You never know what you’re going to see when you come to
Welkinweir. The rich variety of habitat
– from the woodlands and meadows which surround the ponds and stream, to the
arboretum’s colorful gardens – is a magnet to scores of bird species, mammals
like Castor (see here, and here), whitetail deer, and Fred the woodchuck, turtles,
frogs, and salamanders; and insects like our honeybees and monarch butterflies. I saw the magical draw that our
ponds in particular have last Thursday.
It started right at the beginning of the day, with the
sighting of a wood duck pair swimming alongside the more common Canada geese on
the pond. You may have seen our two wood
duck houses while walking along the smaller ponds in the woods near
Welkinweir’s western edge. We haven’t
seen evidence that the ducks use these houses, but it’s encouraging to see them
using the ponds nevertheless!
About a half hour later, I noticed the silhouette of a
hawk-like bird in the sky over the pond.
This raptor had long, gracefully arching wings that had large white
patches on its undersides; as those wings lifted, they also revealed the bird’s
almost completely-white belly and legs.
As you might have already guessed, it was an osprey.
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| Osprey at the Kennedy Space Center. Image credit: NASA |
Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) are an occasional site over
Welkinweir, as they swoop over the great pond hunting for fish. Also known as sea hawks, ospreys are a migratory
species that spend their summers on the coast and along the shorelines of
lakes, ponds and rivers as far north as the Hudson Bay and Alaska. In the winter they travel to warmer climates,
some flying as far south as Argentina! (source: "All About Birds", Cornell Lab of Ornithology, http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/osprey/lifehistory) In Pennsylvania, ospreys are listed under the
Game and Wildlife Code as threatened and protected; federally
and internationally, they are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of
1918 (source: "Migratory Bird Treat Act of 1918",
Digest of Federal Resource Laws of Interest to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
It was a real treat to see one of these
graceful raptors soaring over the pond...
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| Pair of ospreys over Welkinweir's great pond. |
...except that I didn't see just one! Barely five minutes later, I saw a pair of
ospreys circling in the sky, crying to one another with their odd chirping
calls. What were they talking
about? Perhaps it was the bald eagle that swooped over the pond
soon afterwards! It was a big,
chunky-bodied, brown bird with wide, plank-like wings and the characteristic
white head, and as the eagle glided over the pond, one of the ospreys started
to harass it by diving at it repeatedly.
Apparently, the pond wasn't big enough for the three of them! With the bald eagle swooping around to defend
itself, the two raptors looked like a pair of fighter jets in a dogfight. Bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) have also been spotted along Welkinweir's
ponds in the past, probably to hunt for fish like the
ospreys. I attempted to get photos of
all the action, although I'm afraid that the bald eagle is impossible to
spot; try to look for its white head, below, where it perched in a tree along
the south shore of the pond.
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| Bald Eagle (in light-colored box) perched in a tree by Welkinweir's great pond |
In the afternoon, a second possible bald eagle sighting
inspired us to take a walk outside for a closer look. While we searched, the bluebirds and tree
swallows were out and about, as they hunted for insects on the wing and guarded
their nest boxes.
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| Male Eastern Bluebird (lower right corner) perched in one of Welkinweir's weeping cherry trees. |
The bird turned out to be an osprey, and I tried to get a
closer look:
The osprey didn't appreciate my attempts to sneak up on it,
but I managed to get a photo of it in
flight.
My day ended watching the aerial acrobatics of not one, not
two, but three ospreys over the pond. Come visit Welkinweir's array of habitats,
and see what wildlife you can find!
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