As if Endangered Species or any species for that matter could cover their ears, hiding. But after twenty months of “Bangs” and “Booms,” within hearing range of Endangered species, it appears there will be no relief anytime soon! With several Threatened species that have been observed in the area also facing the same assault. Many of […]
Tag: Hawk
Cicada Killer
At about an inch and a half long, the cicada killer is one of our larges wasps. Their huge size makes them look dangerous, but they are usually not aggressive and do not often sting us. They are solitary wasps that live alone; they lack the hive-defending sting-whatever-comes-close attitude of the yellowjackets they are sometimes […]
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald – review
The arcane world of falconry is infamous for a snobbery that dates back to the medieval period, when different raptors were pegged to a hierarchical list of feudal stations. So the noble peregrine was for princes, the dainty merlin was milady’s bird, and – as we know from Barry Hines’s novel – it was just […]
Review: Bird Sense: What it’s Like to be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead
Who’d be a bird anyway? Chickens have bi-focal vision: one eye for the close-up work of pecking seed; one for the fox on the horizon or the hawk in the sky. Peregrine falcons don’t swoop directly on prey – as the crow flies, to coin a phrase – but in a wide arc, using the […]
Free-tailed funnel cloud (reprint from June 2011)
When Doppler radar first arrived in the area known affectionately to Texans as the Hill Country, the local television station meteorologists were understandably eager to show off the weather forecasting capabilities of their newest toy. Unfortunately, they got off to a less than impressive start. Night after night that summer, evening thunderstorms were forecast but […]
Common Buzzard……whats in a name?
The Common Buzzard – Buteo buteo is a hawk and the most common bird of prey in the United Kingdom. The name Buzzard will present no ambiguity to most Europeans but to those speaking English in the “new world” confusion will have immediately set in! The word “Buzzard” in the USA is a broad term […]