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The Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) breeds throughout most of temperate and the more southern parts of the boreal regions of North America, as well as in the West Indies, where there are five different island or archipelago-specific subspecies, all endemic and non-migratory. Northern birds winter as far south as central South America. In fact, the northern birds are noteworthy here in Ontario and much of eastern North America for their spectacular southward migration – that is, if you know when and where to look.  Massive numbers can pass by in a single day in the autumn, but usually (not always) rather high up, slowly circling, wings outspread, to catch thermals, or updrafts, that allow them to fly with minimum energy expenditure. Updrafts are like large bubbles of rising, warmer air. The birds start near the top and circle around the invisible bubble. Actually they are going down as the air goes up, so they may rise, slowly descend or stay at a pretty much the same altitude until reaching the bottom of the bubble at which point they soar to the next one. While they obviously detect the upward movement of warmed air they also know where such thermals are by seeing other hawks, eagles and vultures taking advantage of them. Thus, they actually fly many times further than the distance they cover from start to end, but with far less energy used than if they went “as the crow flies” in a straight line.

I have had people tell me they have never seen a Broad-winged Hawk on days and in places where I have seen hundreds.  One has to be attune to looking for them, and a good pair of binoculars certainly helps to enjoy the sight.

These flocks, some numbering in the thousands, may include various other birds of prey, including other members of the genus, Buteo, all having broad wings and rounded tails, along with other birds of prey, and vultures. It can be fun to try to identify the various species, and keeping track of numbers over the years is an important “citizen science” project that can determine trends in population sizes. Such “hawk watches” can turn into enjoyable social gatherings in places where the topography enhances the occurrence of updrafts, such as Hawk Cliff, Lake Erie, here in Ontario, Hawk Mountain, in Pennsylvania, Hawk Ridge in Minnesota and the River of Raptors in Mexico.

These are smallish, chunky hawks with relatively short tails. I have shown an adult, which is somewhat barred underneath, with the bars tending to coalesce across the upper breast, although typical of hawks, there is a great deal of individual variation. Immature birds are streaked on the breast and can be a little tricky to distinguish from the young of other members of the genus, Buteo.  Broad-wing adults weigh about 265 to 560 grams, or approximately 9.3 to nearly 20 ounces. Most are light morphs, but there is a rare dark morph that can be an all-over dark sooty-chocolate brownish color but with the same underwing and tail patterning as the typical pale morph.

Food consists of pretty well any small vertebrates they can capture, as well as large invertebrates, including insects, worms, and crabs, but small mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians make up most of the diet. Driving through “cottage country”, in the Precambrian shield country of central Ontario, this hawk can often be seen perched on telephone wires, along the road’s edge, patiently waiting for prey.  This painting is approximately life-size in oils on a birch panel. I have also included a small preliminary study I did very many years ago, in acrylics on illustration board.

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Pine Warbler.  Fuertes.  Done for the National Geographic series, and in posting all these images in such a relatively short space of time I’ve found myself becoming more critical of Fuertes than I ever thought I would have been.  His genius is often relative to the time he lived, but these little warbler paintings, while technically accurate, are not as attractive as the almost as accurate Brooks ones, AND neither rise to the level of “fine art”, being, of necessity, so illustrative.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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Pomarine Jaeger.  Fuertes.  This “soft part” study is early, from the Harriman expedition to Alaska in 1899.  But it is outstanding because Fuertes decided to use a strong light source coming in from the viewer’s right hand side, the bird’s left.  He wanted to show the details of the open mouth and front on facial patterning, all lost or compromised when the specimen is preserved, and I find it masterful.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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Bicknell’s Thrush.

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Pine Grosbeak. Fuertes.  This is an early Fuertes and I think if you remember that at the time he would have painted it, presumably sometime within the first decade of so of the 20th century, there was really on artist doing realistic paintings of birds in North America, you can understand the support he quickly had from the ornithological community.  And unlike Brooks, Fuertes was well positioned geographically, being located near Cornell University, and close to the epicentre of natural history science of that era.  It’s a translucent watercolour, very “field-guide-ish” with neutral lighting and simplified environment.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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I’ve attached an acrylic on illustration board of a Black and Crimson Oriole, a species I saw in Borneo

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Red-breasted Nuthatch.  Fuertes.  I am prejudiced because I am passionately fond of this species, and I think this is a gem of a painting.  Not sure, but I think it is a detail from the Birds of New York state series.  He certainly caught the essence of how this species looks.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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Prairie Warbler. Fuertes.  For the National Geographic series.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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One (not a very good photo, sorry) of a Belted Kingfisher

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I have also added a pair of Black Terns, which is a recent painting, in oils.

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Bicknell’s Thrush.

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Ruddy Turnstones (upper left); Wilson’s Plover (left); Piping Plover (middle); Semipalmated Plover.  Fuertes.  This was done for the Massachusetts series, not long before the artist’s untimely death, and shows his use of opaque gouache watercolours.  While still not as “atmospheric” as I’d like, it fulfills the need and the background shows keen understanding of how these birds act, so in balance one of the better ones.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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Ptarmigan. Von Wright.  This is the European version of our Willow Ptarmigan, which, over in Europe is called the Red Grouse, except this painting shows the species in winter plumage, which not all subspecies exhibit.

art by ferdinand von wright

text by barry kent mackay

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I have added three different subspecies of the Black Phoebe.  The first is Sayornis nigricans angustirostris, the second S. n. semiatra, and the third S. n. annicola.  I have seen both the last two in the field but not the first, which is sometimes called the white-winged black phoebe.

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The Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), native to the northeast coast of North America, has been extinct since sometime late in the 19th century, with the last valid sighting being in 1878.  Little is known about it, although there are some 55 stuffed specimens of it scattered about the world in various museums. One mystery is the cause of its extinction. All accounts indicate it was already uncommon by the time Europeans arrived in North America, to stay. Its meat was relatively little in demand, due to bad flavor, and reportedly it did not keep well. Certainly such commercial demand that did exist for its meat, feathers, eggs and skins would undoubtedly have been the final cause of its extinction.

But I have a theory.  Wherever humans have gone, extinctions occurred. I used to think it would not be possible for the extinction of so many ice-age species in North America to have been caused by the arrival of humans after the last ice age ended.  But we now know that humans arrived in the western hemisphere much earlier, perhaps fifteen thousand years ago. We also know that in the absence of humans, many animals, including large ones, simply are not afraid of humans when they arrive.

We can see examples of that, even today, on islands that were historically uninhabited for sure, but even in less frequented continental areas, where foxes or Canada Jays or Boreal Chickadees, to give three examples from my own experience, will act fearlessly in human presence. Urbanites are constantly told not to feed coyotes, or they’ll become used to people and a threat.

The Beothuk people, themselves exterminated, were seal and caribou hunters who once inhabited the area now called Newfoundland and Labrador, thought to be the former breeding grounds of the Labrador Duck (Audubon’s son claimed to have found a nest in Labrador, and probably did.) My theory is that the Labrador Duck was one of a plethora of “ice age fauna” that went extinct as a result of how easily they were killed by humans, having always lived in remote areas.  Animals exterminated in North America between the arrival of the first people, and the arrival of Europeans -- horses, elephants, large condors, giant sloths, camels and other species, included ones that were rare when Europeans arrived with their own weaponry. Many that were extirpated or exterminated were from the same region – sea mink, Great Auks, Newfoundland wolves, eastern cougars, eastern elk, Eskimo Curlews (who migrated through the region), even the Atlantic grey whale  -- the list is large, and the depletion of native wildlife of the region continues into the present – Canada’s rarest mammal is the northern Atlantic right whale, and of course the collapse of the northwest Atlantic northern cod is recent and well known.

I have researched the species for years, photographed every specimen (and collected photos of every other specimen I could find) and studied renderings of many other artists, most of whom, like me, could only do “best guess” restorations.  The painting is about 18 by 24 inches, in oils on a birchwood panel.  I am also including a much earlier painting I did of some Labrador Ducks in flight over the Labrador coast at dawn. It was in watercolours on paper.

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Grey Plantaineater.  Fuertes, from his Ethiopian expedition.

art by louis agassiz fuertes

text by barry kent mackay

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Grey Partridge; Eurasian Bullfinch.  Thorburn.  Now THIS has a composition not unlike some of von Wright’s, and yet…note the compact central mass of the huddled birds.  There is focus here…while also a degree of randomness, with the fence on the right, and the partridge partly out of frame (but aimed toward the central focus.  The group is to the left of center, the bullfinch and partridge to the right.

art by archibald thorburn

text by barry kent mackay

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