I dunno what the weather's been like where YOU are, my friends, but here in "the wild hinterlands" it seems like it's been cloudy, cold and raining non-stop since something like, oh, I don't know, LAST OCTOBER or so... :^( And, while I'm very much aware that the arid hills and valleys of my Northern California home probably need as much moisture as they can get at any time, I don't mind tellin' ya that I'm SICK to DEATH of RAIN and COLD! SICK - OF - IT! D'you hear? SICK! I just wish someone would remind the "Grand Weather Wahzoo" that it's JUNE already, fer cryin' out loud...
And, besides, the gently rolling hills of Northern California look just plain WEIRD in green. By the time summer rolls around, they're SUPPOSED to have turned a nice, golden-beigey, blonde color!
The recently-renewed "kelly green" color they're sporting at the moment is just, plain disconcerting, if you ask ME...
Anyway, after hearing the high-pitched, repetitive, whistle-like squawks of what sounded like a baby red-tail nearby the ole singlewide for almost an hour early in the afternoon the other day, I grabbed my trusty Canon and ventured outside to see if I could tell which tree he was in.
The squawks would stop intermittently as I walked around but would immediately start back up again if I mimicked them for a second or two.
After I'd been walking around for a few minutes, I noticed several turkey vultures -- along with a couple of large crows -- sailing around in a tight spiral pattern flying over the crest of a hill to the south.
That's when I spied the white-tailed kite darting around behind them.
A striking-looking raptor bird, the kite is mostly white with a touch here and there of black and light grey. Easily the kite's most interesting feature, however, are his red eyes that really stand out against the stark mostly-white feathers on his face and head.
He's also EXTREMELY quick, an awesome flier and pretty elusive. In fact, in the five years I've lived here, I've only been able to take a very few photos of the kite -- and they were all from pretty far away.
Anyway, almost immediately after the kite came on the scene, "Maury" (the red-tailed hawk) came streaking over my head from the opposite direction -- headed right for him.
I heard the kite shriek out a couple of strangled-sounding cries and he then dive-bombed Maury -- two or three times in quick succession.
As you probably surmised, there's little love lost between Maury and the white-tailed kite. I've personally witnessed some of their past falling-outs -- the majority of which usually take place during the time of year when each probably have babies in their home-nests.
The kite is almost always the aggressor when the two cross paths. Smaller than Maury (and a LOT less "beefy"), the kite, however, is much quicker and can easily out-maneuver Maury in flight.
Although, in the five years I've lived here, I've never seen either of them really injure the other. It appears these little run-ins are simply "posturing" behaviors meant as territorial reminders and to show that neither is a "push-over".
Despite the fact that they're both raptor birds, it struck me yesterday just how different the two really are -- and not just in appearance! They also have completely different styles when hunting prey:
Maury (being the true American red-tail that he is) tends to "glue himself" to a particular spot of his choosing in the sky and, using his tail feathers as rudders and his wings as stabilizing supports, he seems to just "hang there" -- barely moving around in that little spot of sky while he scans the ground for lunch... Once he spots prey on the ground, he goes into a kind of "superstall"-type dive at a very shallow angle, makes a grab for it and tries to make off with whatever it is. If he doesn't get the prey at that point, it might be quite awhile before he tries again or he might not try to capture that particular prey again at all.
In contrast, when the kite hunts, he hides in deep cover in the foliage of the trees until he's alerted to prey on the ground. He then darts out from the cover and "hovers" with his head angled upward, tail down -- literally beating his wing BACKWARDS -- over his prey's location. When the kite is ready to dive on his prey, he rotates his body around so that his head is closest to the ground toward the prey, tail up and then performs a very rapid series of dives in quick succession -- only climbing a short way into the air after each one.
The kite is elusive and quick, while Maury, I'm afraid, is much more a "brawn over brains" type guy. That only makes sense -- seeing how large Maury really is in comparison. The only time Maury goes unnoticed at all is when he's "pinned" up in one of his chosen spots in the sky at a high altitude where he is just a bare dot as seen from our earthbound perspective. It doesn't take him long to get down to our level once he decides to go for it, however. One of his high-speed -- almost super-sonic -- dives gets him right back down to terra firma in a hurry.
Over one hill, I could hear the local flock of wild turkeys' increasingly panicked-sounding gobbling while, over the other hill to the south, I could hear one of the male California quail "look-outs" sounding an alarm which always sounds to me like: "What's OUT there? What's OUT there?"
The locations of both groups of prey went not unnoticed by the kite and Maury who made small, continual, shifts in their positions in order to maintain their vantage points.
I suppose it was the juxtapositioning of these two, potentially-lucrative groupings of prey that was adding fuel and fanning the flames between the kite and the hawk.
The draught of turkey vultures, accompanied by the crows, continued to amble intermittently along the edges of the scene casting an occasional wary eye, first to the quail and then to the turkeys -- probably to assess the status of any potential left-overs which might fall unnoticed by the raptors but none seemed to be forthcoming (probably due to the considerable warning the prey was getting from the hawks shrieking at each other).
Eventually, after launching a series of short sorties on the flock of wild turkeys and coming up empty-taloned, the kite flew off in search of easier prey -- leaving Maury, I imagine, to revel in a false sense of victory...
From the ole singlewide here in the wild hinterlands of Northern California --
luv,
jean
And, besides, the gently rolling hills of Northern California look just plain WEIRD in green. By the time summer rolls around, they're SUPPOSED to have turned a nice, golden-beigey, blonde color!
The recently-renewed "kelly green" color they're sporting at the moment is just, plain disconcerting, if you ask ME...
Anyway, after hearing the high-pitched, repetitive, whistle-like squawks of what sounded like a baby red-tail nearby the ole singlewide for almost an hour early in the afternoon the other day, I grabbed my trusty Canon and ventured outside to see if I could tell which tree he was in.
The squawks would stop intermittently as I walked around but would immediately start back up again if I mimicked them for a second or two.
After I'd been walking around for a few minutes, I noticed several turkey vultures -- along with a couple of large crows -- sailing around in a tight spiral pattern flying over the crest of a hill to the south.
That's when I spied the white-tailed kite darting around behind them.
A striking-looking raptor bird, the kite is mostly white with a touch here and there of black and light grey. Easily the kite's most interesting feature, however, are his red eyes that really stand out against the stark mostly-white feathers on his face and head.
He's also EXTREMELY quick, an awesome flier and pretty elusive. In fact, in the five years I've lived here, I've only been able to take a very few photos of the kite -- and they were all from pretty far away.
Anyway, almost immediately after the kite came on the scene, "Maury" (the red-tailed hawk) came streaking over my head from the opposite direction -- headed right for him.
I heard the kite shriek out a couple of strangled-sounding cries and he then dive-bombed Maury -- two or three times in quick succession.
As you probably surmised, there's little love lost between Maury and the white-tailed kite. I've personally witnessed some of their past falling-outs -- the majority of which usually take place during the time of year when each probably have babies in their home-nests.
The kite is almost always the aggressor when the two cross paths. Smaller than Maury (and a LOT less "beefy"), the kite, however, is much quicker and can easily out-maneuver Maury in flight.
Although, in the five years I've lived here, I've never seen either of them really injure the other. It appears these little run-ins are simply "posturing" behaviors meant as territorial reminders and to show that neither is a "push-over".
Despite the fact that they're both raptor birds, it struck me yesterday just how different the two really are -- and not just in appearance! They also have completely different styles when hunting prey:
Maury (being the true American red-tail that he is) tends to "glue himself" to a particular spot of his choosing in the sky and, using his tail feathers as rudders and his wings as stabilizing supports, he seems to just "hang there" -- barely moving around in that little spot of sky while he scans the ground for lunch... Once he spots prey on the ground, he goes into a kind of "superstall"-type dive at a very shallow angle, makes a grab for it and tries to make off with whatever it is. If he doesn't get the prey at that point, it might be quite awhile before he tries again or he might not try to capture that particular prey again at all.
In contrast, when the kite hunts, he hides in deep cover in the foliage of the trees until he's alerted to prey on the ground. He then darts out from the cover and "hovers" with his head angled upward, tail down -- literally beating his wing BACKWARDS -- over his prey's location. When the kite is ready to dive on his prey, he rotates his body around so that his head is closest to the ground toward the prey, tail up and then performs a very rapid series of dives in quick succession -- only climbing a short way into the air after each one.
The kite is elusive and quick, while Maury, I'm afraid, is much more a "brawn over brains" type guy. That only makes sense -- seeing how large Maury really is in comparison. The only time Maury goes unnoticed at all is when he's "pinned" up in one of his chosen spots in the sky at a high altitude where he is just a bare dot as seen from our earthbound perspective. It doesn't take him long to get down to our level once he decides to go for it, however. One of his high-speed -- almost super-sonic -- dives gets him right back down to terra firma in a hurry.
Over one hill, I could hear the local flock of wild turkeys' increasingly panicked-sounding gobbling while, over the other hill to the south, I could hear one of the male California quail "look-outs" sounding an alarm which always sounds to me like: "What's OUT there? What's OUT there?"
The locations of both groups of prey went not unnoticed by the kite and Maury who made small, continual, shifts in their positions in order to maintain their vantage points.
I suppose it was the juxtapositioning of these two, potentially-lucrative groupings of prey that was adding fuel and fanning the flames between the kite and the hawk.
The draught of turkey vultures, accompanied by the crows, continued to amble intermittently along the edges of the scene casting an occasional wary eye, first to the quail and then to the turkeys -- probably to assess the status of any potential left-overs which might fall unnoticed by the raptors but none seemed to be forthcoming (probably due to the considerable warning the prey was getting from the hawks shrieking at each other).
Eventually, after launching a series of short sorties on the flock of wild turkeys and coming up empty-taloned, the kite flew off in search of easier prey -- leaving Maury, I imagine, to revel in a false sense of victory...
From the ole singlewide here in the wild hinterlands of Northern California --
luv,
jean