Raptors I Have Known
The other day, Kim and I were coming home from an afternoon errand and, after stopping to pick up the mail, we were driving through our entry pillars when Kim shouted at me to look. I was somewhat taken aback and didn’t know what she was pointing to at to my left. Then I saw it. On the left stucco pillar there was a small red-tailed hawk. It was just sitting there staring at me in the car. I assumed that it would fly away when I drove in, but it didn’t. It just sat quietly there as I drove by a mere four feet from it, staring right at me in the eye. I began to think that maybe it was injured or something, but after driving up the driveway and going in the house, Kim and I watched until he or she (how do you tell with a hawk?) decided to fly away, which it did with no trouble or hitch. For some reason, we get lots of hawks up here on this hillside.
Literally every day, if the sun is shining, we can look out from our deck or back windows and see hawks soaring around over the canyons to the West of our house. We always assumed that they were out there hunting for prey. Then one day I heard a crash and saw two birds out on the deck. This was back when we had an operable deck with a glass railing, so the birds were on the deck floor near the glass. I saw one of the birds flutter around trying to fly away but being thwarted in those efforts by the four-foot high glass railing. The other bird wasn’t moving. On closer inspection I saw that the one bird was an angry looking hawk (probably red-tailed, but I didn’t notice) and the other was less a bird than the carcass of a bird. It was a dove as I discovered once the hawk found its way out over the glass rail and I had to discard it. Apparently the hawk had hunted the pigeon and then realized it couldn’t handle its prey once snatched. It had obviously been forced to make an emergency landing with the pigeon that was simply too heavy to handle. It might have even been the same small hawk I saw by the driveway. But a hawk’s gotta do what a hawk’s gotta do…including leaving the pigeon behind.
I have more experience with predatory birds than you might imagine. During my years of traveling the Arab Middle East (late 80’s and then through the 90’s), I had several run-ins with falcons. Peregrine falcons are a very big deal in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, especially with the sheik set. It so happens that I was always going in to meet with one sheik or another, so I saw my share of falcons. These are the real deal hunting falcons that are managed by falconers. These falconers hang around outside the Maglis during falcon hunting season. The Maglis is where the sheiks meet visitors. Before going in, you get to meet the sheik’s falcons for your amusement. One time I was asked if I wanted to hold one. I doubt I was so very special since they had a spare leather glove for this trick and I’m guessing it is a way to disarm the visitors and soften whatever request they have of the sheik. Anyway, this hunting falcon was a lot heavier than I had expected. But the really fun part was when the falconer took its hood off. The hood keeps the falcon calm, so taking it off is sort of a message that its game on. The first thing this falcon did was to look me over evaluating whether he could take me down. It was the most piercing glare I have ever encountered. I have never been looked at as lunch and it is not a pleasant feeling. It was during that meeting that the sheik invited me to join him on a hunt in Pakistan, but I had the good sense to make up some excuse not to go. The truth was that I didn’t want to be in the wild with that falcon on the loose. I might have ended up like that pigeon.
When we took a family vacation in Western Ireland in 2019, Kim arranged an outing for us at a Falconry where we all took turns with leather gloves on letting various birds of prey swoop in from their tree perches to our outstretched gloved hands. We would then feed them a piece of raw chicken and send them on their way. We had falcons, hawks and large owls. I am tempted to say it was a hoot, but that might be too obvious a pun for a story about predatory birds.
That brings me to my current predatory bird subject. Owls. My brother-in-law Jeff got it into his head last year to learn all about owls and to build two owl houses for us and for my sister. He did what he always does, which is to thoroughly research the subject and figure out everything one should build into a proper owl house. He did that and built the houses and delivered mine to us with the right-sized mounting pole and even the concrete needed to set the pole properly. He even put a brass plaque on the house which said Benvenido Tito Albas, which translated into English is Welcome barn owls. It seems he had built the house specifically for barn owls. This will shortly figure into this story.
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and while getting some water in the bathroom I heard the hooting of owls on the roof of our house. We had seen owls perched up there before, so it didn’t completely surprise me. What was a bit more surprising was that it is February and this is the first I have heard of owls in the past year. Jeff had told me that February is the month when owls go shopping for new homes and that I should be on the lookout to see if we got some new residents in our Owl House. When I heard the owls hooting I decided to text Jeff to tell him we might have some new owls shopping for a new house. He texted back that if they were hooting they were Great Horned Owls and not Barn Owls and therefore would not be interested in the house he had built. What? Who knew we were narrowcasting for Barn Owls? Not me. So now I am unsure what our owl program should be. If we have Great Horned Owls will they scare off the Barn Owls? Can they territorially co-exist? I’m sure Jeff knows, but I’m embarrassed to say my owl knowledge is not up to my falcon standards.
When we took an Alaskan cruise a few years ago we went to an eagle habitat in Sitka and learned that eagles, falcons, hawks and owls are all part of the same gang. They are all birds of prey and they all hunt to survive. None of them are cute and cuddly even though Owls seem like they should be. Get up close to an eagle, a hawk, a falcon or an owl and the same thing is going through all of their minds. Its all a big calculation about whether they can take you down and carry you back to their brood for lunch. That’s OK once you come to accept that this is simply who (or maybe hoooooo) they are. Benvenidos Aves de Presa.