When raptor chicks are this younger, they’re at their most susceptible. And this feminine Tough-legged Hawk spends most of her time taking good care of the nest and the chicks, whereas the male hunts the tundra for voles and lemmings.
She tries to chase off the biting flies and different bugs. She cleans and refurbishes the nest.
When it’s sizzling, she shields her chicks from the solar. When it’s chilly and raining, she hunkers all the way down to preserve them heat, and he or she preens them and interacts with them.
She additionally spends a whole lot of time ready, trying skyward and calling for her mate to convey her meals. These hawks are off to an important begin this yr. But it surely’ll take rather a lot to boost all of those chicks to fledging age.
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Watch as a pair of Tough-legged Hawks work collectively to boost their chicks on this excerpt from our documentary on the raptors of the Colville River Particular Space, Alaska. Cornell Lab cinematographer Gerrit Vyn takes you up onto a steep cliffside for intimate views of the mother tending her rising chicks throughout lengthy days within the Arctic summer time. It’s simply one of many particular moments Gerrit’s workforce filmed throughout three weeks rafting down the Colville River.
America’s Arctic: A Globally Necessary Space for Tundra-Breeding Birds
The Colville River is one in every of 5 Particular Areas throughout the Nationwide Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The NPR-A makes up the most important block of wilderness in the US, and the Particular Areas have been designated by the Bureau of Land Administration as having distinctive wildlife and subsistence values that deserve most safety within the face of improvement.
The NPR-A is in regards to the measurement of Indiana, however its tundra lakes and wetlands are of outsized significance as breeding habitat for birds that journey the world. The area helps extra waterbirds than some other place within the Arctic, together with greater than 660,000 geese, geese, loons, and grebes; greater than 4.5 million shorebirds; and almost 200,000 gulls, terns, and jaegers—an estimated 10 occasions extra waterbirds than the Arctic Nationwide Wildlife Refuge. After the summer time breeding season, these birds migrate out of the NPR-A to succeed in all seven continents on Earth.
Sources: Waterbird abundance figures from Bart et al. 2013. Chook migration routes primarily based on knowledge from Heiko Schmaljohann (wheatear), USGS Alaska Science Middle (loon), World Flyway Community (godwit), Autumn-Lynn Harrison (jaeger, tern), David Ward and Vijay Patil (Brant), Sarah Saalfeld and Bart Kempenaers (phalarope), Rick Lanctot and Lee Tibbitts (sandpiper), Craig Ely and Brandt Meixell (swan). Graphic by Megan Bishop.
Pictures: Loon, godwit, and Teshekpuk Lake inset by Gerrit Vyn. From Macaulay Library: wheatear by Wojciech Janecki; jaeger and tern by Autumn-Lynn Harrison; Brant by Volker Hesse; phalarope by August Davidson-Onsgard; sandpiper by Luke Seitz; swan by Jack Belleghem.
