Young Red - Tailed Hawk Hunting The Town Information, Facts
As we were sitting outside we were fortunate enough to get a show.
The show was put on by our resident Red - Tailed hawks also known as (AKA), the chicken hawk.
Two of the hawks have bright red tails and red within their feathers. This one has no red tail yet.
This is a youngster red tailed hawk. Now if I had not seen all three together I really would not have known what species of hawk this was.
But, since they were all together and the other two protect this one.....
Now falconers do capture the "passage hawks", the young hawks that are out of the nest, but are under a year old. These young hawks are not of breeding age. Thus from my reading are the ones who are taken and trained. They are smart birds!
Birds of Prey or Raptors are something I like to capture with my camera. At close range these young Red - Tail Hawks irises (their
eyes), are yellowish. As they mature the iris turns a reddish color and the tail has the "bars" on them as you can see.
Feathers are very easily found laying on the ground, however I still think it is illegal to have these feathers. Though really I have not read this anywhere, but because I collect feathers, and I have sold feathers and had gotten in trouble with the fish and game part of the federal government it is just best to think of these feathers as illegal?
In Europe I had read where these are known as "Buzzards". However here in America, at least where we live here in Oregon a buzzard is known as a vulture. All of these birds of prey are scavengers. That is they will not pass up a free meal, dead or alive. Including cats and small dogs.
I had a education experience by someone who explained to me about wind, aerodynamics of these birds of prey's flying. Though because I might be passing on information which is not but information I was just told I would rather not pass it on.
Now one
tid bit of information which is very true and I really never thought about it until this person brought it to my attention has to do with power lines. When Raptors take of in flight some have a habit of ... going to the bathroom (this is a friendly, family oriented web site ), this "squirting" as it is called by some of us, if it hits these power lines the electricity runs up and can kill a bird, electrocution. Not sure about you but I really never gave this much thought!!
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