A pic while on my walk...

Diomedes Industries

Diomedes Industries

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Mar 19, 2007
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Hawk.jpg


I rarely carry a camera - but I caught this Red Tailed Hawk today. As you can see - it is chilly here today (36 degrees F) and so he has his down lofted.

I wonder if he knows how regal he is?

TF
 
Considering it is a point and shoot 4X focus. He let me get pretty close - but look at his stance - he heard the shutter and was OUT of there.

I was privileged to make his acquaintance.

TF
 
I've always been fascinated with hawks and eagles... and yes, I do think they know exactly how regal they are.

I spent a summer up north once... my front door was 40 yards from the lake... couple times a week I would see bald eagles fishing in the lake in the early morning. Pretty humbling and fun to watch.

Thanks for the pic!

Hey I just remembered... I found a big ol' feather from a red-tail last summer... meant to use it as deco on a hawk or something but one of the kittens ate it :mad: Now I'm depressed... thanks a lot!

:D
 
I cannot remember the poem - but it mentions the hawk in its soaring on updrafts... knowing its regal and doing this type of flight for fun.

TF
 
I remember reading this one in college although it's probably not the one you were thinking of:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota


Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

James Wright

 
Was it this famous one by Yeats?

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats
 
Wow, 2 of my favs-birds of prey and poetry. We have many hawks sitting on the lightpoles around here. They are beautiful and never cease to amaze me.
 
That's a great pic bro, just goes to show you should take your camera more often !!!!
 
Great pic!

I walked out of my work building the other day and heard a high pitched call (short ones) and looked up and saw a Red-tail sitting in a tree I've never seen a hawk in - lots of squirrels usually :D

I stood there and watched for a few minutes - sheeple had no clue. He was porbably a good 50 - 60' up.

I wished I had my camera at the time and now thanks to your picture I can reflect on it. Thanks.

I love birds of prey as well - eagles and hawks the most. I am fortunate to have a red-tail visit my area from time to time and I have nesting Bald Eagles within a couple miles of my house and pass the nest on my usual way to work - sometimes I am gifted to see them in flight on my way to work, other days just sitting in the trees, other days none - I haven't seen them lately with winter but I haven't looked closely in the last few weeks.
 
Great photograph TF.
I hope that it does not know how majestic it looks. I don't like the idea of a conceited hawk.

I found this poem by Robert Penn Warren


Mortal Limit

I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags
Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming
Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There--west--were the Tetons. Snow-peaks would soon be
In dark profile to break constellations. Beyond what height
Hangs now the black speck? Beyond what range will gold eyes see
New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?

Or, having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it
Hang motionless in dying vision before
It knows it will accept the mortal limit,
And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore

The breath of earth? Of rock? Of rot? Of other such
Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch?
 
I have read both of the first two poems. I cannot remember - but I do remember those poems. My first two degrees were in English - so I read a lot.


Sharp,

I don't think either of us meant conceited - I remember dressing in my Dress Blues - I wasn't conceited at my best - I was just proud.

TF
 
hawks and eagls are fun to see in the wild. in this part of oklahoma, we have one of the highest concentrations of bald eagles, so i get to see them alot. great shot!
 
Great pics fellas!! Birds of prey are some of my favorite wildlife. There are at least seven mating pairs of Ospreys around our fish camp. During the summer, I'll anchor out from a nest and watch them fish for hours. Humbling to say the least. Hope you don't mind me adding a few. I like this fist one, he had just plucked this fish from the water, and I managed to get him flying off, I'm usually too slow.

IMG_1744.jpg


Here's a pair and their nest.

IMG_1707.jpg


I like this owl too, kind of creepy. It was getting dark, and he got red eye when the flash went off.

owl.jpg
 
Nice pic Talfuchre.
As long as we are adding bird pics, here is a Female Northern Harrier that my wife and I saw. We watched her for about 20 minutes, it's really cool watching these things hunt.

DSC_0272.jpg
 
This is a good poem too, by Gerald Manley Hopkins

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
 
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Great pic, We have a pair that hang around the plaza my store is part of that hunt pigeons off the roof and voles from around the highway exit. We have watched them work together to try and surprise the pigeons while they roost, have never seen them succeed until just last week. I was telling a staff member about the hawks and maybe 30' away there was one of them sitting on a pigeon pulling feathers off! Good to see they adapt well to a city environment.

Bill
 
raptors like Peregrine Falcons do very well in city environments. my hometown of Columbus, OH has a pretty decent sized Peregrine population, which thrives by preying on pigeons. natural pest control at its finest.

i like the pic of the owl. about ten years ago i was house-sitting for my parents who were on safari. i was sitting outside one night smoking a cig when i heard a Screech Owl calling. i can do a pretty passable impression, so i decided to try to call him in and began whistling back. we whistled back and forth for several minutes, and pretty soon he was sitting on a branch about 10 feet over my head checking me out. suddenly there was a dark whoosh! that i felt or saw more than i heard, and the little guy was GONE! a few feathers drifted down. it seemed i had unwittingly called in more than the little Screech Owl. i had also called in a Great Horned Owl, which prey on Screeches. the thing was so silent that it took me a minute to realize what was going on, and when i did it freaked me out that something so BIG (up to a 5 foot wing span) could be so stealthy that i had to go back in the house.
 
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