Canadian Airgun Forum

maybe a hawk-- ?--sure looks like one to me. i,ve read of a few being spotted in town. this is the first time i saw it up close. there was one circling the area over our house the other day--probly the same one. today i was headed to sobeys and this fella was in the field just a few feet from the road. he was huge. i think he might have had some lunch pinned down but i couldn,t sit in the car lane to long to see. wish i had a better camera these pics are from my cheap al- catel flip phone. double click for bigger pic.

I think its an osprey, but I have asked my daughter to ID it - she's a biologist and birder.
......And she said it was more likely a Red Tailed Hawk.

_________________

))))----//----------==
Iacio, ergo sum

Looks like an Osprey to me as well, duke.
The white breast was my identifier. The aerial
photo, being silhouetted, does not show the normal white belly and underside of the wings (I think).
That said, they eat strictly fish, as far as I know.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

cool . thanks guys. ya i looked at picks of ospreys after duke mentioned it. and saw the resemblance. it was pretty awesome and a real treat to see such a nice beauty of a huge bird sitting a few feet from the road.

Niagara region makes sense for a 'water' hawk. Why it was on the grass is a puzzle, though. I've never seen one, except in flight or sitting high in a tree.
Usually, when in the air, they are carrying a fish, one leg in front of the other, with the fish's head pointing forward. Most times, I think the left leg is foremost.
Does that mean they are left handed?

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

This one is right handed and looks very similar to what Pete posted.

_________________
Tim
CAFTA Governor and lifetime learner

when i took the pics --the way my car is facing-- the canal is right behind me -- maybe 3 or 4 hundred feet--so he might have got a fish and brought it to this field. i couldn,t see his talons because of the grass and i wasn,t gonna get out of the car and get a closer look.-- he was real serious looking--lol.

We had a bald eagle try to move into the lake area a few years ago. (I live on a small spring fed lake surrounded by boreal forest) It did what eagles do, it raided eggs and babies of ducks and ravens. Bad mistake to upset the ravens. Ravens repeatedly attacked the eagle whenever it appeared. Some of the ravens up here are as big or bigger than the eagle. The eagle left the area.
The eagle will occasionally fly over the lake, but the ravens are in the air immediately to remind him to leave (you should hear the noise!). I guess the eagle doesn't like being stabbed by sharp beaks from above while flying. The eagle knows it is no match for a(n) "unkindness" or "conspiracy" of ravens.
I have been feeding the ravens table scraps, fat cut from roasts, (and occasionally some peanuts in the shell for a treat) by throwing it on the metal roof of my sauna. The ravens know the food is for them. If I'm cooking on my deck and leave some meat out, the ravens won't touch it. I'm beginning to think they've trained me to pay for protection...

_________________
Theory is when you know how something works, but it doesn't.
Practice is when something works, but you don't know why.
In my shop, Theory and Practice are combined!
Nothing works and I don't know why.

Two lathes and too many projects

That's interesting. I've seen a LOT of bald eagles, but never one smaller than a raven (I've seen and shot a lot of those-private farm land). Even the immature bald eagles, when leaving the nest in August or so, are larger than our BC Ravens. Max for a raven is about 3.3feet to 4.9 feet. The bald eagle runs from 5.9feet to 7.5 feet. Immature bald eagles look more like golden eagles, for 4 years, before maturing and getting their customary black and white feathering. There's an eagle nest 1,400yards on the crest of a hill above my camping spot. I watch them most of the summer with binocs. Next summer, I will have the new Hawk spotting scope. 20x- 60x X80mm. They use the same nest every year. It looks to almost 20' wide now. I'm going to see if I can get a picture through the spotting scope, next summer.
When ravens are wheeling around attacking eagles, it is hard to see these differences exactly, I assume. They do the same thing here, but the eagles eat mostly fish, ducklings, merganser chicks and grebe chicks. Every now and then I see (at the lake) crows or ravens pestering the eagles, but it is usually short lived, with the black devils finally getting tired of dodging the talons. The eagles are pretty good at hearing when they are close and instantly swiveling around to produce claws reaching up to grab them.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

That Osprey appears to be re-positioning the fish. They do that until the fish is properly oriented, head first and belly down, back up.
They carry them in both feet for travel, even a relatively short distance.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

We have two sets of nesting Ospreys real close to us as we live right on Lake Ontario, about 25 minutes west of Kingston. Both nests are right in front of the OPG generating station. They can put on a real show.

I have seen as many as 18 Bald Eagles out over our section of the lake, as it is protected and seems to be the first open water close to shore in the spring. That tends to happen if there is a lot of ice. If there is no ice, they are much more spread out. I can just sit in our sunroom with a coffee and enjoy the show.

Not sure if they are still nesting there, but there was a pair of peregrine falcons that nested on the high edge of the building at OPG. Amazing birds.

_________________
Tim
CAFTA Governor and lifetime learner

Yes, the peregrines are amazing for sure. Fastest dive of all raptors, iirc. 320kph/300mph
some have stated these numbers are low and expect the actual fastest are 389kph and 242mph.
This higher speed was said to be recorded by a falcon dropped out of a Cessna 172 at 17,000 ASL.
Last summer, I got to watch a young eagle grow, from chick to juvenile, practice "catching air", exercising
his or her wings, then finally leaving the nest. I was out on the lake below the nest when that happened
& I don't remember if that was late August. I'm pretty sure it was August.
They were sure hell on the duck, grebe and merganser chicks. All 2 clutches of fish ducks, each had 6 chicks
first time we saw them, but only 1 chick each, by mid August.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

I like that pic, Daryl. I think we have had all those shown over the last seven years. Last year and adult hauled a fish out of the open water and just landed on the edge of the ice to enjoy it. It was a few hundred yards away, but could be seen clearly with binoculars. There is nothing around at that time that can threaten them, so they seem quite relaxed. We probably have about a thousand geese and ducks here in the open water at the same time. Smorgasbord!

_________________
Tim
CAFTA Governor and lifetime learner

Yeah- I didn't realize the juvy's were getting that many white feathers at 2 1/2 years of age, but, it makes sense.
I assume those are all fall pictures.
I fed them a couple "minnow pike" this last summer. Used to be a different name for those toothless baby trout eaters.
This is the first year I have caught them in the lake proper. I hope these coarse fish are not indicative of the future of
the lake's fishery.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl