True Nature Stories: Red Shouldered Hawk Nest

After bringing a dead mouse to its young, one of the red-shouldered hawk parents prepares to fly off for more.

I was visiting Strybing Arboretum back on May 13 when I saw a red-shouldered hawk bringing a small branch to its nest in a eucalyptus tree back near the Children's Garden (a photo is at the bottom of the linked post).

Back at home I looked up the length of their incubation periods and, based on my calculations, returned last week wondering if the eggs had hatched. I was a little perplexed when my wife and I got there and saw that the adult hawk spent most of its time standing next to the nest rather than sitting in the middle of it. The day was chilly and windy, and it didn't seem like the best time to leave incubating eggs in the open.

Then I wondered whether the "adult" I was looking at was actually a fledgling. But how could it have hatched and become so large already?

What I didn't see until I put the pictures up on my computer screen back at home was that the little fluffballs of recently hatched hawk chicks were actually within the nest. One of each would pop its head up from time to time to be in the picture, but we hadn't noticed them from far below, especially with a skinny, leafy branch continually whipping up and down in front of the nest.

In any event, my wife and I went back for another look yesterday morning, and now the nest was empty! How could those little fluffballs have grown up and fledged already?! Does Nature really move that fast?

As a matter of fact, the two fledglings had indeed left the nest, but they were perched nearby on a different eucalyptus tree. Almost as soon as we arrived, one of the parents flew in with a dead mouse. The two youngsters fought over it, but only one got the prize.

After waiting fruitlessly for a repeat performance, we eventually gave up and walked through the California Garden to exit the arboretum, stopping to enjoy the sight and scent of the big buckeye in bloom.

Buckeyes are one of my favorite California native plants. The tree itself has a gnarly trunk with an intricate crown of branches and looks as beautiful when it's adorned with its large dangling seeds in the fall as it is when it's full of flowers in the spring. The white corollas with their long arcs of orange-tipped stamens are positively musical, and the huge and shiny mahogany seeds are delicious to look at (though poisonous to eat unless leached of their toxins). And if all that weren't enough, the wood is also excellent for making bow-drill fires.

What I hadn't known until recently is that buckeye nectar and/or pollen is toxic to European honeybees. If there's a lot of buckeye and not much else near the bee hives, whole colonies can succumb to the toxins.