Raptor

  

 C  A  L  I  F  O  R  N  I  A       C  O  N  D  O  R

A large bird of prey with a ten foot wingspan.

These are vultures left over from the Ice Age,

soaring over a landscape rich with Sabre Tooth Tiger,

Woolly Mammoths and ground sloths that appeared

near the size of elephants.  By 1982 the condor was at

the brink of extinction with its population down to

twenty-two.  As scavengers they became the victim

of ranchers who set out poisoned carrion

in order to kill coyotes that preyed upon

their livestock.

A captive breeding program has increased their

numbers to over six hundred, as of 2025.

This vulture loves meat, as any raptor should,

but it first has to already be dead.

Birds of prey are required to have talons

powerful enough to hold fast their struggling

prey, then kill it and carry it away.

A vulture's feet are good only for standing.

There is no need to tightly grasp a

desperate morsel.

 

 

B  A  L  D       E  A  G  L  E

The term Bald in the name is from the Old English

balde, which means "white head", not bald like

a head naked of feathers.

 

Designated by Congress as the National Emblem in

1782, the Bald Eagle was right out of central casting,

an icon of strength, resolve and justice.

The truth is more complicated, as you might expect.

Survival is the animal's goal in the wild.

Use your energy efficiently.  Why go to the effort of

killing food when you can eat something that is

already dead, waiting for your appetite?  Eagles

mostly scavenge.  They also resort to 

bullying osprey and other smaller birds of prey

and steal their lunch.

Still, they look spectacular performing their

grab and dash fishing skills while skimming 

a river's surface.

 

 

 R  E  D  -  T  A  I  L  E  D       H  A  W  K

 Look at all the surface area of this bird's wings 

and tail.  Broad wings and a fanned tail sacrifices

speed for the sake of lift.  Warm air carries the bird

upward to great heights, and with little effort on

the part of the bird.  Burn your calories sparingly,

especially in the desert when a meal might be

limited to a scraggly jackrabbit, itself half-starved. 

 

From this floating perch the hawk surveys the

terrain below with a vision that is eight times

sharper than that of a human, looking for mice,

lizards, snakes and anything else small enough

to carry off.

The female Red-Tailed Hawk is about twenty-five

percent larger than the male.  It makes sense

that she have the muscle, since she's the one

left defending the nest.  Also, and this is more

important, a brawny mom is able to wrest meat

from the beak of a male, reluctant to share

his meal with the nestlings.

 P  E  R  E  G  R  I  N  E       F  A  L  C  O  N

 This bird isn't made to soar.

The Falcon is all about speed.

The long, narrow wings and slim, aerodynamic

tail; its sleek airframe tough enough to withstand 

speeds reaching over two-hundred miles an hour

in a dive.  Falcons prey on birds in flight.

Its critical you kill your target with your talons.

A bird to bird collision makes you both

equally dead.

The falcon's vision is comparable to that of the hawk

but each species utilizes this advantage differently.

Hawks look about for small animals to eat from

a great height overhead.  The falcon behaves

as a bullet adjusting its own path in flight to

achieve the perfect, lethal hit.

 

 G  R  E  A  T       H  O  R  N  E  D       O  W  L

 What is the point in having a head that can swivel

nearly all the way around?  There is a reason

behind everything.  In this instance, the neck's 

dexterity compensates for the owl's limited

peripheral vision.  The owl has wonderful eyes.

Why this weakness?  

Rule of everything - nothing's perfect.  

Nature is filled with trade-offs.  You have to

give up something to get something.

One factor contributing to the owl's spectacular

sight has to do with the bird's unusual eyeball

shape.  Its oblong.  And it is this characteristic

that enables the eye to close in on an object,

acting as a telephoto lens does in a camera.

Achieving this feat of vision requires an eye

so large it barely fits its socket, making the eye 

totally unable to move.  

Hence the swivel neck.

Nature gives up something to get something 

in return.  In this case, what is being sacrificed

for game-changing vision?  The individual can

see only straight ahead.  Unacceptable.

The compensatory solution:  a neck that

can twist to 270 of the circle's 360 degrees.

Nature's judgment:  the species thrives with these

choices having been made.

 

 B  R  O  W  N       P  E  L  I  C  A  N

 How do you grasp your prey when your feet are webbed?

Talons are useless for swimming and pelicans 

must be fast swimmers to catch their prey.

The solution for grasping lies elsewhere.

Most birds of prey lead with their feet when attacking

their prey.  They attack with a powerful grip, using their

long claws like teeth.  The pelican attacks head first

in pursuit of a targeted fish.  Growing teeth on their bill

was tried by ancient species, all extinct.  It made the

head needlessly heavy.  Claws became the bird's teeth.

We've ruled out talons and now, teeth as well.

The problem is we are looking to grip the prey

when all we have to do is control it.  Bag it.

A pouch, and one that is elastic would work.

It would expand to scoop up and retain a large,

thrashing fish.  But this expansive gullet is not

for storage.  Once the prey is corralled, the

pelican slings back its head and swallows 

the fish whole.  No arguments.

Just a meal. 

 

 

 

*   *   *   *   * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER   EASY 

coldValentine

Audubon

  

 G R E A T      H O R N E D      O W L

 Feather tufts like ears are for display.

The bird has claws with a grip powerful

enough to sever the spine of their prey,

be it rodent, skunk or geese.  Specialized

serrations on their flight feathers give these

nocturnal hunters a deadly stealth flight.

Great Horned Owls are widely found, 

living in desert and forest.  They also 

make a good living off of park squirrels,

who were just hanging out in the

center of town.

 

 B A L T I M O R E      O R I O L E

 These woodland song birds breed in summer

and migrate to Central and South America for

the winter.  They eat both insects and fruit, as

well as nectar and bird-loving grape jelly.  Their

hanging sock nests are weaved from plant fibers,

string and the mangled hair you couldn't do

a thing with.  

They are Maryland's state bird and mascot

for Baltimore's baseball team.

 G R E A T      B L U E      H E R O N 

 Standing four feet tall and having a wingspan

of nearly seven feet, the Blue Heron is the

largest waterbird found in North America.  

Herons weigh no more than seven pounds

despite their size because of the hollow

bone structure, common to all birds of flight.

Specialized neck vertebrae gives them 

blazing speed when striking for their prey.

They eat most any animal they can swallow

whole... fish, frogs, lizards, insects, gophers,

other birds.  They build their stick nests bunched

together atop high trees that thrive in salt and

freshwater wetlands.

C O M M O N      C O R M O R A N T 

 These are large diving birds are found in lakes, 

rivers, estuaries and coastal waters most anywhere

on the globe except the polar caps.

They don't walk, not even like a penguin.

They land on tree limbs and power lines and

take their naps on narrow ledges found on 

the face of cliffs.  

They spread their wings to dry their flight feathers,

which are not fully waterproof.  That seems a 

surprising shortcoming for an aquatic bird,

but it works.  Their wings are what they are

because their makeup gives the cormorant

an advantage at diving and their pursuit

of small fish.

 C A R O L I N A      P A R A K E E T 

 A highly social, boisterous parrot that flocked

together by the hundreds.  They were the only

parrots native to the United States having 

what it took to endure cold weather.

 They fed on the poisonous seeds of the Cocklebur 

which made this parrot possibly toxic to its

predators.  Still this bird is extinct.  It's colorful

feathers provided plumage for hats and fashion accents.

Farmers considered them an agricultural pest and

took every opportunity to kill them by the hundreds.

Today they are a prime candidate for extinction

reversal.  Their genetic information has been extracted

from museum samples and successfully sequenced.

This species may one day be revived from some lab

petri dish.

C A L I F O R N I A      C O N D O R 

 With a wingspan of nearly ten feet and weighing 

in at an amazing twenty-five pounds this vulture

is the largest land bird in North America.  They 

are also among the longest living birds at sixty

years.  Using wind and updrafts the condor can

cover 250 miles in a day, hunting for dead deer,

cattle or beached mammal to devour.

In 1982 the California Condor's numbers had

dwindled to near extinction, with only 22 individuals

left in the wild.  These individuals were captured

in a first step to repopulate the region with birds

that were hatched from an intensive captive

breeding program.

As of 2022 the Condor population has grown to over

500 birds, with 347 having been reintroduced into 

the wild.  Still, the initial reasons for the declining

population in the wild remain.

 J O H N      J A M E S      A U D U B O N 

 

1 7 8 5  - 1 8 5 1

 Audubon was a self taught artist and naturalist.

His book, The Birds of America, with its 435

hand colored prints, was a seminal publication

in the study of birds.  His original illustrations 

were life size, painted from fresh killed specimens.

They were first wired into the pose he desired

to illustrate.  An animal too big to fit on the paper

used in his illustrations would then be contorted

to an unnatural degree to make the image fit.

Life size was all important.

Audubon was an historic conservationist 

and a notable proponent of slavery 

in the years leading up to the

American Civil War.

 

*  *  *  *  *

©  Tom Taylor

 

 OVER   EASY 

 

coldValentine

Good Morning Justin...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 13 April

Cardinal

Good Morning Justin…

The past few weeks I’ve been taking casual note of life’s return to full activity following its annual hiatus during the cold, brief days of winter.  First came the yellow bloom of Daffodils and the white petals of Bradford Pears, even though the tree remained bare of its leaves and it was only early March and the weather was still the chill blast from a lion’s roar.  The nights routinely dropped below freezing and occasionally dipped into the twenties.  It didn’t snow, though, as the sky on these coldest of nights would remain clear with crystalline stars and maybe a sliver of moon.  When evening clouds did roll in they would provide a thermal blanket over the atmosphere and what precipitated would be a pattering dance of rain on the roof above.  It was too warm for even the slightest dusting of snow.

Robins began the month of March in a communal spread across muddy neighborhood lawns, searching among dead strands of last year’s leftover leaves for the first squirming specks of life that over the course of the day might add up to some kind of meal, not tasty but enough to keep one going.  By mid-month they had paired off and were busy building their nests in mostly secretive places amidst the thick brush or in the stretched limbs of towering trees overhead, safely out of reach from snakes and prowling fox but not from the hungry crow, which was already busy marauding the still naked arboreal crowns for delectable eggs and possibly a precocious youngster, naively rearing up its tender head.  Then, too, the adult bird had to always be mindful of the ever watchful Cooper’s Hawk, whose swift fatal strike would leave but a brief stir of feathers where just an instant before Mom was collecting bits of grass to add to her growing nest.

Male Cardinals were seen in twos and threes squabbling among themselves as to who would get rights to which choice piece of land.  There wasn’t room for everyone and less dominate males would be constantly kept on the move until they successfully fought off rivals for a stake of their own or were pushed beyond their desired habitat of thicket or woodlands edge.  Defeated and dispossessed, the outcast Cardinal would become weak from lack of food and would fall prey to any one of a number of predators or natural calamities.  By April the ants had once again broken through to the surface of the land and they could be counted upon to pick clean the bones of any animal that had failed to sustain the careful internal chemical equilibrium required of the living. 

April would also find Northern Flickers and Red-Headed Woodpeckers busy swooping from tree to tree and doing their rapid rat-tat-tat to break through the rough, cork-like outer crust of oak and other forest trees in order to use its long, sticky tongue to nab insects that had burrowed beneath the bark.  Black Carpenter Bees were also out in number, swarming about the now flowering Dogwood and the showy, dangling violet blooms of Wisteria – not the native kind but the exotic Chinese Wisteria that can quickly infest an area with its many runners that course the ground and use the framework of sturdier vegetation for climbing, giving it height. 

Still missing are the many hummingbirds and butterflies.  Presumably they wait in the wings for a more generous supply of nectar provided by the mature bloom of summer flowers.  Swallows from the Amazon basin probably aren’t due until May.  They’re expert at vacuuming insects from the air and, to date, there just aren’t that many around.  They’re coming, though.  Temperatures are now flirting with daytime 80s.  New kinds of walking, crawling and flying insects are making their appearance each day.  Yesterday, it was young, female flying ants.  This morning it was a small praying mantis.  The insects awaken and they will soon be here in waves – grand, fat morsels ready to feed a whole new generation of mockingbirds, robin, wrens, possum, frogs, lizards and the like.

Love,

           Dad

Good Morning Jack...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 30 March

We're all somebody's meal one day

Good Morning Jack…

I was caught in the rain yesterday while on a long walk.  My clothes were drenched but it didn’t matter.  It’s spring and the rain wasn’t cold.  No more freezing nights.  Soon we will switch from heater to air conditioner here in North Carolina.  But for a short period there won’t be need for either.  Today is right for opening windows and letting the breeze sweep all the winter’s cabin fever from the house. 

Friday a woodpecker came knocking.  He was right above the window to my room.  They really are quite loud.  You’d think they were driving nails with their bill.  How does their brain take all that pounding?  Terns that spend their life diving into water after fish have a similar problem.  Several times each day they collapse their wings and make a high dive attack at their intended meal.  I’m told smacking your head repeatedly does take its toll and they aren’t likely to live more than three years.  What do you think happens?  Do they slowly knock themselves senseless to the point of senility?  Maybe their vision becomes blurred or they start seeing double.  It’s not like they can go to an optometrist and get fitted for corrective lenses.  Every head throbbing dive becomes a lucky miss for the fish.  Eventually it gets to be too much.  How does a bird process the headaches and all this frustration?  Don’t forget their nagging hunger pangs.  Then there are the youngsters.  You’re no longer part of a team providing food for a hungry nest.  Your spouse is left with all the work.  It just won’t do.  Wanted:  healthy tern to replace the worn out one seen sitting lethargic by the water’s edge.  Life is for the young.  Animals in nature don’t enjoy their golden years.  There aren’t any to enjoy.  Your sorry carcass simply becomes someone else’s nutritious meal.  It’s probably not long in coming, either. 

Most every warm-blooded animal gets hungry on a daily basis – birds especially.  They have to fly to stay alive and they don’t have the luxury of carrying around any body fat of consequence.  You ever see a robin with love handles?  If a bird on a limb looks plump you can be guaranteed it is only because they’ve fluffed up their down for warmth. 

So, yes, in the dog-eat-dog world of Mother Nature there is no need for hiring a janitorial service.  If you’re that worn out tern resting at the water’s edge and you hear “Clean up on Aisle 7” – you can rest assured they are talking about you.  The best you can hope for is a humane death of having some ravished predator first bite into the back of your neck.  Lights out. 

If we’re open-minded about the matter we should probably feel gratified that our spent selves provide a meal for more than one worthy individual.  Usually there’s a vertebrate to provide the ceremonial coup de grace.  But they rarely pick your bones clean.  There’s too little left to make it worth the effort of an animal carrying around a large stomach.  Now it’s a race among the insects.  Flies are quick to sense the aroma of your decay and gladly lay their young amidst your tissue.  Of course, you can never count out the energetic search of the enterprising ants.  Now they truly will pick your bones clean.  How many times have you witnessed a parade of these busy-bodies streaming into the eye socket of some dearly departed animal?  By the end of the day, two at the most, every sinus and cranial cavity becomes remarkably spic and span. 

I suppose I’m still a bit touchy about being eaten.  I can’t grasp the aesthetic beauty of being systematically torn limb from limb and devoured.  If that isn’t bad enough then I have to further endure the humiliation of being defecated.  Now doesn’t that make for a classic before and after picture comparison?  No, I much prefer being consumed by flame.  You can scatter my ashes about the base of a desert mesquite bush.  It’s so much more discrete.  They have such fastidious manners when it comes to feeding. 

Love,

           Dad