Monthly Archives: June 2012

Kestrel chicks to be banded Thursday

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Five kestrels have hatched in a nesting box at the Agassiz Valley Water Resources Management Project near Warren, Minn. PKM Electric Cooperative installed 10 of the nesting boxes this spring.

Aaron Wall, a sixth-grade teacher at Warren-Alvarado-Oslo school, photographed these newly hatched kestrel chicks Monday. The chicks are scheduled to be banded Thursday.

Heidi Hughes, manager of the adjacent Audubon Center of the Red River Valley, said this morning in an email that the kestrel chicks will be banded at 11 a.m. Thursday. Tim Driscoll, director of the Urban Raptor Research Project, will be banding the chicks. Driscoll recently banded the three peregrine falcon chicks that hatched on the UND water tower and also has banded numerous Cooper’s hawks in Grand Forks.

Hughes said students from the Warren-Alvarado-Oslo school also will be on hand to witness Thursday’s banding. It should be a great opportunity for the students to get a first-hand look at the process and the newly hatched chicks.

And if you’ve never been to the Audubon Center near Warren, put it on your list. For more information, contact Hughes at (218) 745-5663 or click here:

Not a peregrine, but a notable sighting just the same

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Gary Olson of Grand Forks sent me a photo he took last week of a raptor in his backyard.

Gary Olson of Grand Forks photographed this banded Cooper’s hawk last week in his backyard.

The bird had bands on its legs, and he wondered if it could be one of the peregrine falcons that have been making news around town again this spring. Roosevelt and Terminator are back, and they hatched three chicks on the UND water tower that were banded last week.

Not being an expert on birds — especially raptors — I forwarded the photo to Grand Forks birding expert Dave Lambeth and Heidi Hughes, director of the Audubon Center of the Red River Valley near Warren, Minn.

Lambeth and Hughes both confirmed the bird Olson photographed was not a peregrine, but instead was a Cooper’s hawk. Tim Driscoll, director of the Urban Raptor Research Project, has banded several Cooper’s hawks around Grand Forks as part of a study on the birds.

Lambeth said people often mistake Cooper’s hawks for peregrines. They’re similar in size, for one thing, and with recent news reports of the peregrine chicks being banded, falcons are on people’s minds.

Despite the similarities, peregrines and Cooper’s hawks are easily distinguished, Lambeth said.

“A peregrine would have a helmeted look to its head, and its wings would reach much farther along the tail,” Lambeth said in an email. “Cooper’s show up on decks and in backyards frequently (including my own) and people knowing about peregrines think they may be seeing one of those. Understandable! But peregrines are aerial hunters of wide-open spaces, and a backyard would be much too confining for them.”

After hearing from Lambeth, I called Driscoll and told him about the Cooper’s hawk Olson had photographed. He was very interested to hear about the sighting and the photograph, because it was a Cooper’s hawk he’d lost track of during his research.

In a follow-up email, Olson said Driscoll paid him a visit and showed him the nesting sites of Cooper’s hawks around town.

So, even though the bird Olson spotted wasn’t a peregrine, it still had a pretty cool story behind it.

Devils Lake produces new state record white bass

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North Dakota has a new state record white bass, and of course, it came from Devils Lake.

Charlie Vang of Brooklyn Park, Minn., broke North Dakota’s state white bass record with this 4-pound, 10-ounce fish he caught Sunday on Devils Lake.

Charlie Vang of Brooklyn Park, Minn., broke the record this past Sunday, when he landed a 4-pound, 10-ounce white bass that measured 19 inches in length. Vang’s white bass bested the previous record of 4 pounds, 8 ounces, taken from Devils Lake in 2000. Randy Hiltner, northeastern district fisheries supervisor for Game and Fish in Devils Lake, said the new state record also is 1 inch longer than the previous chart-topping fish.

Hiltner said he was told the new state record came from the north end of Six-Mile Bay near Channel A. Hiltner said he’s still trying to come to grips with the idea of a white bass that size.

“There’s a lot of white bass closer to 3 pounds than 4 pounds, 10 ounces,” Hiltner said this morning in a phone interview. “That’s really big. I’m sure it’s in the upper couple percentile of bass swimming around out there.

“It’s not a real stretch. There are some nice, big white bass swimming around Devils Lake.”

Ironically, the timing of Vang’s record catch suggests early June is prime time for big white bass. He caught the fish Sunday, which was June 10, while the previous state record was caught June 9, 2000.

The bass also tops Minnesota’s state record white bass, a 4-pound, 2.4-ounce fish caught in 2004 on Pool 5 of the Mississippi River near Wabasha, Minn.