http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-_RHRAzUHM&feature=email
This from Lynn. Excuse the commercial: it’s beautiful. You can only wonder how fast they’d be without lugging the camera and the wind resistance.
flying with the experts—peregrine falcon and goshawk
by CJ | Oct 9, 2010 | Journal | 12 comments
12 Comments
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My FiL, who is an amateur ornithologist, sent me a link to this video several months ago. Be very careful if you are prone to motion sickness from bounce-cam! Lovely birds; the camera is under an ounce. I wonder what caught the falcon’s attention and made her stoop?
Wouldn’t this make a great 3-d video experience?
I have a kendo friend in Mississauga, Ontario (just west of Toronto) who is a falconer. I envy him, but I know that it’s a lot of work, and once the bird decides it’s going to be free, it goes off. But I like watching the raptors fly, especially the falcons. I have a red tailed hawk in my woods, or at least, I used to – I hope the neighbor didn’t shoot her because of his chickens – and it was really a great time to watch her fly over the fields. If we went into the woods, she would scream at us until we were halfway back to the house. It’s a half-mile to the house from the edge of the woods, so you’re getting screamed at for about 10 minutes. I haven’t seen her this year or last year, and that has me wondering.
There are peregrine falcons nesting under a bridge in Dayton, OH. The city has restricted that area and it’s a pretty hefty fine if you’re caught messing around in that area. Traffic doesn’t seem to bother the birds and since their natural habitat is a cliff, the concrete cliffs of a city are almost as good. Same with pigeons, which happen to be their primary prey. They’re cliff dwellers, which is why they do so well in the city. But oh, the mess they make on the Quinaltine steps.
There are peregrines in Rochester, NY: rfalconcam.com
They try to keep track of the offspring from earlier years – there’s one living around Pickering, Ontario, now.
I think there’s also a webcam watching peregrines in San Francisco.
Beautiful shots. I feel like I am flying!
We have had red tailed hawks in the woods since moving out here over 30 yrs. ago. How long do they live? I assume that we are on 2nd or 3rd generation. As soon as they get to know the sound of the car I currently drive they only fly a few feet into the woods when I pass them. They are amazing creatures. How they fly through the trees is beyond me. The best was the day I opened the front door after a snow in time for the hawk to dive a muscovy duck about five feet from the door. We think the hawk focused on the duck’s head and bill with the rest of it blending into the snow. I don’t know who was more surprised me, the duck, or the hawk. Muscovys are *not* small.
For the life of a red tail hawk in the city Google Pale Male and his mate Lola.
For Pale Male, Lola and many, many more, check out http://urbanhawks.blogs.com/
I’d love to see the camera this guy is using because he gets some amazing pictures. Things have pretty much quieted down now for the year — the last fledgling has flown on, but come spring, when nesting season starts, there’s something interesting every day
(Just checked my own link to see if it came through okay and discovered that there’s a Pale Male movie! Trailer at http://thelegendofpalemale.com/HOME.html
Fascinating footage! I had more trouble dealing with the editing than with the jolting view–which was speeded up, I think. I had to wonder about the effect of the camera’s weight on the bird, too–doesn’t take much weight at all to really have an effect when multiplied by 10Gs! (ask me how I know) I always envied the variable geometry guys! I also found the hyperbole of the narration pretty annoying.
Here’s a link to a piece written by a fellow I know, about hang-gliding with red-tailed hawks:
http://yarchive.net/air/hang_gliders.html
Sadly, he was recently killed in a crash.
Wonderful description of flying with the birds. His friends will surely miss him.
I drive to work every day on I380 between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. Where the interstate crosses the Iowa river there is a nesting area for a dozen or so bald eagels. Some days they fill the sky.
wonderful to watch with an open sun roof.
Beautiful. We had one that used to fly within feet of our balcony rail when we lived in the 3rd story apartment over Latah Creek. I hope he and all his eaglets fare well.
Lovely!
Another hawk to watch is the Northern Harrier. You don’t need binoculars because they don’t spend as much time soaring. The male hunts mice on the wing and his twists and turns are easy to watch as he usually at eye level. A pair, which winters here, has just returned. So I can add some hawk watching to my day.
I keep thinking (in the passenger’s viewpoint) ‘Yahooooo!’
(For whatever it might be worth, those birds were in their natural habitats: goshawks live in forests, and peregrines on and around cliffs.)