Subject: Re: Red-tailed hawk nabs a shorebird
Date: Apr 27 06:03:08 1998
From: Don Baccus - dhogaza at pacifier.com


At 11:13 PM 4/26/98 -0700, Jane Hadley wrote:

>We assume the hawk is opportunistic and would eat whatever it could
>catch. We are just not used to thinking that it could catch a shorebird.
>Any thoughts on how unusual this is?

Yeah, so much for the notion that creatures are so well-designed that they
couldn't've arisen from evolution - I saw a peregrine make three tries
at catching shorebirds at Bowerman Basin yesterday, with no success.

It's a strange world when redtails catch shorebirds, and peregrines don't!

They certainly are opportunistic. At the Goshutes, we catch redtails on
our bird lures. They mostly ignore bird lures, but when they decide they
want to catch a bird, most of them come in like a Mack truck. Others, though,
generally immatures, will come land next to it and look it over, trying to
decide whether or not it should catch this strange creature that sits there
in blissful ignorance of the intentions of its new-found playmate.

If you think that's weird, I've seen a female kestrel bind to a pigeon
weighing
about eight times as much as it. Bind to it and refuse to let go as it was
dragged to the bownet and captured for banding. This kestrel must've decided
that rather than hunt little bugs and shrews several times a day, it was just
going to catch a pigeon and gorge itself for a week with no other effort!


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
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