Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Raptor Wednesday

This young Red-tailed Hawk, the only nestling, evidently, is roaring along.
You can hear the bird calling from some distance. This time, as it happened, there was food already in the nest.
Looks like rat is a major part of the diet. Two hours after the first two photos, one of the parents was flying in another rodent kill. (This is problematic because of the use of rat poison in the city.)
I suspect there’s some duck in that nestling as well. These two were all that were left of the six I saw two days previous. (Last years, I saw a Red-tailed grab a Mallard duckling.)

mthew

One response to “Raptor Wednesday”

  1. Chuck McAlexander

    As much as we’d like to cheer the hawk dining on rat, almost anything else would be better for the hawk. Rats carry a toxin load from our attempts to control or eliminate rat populations. They develop an immunity over long time periods which allows them to survive with the poison in their bodies. The hawks get some of that poison, and there are several kinds, when they eat rat. It bioaccumulates until it debilitates or kills the hawk. This is what happened to Barry, the Barred Owl in Central Park. She had half a dozen kinds of rat bait in her system which attacked her nervous system. That’s why she flew into the truck. At least that part was quick.

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