WHY SOME RAPTORS NEST EARLY
By the end of November every year, in the woods of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I hear pairs of great horned owls hooting to each other as the start of their courtships. And through December each year, I continue to hear the romantic owls back in the woodlands, and see pairs of bald eagles and red-tailed hawks perched together on large, lone trees in local, human-made cropland, or soaring together over that farmland, to which the eagles and hawks have adapted well. In January, these three kinds of raptors start adding sticks and twigs to their open cradles in tall trees, in woods in the case of the owls, and in farmland for the eagles and hawks. Young pairs of each kind might usurp stick nurseries from herons, crows, ospreys, or other pairs of their own kinds, or build new nests. The cradles of all those birds are big, made of sticks and twigs, and placed in treetops. I'm sure there is some competition among these large...