In Idaho, photographed by Stephen Barnard (click to enlarge):
Red-tailed hawk in flight
November 21, 2013 • 7:38 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Beautiful.
Wow.. I want to go to there.
Magnificent! Evolution-perfected hunting organisms. Watching the Cornell birds each spring gives one an appreciation of the skill and experience of Big Red and Ezra in bringing (usually) three eggs to healthy, fledging redtails, and the enormous work involved for them.
That’s a really beautiful photograph.
Clearly an antidote to living in the same state as some of those mentioned recently on this website. Plus, I imagine these lyrics help, too, when thinking of the rest of us in more populated places:
…They’ve never seen the northern lights
Never seen a hawk on the wing
Never seen the spring hit the Great Divide…
I have a fact about Red-tailed hawks!
The bird screeching sound effect you hear in far too many movies, TV shows, etc is usually the Red-tailed hawk. But the bird on camera is very rarely a red-tailed hawk.
Here is a pretty cool video of it’s screech – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33DWqRyAAUw
That’s true. Red-Tailed Hawks have a awesome screech. Eagles are relatively wimpy in comparison.
This juvenile hawk has been hanging around my house for months. It’s almost tame. They are extremely common here. During harvest there are scores of them feasting on panicked volves stireed up by the combines.
Piffle!
That descending scale ah-ah-ah-ah that bald eagles make is one of the most beautiful sounds in nature.
Listen at 0:24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l_PvPsDPEk
[This video is also very amusing. It shows that bald eagles bath in a pond in just the same way little sparrows do in a birdbath, lots of flapping and splashing and duckings of the head.]
A video about the guy who shot that sequence:
This very dark morph may well be classified as a “Harlan’s Hawk”, but I am no expert. Note that there is no red or reddish in the feathers, notably the tail.
It’s a juvenile. They don’t develop a red tail until they mature. In any case, the photo is black and white. The light was very difficult and the color was washed out so I desaturated it.
“but I am no expert”
Ah, yah. This is a B&W of a color image. So there’s that.
On the other hand, SB, when are you going to stop getting your shots by terrorizing birds off their perches, when at rest!
This stressing birds in order to get your snapshot… please stop this immature behavior.
Are you serious? This bird will practically eat out of my hand. When he flies off from the goose nest box by the duck blind he lands on a spruce right next to my house.
Look, I have dozens of these birds on my ranch. I can’t step out of my door or drive across my property without spooking them.
You might as well tell Jerry to stop terrorizing squirrels.
I like stop-action shots of birds in flight. That’s my art.
Really nice one Stephen!