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Buteo lineatus, the Red-shouldered Hawk, is a gorgeous bird. Before January I had come across the very red birds of the western United States and the “normal” birds in the eastern part of the country but when I first laid eyes on the pale form of Florida I felt like I was seeing a whole [...]

I don’t know what it is, but since I bought Dick Forsman‘s “The Raptors of Europe and Middle East” my interest in buzzards has gone through the roof. In fact it got so bad that when we bought a new car, my only decision criteria was whether it had a full glass panorama roof or [...]

Sometimes hawks, in particular, Red-shouldered Hawks will go all Turdus migratorious, hop on the ground and nosh some slimy earth worms.  There’s even video proof of a Red-shouldered Hawk eating earthworms on Flickr and there’s been discussion about this on MD bird listserv. This discussion about red-shoulders comes up from time to time and it [...]

Ok, so I’m unashamedly promoting my new show on National Geographic WILD in this post. It offers a fantastic insight into the lives of Harris’s Hawks, the Sonoran Desert and its creatures. Please see below for more details. The National Geographic WILD TV network is debuting Aerial Assassins, hosted by James Currie on Friday, January 20, [...]

A long holiday weekend with lots of food, lots of family, and a long drive on each end leaves me feeling much how this young Red-tailed Hawk looks.  I’m not the only one, right?  Not that I didn’t have a wonderful weekend but I think I will spend as much of tomorrow as I can [...]

A nice thing about spending 7 months with the same bird, particularly a second year bird, is getting to watch it molt and acquire its adult plumage. Watching a bird mature is also gratifying because the majority of young birds don’t make it to their second birthday, so every adult you see is a special [...]

(Check out Part 1 here) (Check out Part 2 here) This hawk was a fierce hunter. I’ve seen young Red-tailed Hawks who just don’t have the hang of it, counting on luck of good fortune to present them with a careless gopher or a rare easy meal. Patch was focused and deliberate, consistent and inventive. [...]

(Check out Part 1 here) The city can be a tough place to make a living but San Francisco offers raptors a number of parks, small and large, for them to thrive in. But the parks have edges, hard edges, and the hawks have to handle the transitions. Above, Patch the Red-tailed Hawk perches on [...]

I confess, I don’t always love hawks.  Sure, they’re beautiful and powerful, a reminder of the feral freedom of the skies. They’re also confoundingly difficult to identify, the eternal inscrutable spot in the distance.  This is probably why I number so many hawk books in my collection. There’s the slim Hawk Watch: At Guide for [...]

I was pretty new to watching birds and photography when I first met this Red-tailed Hawk. While keeping track of some hummingbirds in Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco, I noticed a shadow slipping over the terraced hillside. When I looked up the hawk was five feet above my head and powering towards a perch [...]

On October 15-16th, 2011 Nikon Birding teamed up with Hawk Mountain and Cabela’s to host a blow-out weekend focusing on raptors. This weekend was meant to draw kids into the Hamburg, PA Cabela’s to experience birds in a up-close and personal kind of way. Those of you who have read my posts in the past [...]

If you have never been to Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania during fall migration I would strongly recommend a visit. We have just returned from hosting this past weekend’s inaugural Extreme Raptor Weekend and Hawk Mountain was one of our chosen partner venues. Besides the presence of several noted birding personalities, interesting seminars and phenomenal prize give-aways, [...]

Guianan Cock-of-the-rock, Capuchinbird, Red Fan Parrot, Guianan Toucanet, White Bellbird, Grey-winged Trumpeters, Black Currasow. Interested yet? Well, you should be. For these stunning birds are not easily found outside of the Guianas which includes Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana. On a trip to Suriname to find and film some of these spectacular species I was [...]

I’ve recently returned from a filming trip in Arizona where I have been working on a production for National Geographic on Harris’s (Harris) Hawks. During the filming of this production, I got to experience “dirt hawking”. Dirt hawking is a form of falconry that involves hunting rabbits and other small game with Harris Hawks (other hawk [...]

Now that I have a car I can get to places that were either too far to be really worth walking to or too difficult to access via mass transit.  Yes, such places exist in New York City, even within my beloved borough of Queens.  One such place is the World’s Fair Marina, located at [...]

What do you think when you hear the word raptor? Those of us from generation Jurassic Park can’t help but think of the terrifying dinosaurs nicknamed “raptors,” horribly Hollywoodified versions of Velociraptor that were as it turns out, way too naked. Yes, Velociraptor had feathers, and arguably, it and the other dromaeosaurs could even be [...]

Five individual hawks consisting of two separate species are currently making waves in the Carolinas this winter.  They’re not the regular ones, the common open country Red-tailed and the smaller, more suburban Red-shouldered.  No, tails and shoulders would not raise eyebrows at all, let alone inspire legions of avid birders to descend on places as [...]

Ever wonder just how long a Red-tailed Hawk can survive in the wild?  How about 27+ years?  A bird recently captured in rural upstate New York and currently being rehabbed was banded at the age of six or seven months back in October of 1983!  The New York Times has the story.

New Year’s Day birding is always so much fun.  Every bird is a new bird on the year list and the year seems wide open, full of limitless possibilities.  New Year’s Day 2010 was no exception.  My biggest problem was that I couldn’t decide where I would go with the few hours for birding that [...]

It had been over a week since the bird was first seen and nearly a week since it was first identified.  What bird am I talking about?  The Swainson’s Hawk in Greene County, New York, discovered by upstate birder and Greene County partisan, Rich Guthrie, and described by him here, here, and here.  Why does [...]