated spur of the Highwood mountains, 2,600 feet above the prairie. In reality the socalled “Chalk Clifts” consist of an outcrop of white sandstone, chiefly in the center of a range of grass-covered hills whose green summits rise in strong contrast above the white corrugated rocks. This sandstone strdlum has been worn into a series of perpendicular cliffs, pure white above, but stained light brown below by lignitic matter, and projecting spurs are carved into fantastic pinnacles and mounds. One promontory in particular is a regular saw-tooth ridge. The nest here shown is poised upon the apex of a pillar which terminates a. knife-blade Iprojection 8,575 feet high, and suggests in some phoiographs the prow of a ship. As there is a sheer vertical descent on three sides, and the surface of the connecting ridge suddenly breaks off, leaving a wide fissure in the rock between it and the nest, It is a task of no small difficulty to reach the latter and one best suited to a sailor or a cat. It can only be accomplished by approaching the eyrie from above, and then crawling along the ledge, when, by dropping into and crossing the gap (which is well shown in the photograph), the nest can be attained. Mr. Felton, making light of the danger, to the nest, and inade numerous exposures with a small camera at the range of a few feet. The nest was four feet in height and three and a half feet in. diameter, and was higher than any Montana eyries of the golden eagle known to me, which species has also nested in the "Chalk Cliffs.” (In his recently published “History of the Birds of Colorado,” Mr. W. L. Sclater mentions a golden eagle’s nest which measured “six feet in diameter and nine feet high.”) The hawks carried green alfalfa to the nest for decorative purposes, And Mr. Felton noticed a fresh supply there on three separate occasions. When found on May 18 the eyrie contained three newly hatched young, but only two, reached maturity, as one of the nestlings disappeared on July 9 when fifty-two days old. Mr. Felton conjectured that it had been blown out of the nest by a violent thunderstorm, but the two stronger birds might have ejected their weaker brother. In any event, the outcast would soon have been picked up by some four-footed or winged marauder. The two remaining fledglings permanently left their nest on July 25, when about nine weeks old. While watching at this nest, at two o'clock one afternoon, Mr. Felton observed a great horned owl flying along the cliff face in an easterly direction. The owl passed close to the nestlings, when one of the soaring hawks, presumably the femaleAwas seen to swoop at and strike the interloper, which thereupon dived obliquely to the ground. The hawk made (wo more dashes at the sitting owl, and a short squabble ensued each time between the birds; but when Mr. Felton reached the place, the owl was nowhere to be seen, and the hawk had returned to her nestlings. As the great horned owl la a powerful and ferocious bird, which even attacks and eats large hawks (see

Fisher, “Hawks and Owls of the United States,” page 175), it undoubtedly beat off its assailant without difficulty. So {ar as I have observed in eastern Montana, the ferruginous roughleg feeds chiefly upon prairie dogs and meadow mice, though not averse to snakes. In my opinion it never takes frogs. Like V golden eagles, these hawks often hunt amicably in pairs, and then appear to be more courageous, attacking mammals as large as jackrabbits. Mr. Felton made many valuable observations on the food habits of these

hawks during the nesting season, and discovered the fact, new to science, that they prey Upon birds as well as on mammals. Over the whole course of his observations until the young birds had flown, prairie dogs were found largely to ex-1 ceed all other diet; but until the nestlings were about two weeks old, their food consisted partly of meadowlarks (Sturnellg tieglecta). While very little food was found in the nest, taking into consideration the frequent visits paid to it, there were seen altogether nine prairie dogs, one cot-ton-tail rabbit, two bull snakes (one 31 inches long) and some remains of sharp-tailed grouse and meadowlarks. On two separate occasions, while Mr. Felton kept watch near the eyrie, the wary female frequently passed and repassed overhead with a meadowlark in her talons, as subsequently identified. The bill of fare at all four eyries was similar, and meadowlarks, as demonstrated by their down and feathers, were provided for the nestlings. ■ The following interesting collection of remnants was seen at one nest: Four prairie dog skulls, the skeletons of two bull snakes (one of them being very large), the leg of a sharp-tailed grouse, the wing aiyl scapulars of a magpie and the primaries of a meadowlark. Groupe and magpie remains were not found until July 17 and 21, and were proved by the feathers to belong to young birds. To the best of my knowledge, this species never attempts to take poultry of any kfAd, and my own observations are strongly confirmed by Mr. W. P. Sullivan, for 16 years manager of Mr. Milner’s beautiful Square Butte ranch, where these hawks have always been protected on account of the numerous gophers (Thomomys) which they destroy. As above narrated, several pair breed annually upon the ranch, and are constantly flying around the buildings, yet no chickens have ever been molested. Mr. Sullivan, who is a close observer of nature, considers that, after the young can fly in the fall, these hawks subsist chiefly upon gophers, and he has described to me their methods of capturing them as follows: "I have watched the hawks often through glasses in our alfalfa field after the first crop has been taken off. The pocket gophers get pretty busy tunneling, and pushing all the loose damp earth up in piles on the surface. The hawks fly slowly over the field until they discover a fresh pile of damp earth. Here they will alight softly, and wait for the gopher to push close to the surface. They will then spread their wings and, rising a few feet in the air, come down stiff-legged into the loose earth, when the gopher is transfixed and brought out. I have seen them eat the gopher where caught, and at other tlnMs carry it away.” In the summer of 1903 about an acre of ground at the Square Butte ranch was covered with piles of building material, such as lumber, posts Knd heavy shed timbers, which had been collected there the previous year. Numbers of cotton-tail rabbits lived under these piles, and provided an occasional meal, both for the hawks and for the ranch cat, which was a female tabby. On a certain day Mr. Milner (owner of the ranch) happened to be engaged In conversation with Mr. Sullivan near a pile of posts, upon which the cat was basking in the sun with one eye open for a chance rabbit, as usual. A ferruginous

rough-leg, with nestlings in the whit* j j cliffs, was gyrating low over the build- / / ings, but neither the gentlemen nor tho dat took particular notice of this familiar sight Both men were, however, suddenly Startled by a loud whirring noise, when to their intense surprise they saw ttiat the hawk had lifted the now bewildered and struggling cat from her couch on the posts and was slowly bearing her aloft. It seemed at first to the astonished spectators as though the hawk would actually succeed in disposing of this troublesome quarry, since it continued to rise easily with .its burden to a height of about 25 feet. By this time, however, the fullyaroused victim was stirred to a desperate effort, and it became clear that the audacious hawk had “bitten off more than it could chew.” In Mr. Sullivan’s words, the tabby “twisted round, gave a terrible splutter and scream, and clawed the hawk with a vengeance.” The latter, flapping wildly, at once relaxed its grip, while pussy, nothing loth, withdrew her claws, fell to the ground and dashed under the posts. Numerous downy feathers floating gently to the ground convinced the onlookers that the chagrined hawk had none the best of the encounter. Temporarily tired of cats, it now soared to a great height, and returned with empty talons to the “chalk cliffs.” The cat in question was a very small one, and Montana cats are notably thin in summer; but, allowing for these facts," the victim must have weighed six pounds at least. Nevertheless, Mr. Sullivan feels sure that had the cat behaved like

the rabbit for which she was mistaken, the hawk would successfully have conveyed the quarry to its eyrie in the rocks. As the nest was two miles distant this would seem an extraordinary feat, and presumably transcend any hitherto published records of the kind. I quite admit that under favorable conditions of wind the female hawk might transport a five or six-pound jackrabbit to the eyrie; but that any cat-lifting hawk should ever surpass what this one achieved seems to me improbable. The* dexterous application of the cat’s raking claws would not fail to prevent it as in the above remarkable instance. Where a rabbit succumbs to the shock and the hawk’s constricting grip, the agile and wiry feline, on the other hand, is stimulated to offer a desperate resistance, and, like Mr. Sullivan’s protege, is little the worse for the encounter. It cannot be, told whether the hawk was mistrustful of rabbits after this event, but the cat became so suspicious of a flying object that she would race for the wood pile if Mr. Sullivan threw his hat into the air.