It Isn't Always What It Seems

I had a great lesson this spring in bird identification: don't assume that you've correctly identified the bird you are observing, just because it looks like and acts like a familiar bird. Here's what happened... A friend called me one Saturday morning and said she had an immature Barred Owl on the lawn in her very developed suburban Oklahoma City neighborhood. Well it's possible, I thought, and of course I wasn't going to pass up a chance to see an owl... any owl... so I headed her way. When I got there, the owl was hiding in a 4" pipe that served as a drain for her neighbor's french drain system. (Top photo) Although several inches back from the opening, it was visible with binoculars, I could tell that the bird was smaller than an immature Barred Owl and had yellow eyes, which ruled out the Barred completely. So what owl might be seen in a residential neighborhood, sitting in a pipe, and have yellow eyes? It was one of those "looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck moments." And so I proclaimed with great authority that this was an Eastern Screech-Owl and told her how fortunate she was to have one hanging around -- perhaps it was an immature because, as my friend reported, it didn't have great flying skills.

The little owl never came out of the drain while I was there so I made the ID based on a few characteristics. I made another trip to the neighborhood the next evening and this time the owl was sitting along the curb, in front of the drain pipe (second photo). I was excited to get better pictures and the little owl even stayed still while I drove within a few feet of it. I'd never seen a Screech-Owl sitting in the road but I really hadn't seen too many of them at all so this qualified as a great Screech-Owl opportunity!

The bird disappeared the next day so I sent a photo to my friend (she's a big fan of my photos, bless her!) and we had fun remembering the cute owl. It was only days later that I wondered why the owl had almost bare legs. Did immature Screech-Owls have only slight feathering on the legs? I didn't have a clue that my assumption on the bird ID was wrong! I just kept "knowin' what I knew."

Because I like to list the photos in my Photo Gallery by age, gender and plumage when possible, I sent a photo to my very patient bird ID mentor, Jim Arterburn asking if I was correct in noticing that immature Screech-Owls have somewhat legs. Was I
surprised -- and was he gracious -- when he wrote back saying I was wrong -- it was a Burrowing Owl, a rare sighting for Oklahoma City, especially in a
residential area, and that I needed to document it for the Oklahoma Bird Records Committee.

I've seen and photographed Burrowing Owls in prairie dog villages at theWichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. But I don't think I'm going to be the birder who's going to see something different -- so I just didn't allow myself to think outside of that too-often-clichéd box to think that I was seeing an unexpected bird. If I hadn't contacted Jim, I'd still be happy with my screech-owl sighting but missed the opportunity to get hit between the eyes with the reality that in bird identification, IT ISN'T ALWAYS WHAT IT SEEMS.

PS. You'd think I'd learned my lesson? Not so-- I just learned that a swan that showed up a few weeks ago at Lake Hefner isn't a "run of the mill Mute Swan" even though I've photographed it several times and thought I'd confirmed it in Sibley's (after all it was tame and that's what tame swans at city lakes are). No! It's a Trumpeter Swan... I have no idea what a tame Trumpeter is doing at our lake but there you have it, another lesson 'cause I'm still making assumptions based on what I expect the bird to be. Will I ever learn?!!

Mississippi Kite preys on bird

The distinctive Mississippi Kite is a bird that many out-of-state birders looks for when they visit Oklahoma in the summer. The good news: it's not hard to find one! This kite is a very familiar sight in the skies above Oklahoma City as it soars and catches cicadas. It is a migrant, arriving in late April and leaving in October. And it is quite infamous for protecting its nest by attacking golfers or people walking in parks! All of that is "normal" behavior -- what I observed last week when I found a pair of Mississippi Kites at Lake Hefner was very abnormal. I watched one of the kites eat a bird. This may not sound unusual for a raptor but I learned that my photos of the meal were only the second documented evidence in Oklahoma of a Mississippi Kite preying on a bird. Berlin Heck, a retired wildlife manager and expert on Oklahoma birds, published a report in 2005 about possible incidents of the kites predating other birds and found only one other photo of this happening. It's uncertain why a bird that is known to eat only insects would change its behavior. I sent my photo to Berlin and he suspects the prey was a fledgling that fell out of the nest and was an appealing target to a kite entering mating season. It makes sense... I wonder, though, if our unusually wet weather has disminished the cicada and grasshopper populations (although other insects are plentiful this year!). I would enjoy hearing from others about normal / abnormal behaviors of this fascinating species!

Update on July 1, 2007: The photo above doesn't show many of the Mississippi Kite's identifying features so I can understand Ridgeline's comments that it might be a White-tailed Kite. I can't easily include photos in comments, so I'm adding some additional information here and another photo to clarify my ID. The photo was taken immediately after the bird finished eating. This photo shows the underside of the kite's wings and tail. They lack the distinctive white plummage with black wrist spots of the White-tailed Kite. I've photographed a white-tailed only once: 2003 at Fort Sill. The top photo also shows that the bird does not have the black shoulder patches of the white-tailed.