Saturday, February 24, 2007

Flight

7 comments:

Cursief Huigje said...

nice capture

Rick Lee said...

Hi Bart... great to hear from you.

浮生若茶 said...

SO beautiful pic ^_^

Rick Lee said...

BTW, that's a red-tail hawk, not a vulture. It was screeching something fierce... which seemed odd to me. Why do they vocalize?

D. B. Light said...

At first glance I thought it was a turkey vulture too, what with that small head, but you are right -- it is a redtail. They're a very variable species. I've never had a TV screech at me.

A local raptor authority [everyone here on Hawk Mountain claims to be one] tells me that Red tails tend to vocalize during courtship and when making aggressive displays. At those times they fly with exaggerated wing beats. Did you notice that?

This is the wrong season for mating, but maybe it felt threatened.

Desert Dust said...

The red-tailed hawks in southeast Arizona are already incubating eggs. I've observed a mating pair on my property for several years now, and while I welcome their noble presence, they are quite vocal. Lovely photo.

Rick Lee said...

Around here, you can hardly ever look up in the sky without seeing a turkey vulture. There are as common as sparrows. I've gotten pretty good at spotting hawks in flight. The first thing to look for is a flat wing-dihedral rather than the V shaped (lazy flying) dihedral of the vultures. I get excited when I see a hawk and I get the camera out but I practically never get a good close photo. It was really surprising when this one started screeching. It screamed for about 30 seconds and then flew away.