News: Hawks & Kites

[BirdLover]

I just read this on the Winnipeg Free Press sight. 

It reminds me of when the Ross' Gull turned up in Churchill in the early 80s.  We had lots of birders come up to specifically see them. 

I wonderful to be able to see birds that we normally wouldn't see. 

Thanks for the pics dupre

[The Peregrine Chick]

Wonderful! Might it be our own Dennis's exceedingly reputable sightings & photos?

Not so far as I know

[dupre501]

Checked this out for myself, around 7 p.m. There were a whole lot of birders hanging out on the same corner. I caught a glimpse of one of them myself.

[Kinderchick]

Wonderful! Might it be our own Dennis's exceedingly reputable sightings & photos?

[The Peregrine Chick]

Mississippi Kites


There have been a number of (exceedingly reputable) sightings (and photos) of a pair of Mississippi Kites flying over the Wellington Crescent area in the last couple of days.  We are a little further north than their usual stomping grounds ...

 

[The Peregrine Chick]

Swallow-tailed Kite

For those wanting a bit more information on these birds ...

   

Cornell's All About Birds page on Swallow-tailed Kites: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Swallow-tailed_Kite/id

[Kinderchick]

Wow! Very interesting article & very exciting news & sighting for Manitoba birders.

[allikat]

WOW, 122 years!!!

What a site, literally!  Hope this is good news for the future of this species!

[irenekl]

Very cool.  And now how can any of us resist watching out for our very own sighting.  Heads up, that's for sure!

[Jazzerkins]

Swallow-tailed Kite


Great article.  Beautiful bird.

Rare bird of prey not seen here in more than a century
Winnipeg Free Press / 28 May 2014

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/out-of-the-blue-260878551.html

[The Peregrine Chick]

And you thought it was just a rumour  

Raptor porn: The ridiculous proliferation of the red-tail call
Christopher Cokinos / Salon / 27 Dec 2013

Once my partner Kathe and I were hiking at Fossil Butte in Wyoming when we heard a red-tailed hawk. We peered, hands over foreheads, at the huge Western sky, as rabbitbrush and sage scuffled in the wind. Bits of dirt pelted our calves. It was perfect soaring weather, warm and windy, the hawk hunting for prey with eyes that can make out headlines a mile away. Kathe then told me about a romance novel she’d read in which the heroine would scream like a red-tailed hawk – which is very hard to do – in order to call in her helpful wild mustang named Lucifer. Kreeeer, kreeeer we called, laughing, to the horseless landscape.

Just as steam is a visual cue for Mechanical Failure or Brooding Evil in science-fiction film, so too is the cry of the red-tailed hawk an auditory signal for Wildness in everything from romance novels to films and TV shows. Few sounds are more piercing. So, of course, our use of this call is another iteration of how we use animals in our stories, from fairy tales to myths. Around the world, birds of prey have been venerated as gods, royalty, warriors, sacred messengers, protectors and prophets. New Agers sometimes talk of a hawk’s presence as giving vision to earth activists, those tree-hugging, spirit-animal, the-revolution-won’t-be-motorized folks who may or may not know a hawk’s feather from a robin’s. But the red-tail cry is no longer woven into a narrative fabric explaining the relational roles of humans and animals in the world, as in, say, the Cheyenne tale of how a hawk beat a bison in a race, thus sparing humans from being eaten by bison and allowing us to hunt them instead.

Now the cry of the red-tail is simplistic metaphor, the vehicle for promoting the feeling of wildness rather than its ecological fact. This cry is a dramatic aural wave of the hand, a glimpse of some lost vista, the wild that we wish for but only to a point. It does not frighten us. It inspires a tidy, monadic surge of ferocity or freedom, quickly passed over in novel or movie because the hawk isn’t embodied. Disembodied, this voice gets invoked or punched up “for effect.”

I’ve been listening to and for inappropriate and excessive use of this cry for a long time. The promiscuous replication of this call at the hands of sound editors is nothing short of Raptor Porn. And, like all porn, unless you’re in the mood, it’s sort of ridiculous. And, as with porn (though that is a different and more complicated story), it can mask the real ...

Read the rest here:  http://www.salon.com/2013/12/28/raptor_porn_the_ridiculous_proliferation_of_the_red_tail_call/

[The Peregrine Chick]

For those of you who are fans of Red-tailed Hawks, just had a report through one of my birding loops that an adult male red-tail was captured, or rather, re-captured at Cape May, New Hampshire.  Bird was banded so with a little investigation, bird was found to have been banded in Virginia in 1993.  So 20 years old.

According to longevity records up to 1994 showed that the record for a wild red-tail is 25 years, 9 months and for a captive (female) at least 29.5 years.  The sample size was just over 5,000 birds of which, 31 had survived 17 years and older while only 11 survived to be 20 years or older.  So this Virginia males is a member of a very exclusive club!!

[Kinderchick]

Classic eyes too big for his stomach (or rather his crop!)

LOL! I guess those are what one would refer to as "hawk eyes"!

[The Peregrine Chick]

Classic eyes too big for his stomach (or rather his crop!)

[dupre501]

Good heavens!