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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Ethical Question (1 Viewer)

Thoughts on feeding wild hawks their natural food?

Feeding wild animals usually isn't considered making a contribution to the livelihood of wild animals. Wild animals need to hunt and forage for food whereas domesticated animals need to be fed by humans.

What is considered acceptable is to create a landscape with native plants that provide food and shelter at different times of the year for different species; provide some sort of water feature; put up nest boxes; get rid of all or most of your lawn - it's a desert, in terms of wildlife habitat; don't use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides, weed-and-feed products, slug bait, etc.
 
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Interesting, but I'd say that was an exception to the general rule...

There's some info/discussion on whether hunting behaviour in Raptors is innate or learned here.

Eleonora's Falcons teach their young by catching a migrant songbird over the sea, but don't kill it. Then, as they approach land, they call the fledged young off their cliff ledges, and then release the prey, which then flies off but is stooped upon or chased by the young bird.

I've seen Hoopoes caught, released and dispatched in this way at Tunnel Beach, Episkopi, Cyprus.

Incidentally, Eleonora's falcons work cooperatively. Experienced adult parents may make a kill, then transfer the kill to another non-breeding Eleonora's Falcon (Perhaps a bird from the previous year?), which then takes it back to the nest and feeds it to the nestlings.

Sooty Falcons may also work cooperatively, but i may be imagining I read that!
MJB
 
i think ethics are no longer relevant except to individuals working out their own balance. every time you buy clothing you dont really require, pop into the supermarket for packaged food, put down lawn, even go on a forum in some way you are destructively affecting the environment. and that is a very complicated issue - as we feed and protect ourselves and families, watch football rather than go to war we are bound into a complex and interdependant technology that is to our benefit. the cost, we all know.

so it ends up being a matter for individual conscience. many dont even have that. we all know we should control human breeding and visit the stars. instead we follow species instinct.

the whole world is pretty much an artificial environment now. feeding raptors by running over rabbits is one way, backyard feeding another. and they probably eat a few bred uo grouse and pheasant snacks where they sneak by the guns.
do what you think us best and pass that on to your kids is all you can do.
 
Watched Peregrines do the same in the UK.There is a video of Peregrines flying into quarries with live Pigeons and releasing them near the bottom so they have to out fly the young Falcons over some distance and hundreds of feet high before clearing the quarries walls
 
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