A Montana Mother's Day

Mothers' Day dawned as a warm, blue-sky morning, so we celebrated by paddling our faded pink canoe around the lake to check on the neighbors. This is our holiday update on motherhood in northwestern Montana.

Mother Loon on her nest on Mother's Day morning

One of the adult Loons was incubating eggs on their reedy nest at the edge of the cattails. The adults are hard to tell apart, but we decided it must be the female because bird moms don't get holidays. Her beak was open slightly and she appeared to be panting in the windless heat, which both adults will need to patiently endure for another 17-18 days before their eggs hatch.

Loons normally lay two eggs, but sometimes only one and -- rarely -- three eggs. The 28 days of incubation is the passive portion of Loon parenthood. The real test begins on the morning after the last egg hatches. That's when the family will leave the nest for good, and the adults will have to defend their little chicks from the resident Bald Eagles, who also have young to feed.

Click to see two fuzzy Bald Eagle chicks

One of the adult Bald Eagles -- probably the male -- delivered a fish to their massive stick nest just as we floated past. The female began tearing off small pieces to feed to their two chicks. Both parents spent about the same amount of time incubated their eggs, but now the female will feed the chicks 80-90 percent of the time, and the male will do most of the hunting.

Eagle eggs hatch 1-2 days apart, and the elder chick should be about 8 days old today. Both of the wobbly chicks are standing up in the nest, just now becoming visible. The chicks have downy feathers, but both parents will take turns keeping the youngsters warm by brooding them about 80% of the time during their first 10 days. Time spent brooding will gradually decrease over the next six weeks, as the youngsters grow big enough to maintain their own body temperature. Before fledging from their nest, a female juvenile will be bigger and heavier than her father.

Male Bufflehead

We turned our old canoe towards home, passing a male Bufflehead on patrol at the mouth of the creek. Just a few days ago, we caught a glimpse of his mate flying into a hole in the old larch snag -- 40 feet off the ground. That's where she's doing her motherly duty, incubating their eggs in her high-rise nest. She makes a daily trip down to the lake where she'll feed and preen for an hour or two. While on the water, the male will mate-guard her from other Buffleheads. This protects his paternity while allowing her to forage more efficiently. It also allows him to avoid nest tending, but it exposes him to the hazards of fighting with the other male Buffleheads on patrol nearby.

Just a short distance uphill from the Bufflehead, thousands of Arctic Grayling were busy spawning in the little creek that flows into our lake. The adult males and females began working upstream two weeks ago, and their numbers are just now peaking in the neighborhood of 5,000 to 7,000 fish. It'll be another two weeks before they've all returned to the lake. Spawning in the shallow creek is dangerous and difficult, but most of the grayling will survive to spawn another day.

A male Arctic Grayling (front) fertilizes the eggs released by a female (rear) in a shallow stream.

Grayling don't spawn until they're 2 to 5 years old, and they only live for 5 or 6 years. When they move up into the spawning stream, the dominant, older males defend territories over the best gravel beds for almost a week, while the females swim freely among them. Instead of excavating "reds" in the gravel, they will broadcast spawn. The female swims up next to the male(s) of her choice, and both will begin a trembling dance -- the result of straining to squeeze out the eggs and sperm that briefly mingle before settling into the tiny crevices between the rocks and gravel.

After the tiny fry hatch, they'll spend 3 to 4 days hiding in the gravel before emerging to swim up or downstream to a refuge. Fry disproportionately select stream reaches that have slower, shallower water with some sort of vegetative cover. The limbs and branches will help to hide them from the eyes of our resident Kingfishers, at least until they are big enough to swim down to the lake.

Female Belted Kingfisher

As we slowly paddled our canoe towards home, the female Kingfisher flew over and announced her presence with a rattling call. We're smiling now -- it was exactly one year ago today that we released a female Kingfisher who needed rehabilitation after she'd flown into a window. She and her mate spent last summer catching crawdads along our shore, but they apparently did not nest.

Could this bird be her?  Is she nesting in the neighborhood this year?  Will we get to watch her feeding youngsters sometime soon?

Last year, watching the Kingfisher fly from our hands made Mothers' Day for both of us. This year, watching her fly over our canoe was just the icing on a many-layered cake.

Halcyon Days

(Winter Solstice issue...)

Greek legend tells the fate of fair Alcyone, daughter of the minor diety Aeolus who ruled the winds.

Alcyone loved her husband so very much that, upon hearing news of his shipwreck, she threw herself into the sea. But the gods took pity on the drowned lovers and transformed them into 'halcyon' birds, or Kingfishers. (The 'h' was added to her name to show an association with the sea, or 'hals' in Greek.)

As Kingfishers, Alcyon and her husband were happily reunited. She was soon brooding their eggs on a floating nest, and her father protected their nest by calming the winter winds and waves.

And as legend has it, that is why there is often a period of calm weather for one week on either side of the Winter Solstice, on December 21st.

In modern times, 'halcyon days' refers to our nostalgic memories of the endless, sunny days of youth. And in current-day, semi-modern Montana, Belted Kingfishers (Megaceryle alcyon) are much more common during the sunny days of summer.

Kingfishers are solitary birds, except during summer. Males establish a nesting territory along a stream, river or pond, and then court females by singing to them and feeding them fish. After a pair has bonded, and immediately following copulation, the female briefly follows her mate in an aerial display. She returns to a branch with a view while he continues his aerial ascent, then stalls, somersaulting and spiraling back towards her, pulling out of his dive just before crashing into the water, all the while flashing his handsome white wing feathers.

Summer lovers, indeed.

Both birds excavate a nest site in a vertical bank of unvegetated sand or clay. The male begins, then the female joins him in digging a tunnel 1-8 feet long, ending in a rounded nest chamber. Six to eight perfectly white eggs are laid and incubated for 22-24 days. She incubates overnight, and he takes over in the morning.

Immediately after hatching, the naked chicks are "brooded," or kept warm by the female, while the male feeds his mate and her chicks. Soon, both parents are busy feeding small fish to their young, averaging about eight fish per day per nestling. If you do the math, that comes to roughly 1300-1800 fish delivered to the nest by the busy parents of 6-8 young.

Young Kingfishers grow fast, reaching adult weights within 16 days, and they actually loose weight before leaving the nest at about 28 days. For about three weeks after fledging, they'll stay close to their parents, who will feed them less and less often. Then the juveniles wander off, the pair parts ways, and Kingfishers become solitary once again.

Many Kingfishers are migratory, and most will withdraw completely from their summer ranges in Alaska and Canada. They also withdraw from the eastern third of Montana, but some will overwinter in the western two-thirds of our state. Kingfishers heading south will leave Montana in November and return in April. Migrating birds will range as far south as northern South America.

Nest success is relatively high, and Kingfishers appear to be less impacted than other fish-eating birds by pollutants in the water -- possibly because they tend to eat smaller, younger fish. Still, Kingfisher populations in many areas appear to be declining slightly, for unknown reasons.

Fortunately, the breeding range of Kingfishers has been expanded somewhat by human disturbance that creates new nesting habitat. One study found that 84% of Kingfisher nests were in disturbed locations such as gravel pits and road cuts. These adaptable birds are also flexible in their diets. When fish are scarce, Kingfishers will also eat snails, salamanders, tadpoles, insects, berries, and even small birds.

And for a chunky bird that only weighs about six ounces, adult Kingfishers appear fearless when hungry hawks show up in their territory. There are multiple accounts of male Kingfishers mobbing Cooper's Hawks, Sharp-shinned Hawks and Goshawks.

Upon noticing the hawk, the Kingfisher flies directly at it while making its familiar rattling call, enticing the hawk to give chase. The slower Kingfisher zigs and zags over the water, and when the hawk swings its deadly talons forward for the strike, the wily Kingfisher escapes by diving into and under the water. The Kingfisher then initiates another and another chase, leading the hawk farther away each time. The Kingfisher eventually flies back to its territory, where it can resume uninterrupted feeding.

You don't have to be a Greek god to appreciate the kind of devotion and intelligence that Kingfishers display so well.

Behind the lens: Photographed while floating chest-deep in the water with a hand-held Nikon D700, 500mm f4 lens and 1.4X converter. (I was following a brood of young ducks when the noisy Kingfisher suddenly appeared.)

Behind the bird: When Kingfishers catch live prey, like the salamander shown above, they'll land on a nearby branch and kill the critter by smacking it repeatedly against the branch. Once the critter stops moving, the Kingfisher turns it to swallow head-first. Later, the bird will cough up a pellet of bones and (after eating fish) scales.

Behind the name: The Cousteau Society's research vessel is partially powered by a unique wind-catching turbosail. The ship's name? Alcyone, the "Daughter of the Wind."