Birds

Flight of a Red-tailed Hawk

February 2, 2017 by Dragan 1 Comment

I can imagine how you hate to see a Bald Eagle in a movie and hear the Red-tailed Hawk screech. Yet, at least, the two of them can be found at the same place. Hence, it is not impossible to see one and hear the other at the same time.

But try to imagine my surprise when I discovered that Red-tailed Hawks may be found in the Balkans! The other day I watched a TV ad for a local mobile network provider showing a bright young free climber Stasha scaling a wall somewhere in the hilly heart of Serbia and immediately posting it at Instagram or wherever.

It wasn’t Stasha who caught my attention. While filming her daring exploits, the moment before the cliff drama unfolds, the camera crew accidentally recorded a sound of a big, lonely place. A sound of a species never before recorded in the wilds of Serbia. A sound we all know and hate.

I wander, should I let the rarities committee hear about this latest addition to the bird fauna of the country? Or, perhaps this marks the final point where Hollywood has to enlarge its bird sounds library?

Photo by Don DeBold / Wikimedia Commons

Written by Dragan
Dragan Simic is obsessively passionate about two things – birding and travelling in search of birds, and that has taken him from his native Balkans to the far shores of Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa, India and Latin America. His 10,000 Birds blog posts were Highly Commended in the International Category of the 2015 BBC Wildlife Blogger Awards. Birder by passion and environmental scientist by education, he is an ecotourism consultant, a field researcher and a bird blogger who always thinks that birding must be better behind that next bend in the road, and that the best bird ever is – the next lifer. He tweets as @albicilla66