Proceed at Your Peril
**BE WARNED… this one is going to get gruesome y’all.
Raptors look as raptors do because raptors do what raptors do. They kill things daily. They look fierce because that brow ridge protects their precious eyes during all manner of prey related entanglements. That down-curved bill tapering to a point makes short work of anything that resembles flesh.
“they look so regal…” “they look so dignified and proud…” “they look so cool”
Yup, they look that way because they are predators. IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH TURN BACK NOW. SERIOUSLY. Two pictures down is a mouse getting its head and face removed. No joke.
A Red-tailed Hawk doesn’t have the slightest thing resembling mercy. It has a thing called hunger, and it must be satisfied. Cue head and face removal photo…
There is no caption that can fix this.
This girl Cooper’s Hawk is too young to hunt on her own so she gets meals delivered by her parents.
The adults often prepared the food by removing the feathers and head (a commission for the hunt). Any guesses on dinner? House Sparrow? House Finch?
Red-shouldered Hawk looking regal? Noble? Dignified?
Here it is eating a freshly caught pigeon. It worked on it for a long… long time.
This is all that remained.
All that pigeon now resides in the hawk’s crop and it is not a flattering look. I honestly wondered if it could even fly.
The answer was no… it could only waddle up into a tree and sit for hours. How’s that for dignified?
I’ll leave you with another fairly intense image of another bird of prey – the fiendishly cold-blooded Great Blue Heron.
Fledgling Cooper’s Hawk with prey
A young Cooper’s Hawk with a pre-plucked and prepared meal from its parents.
Pigeon Dinner
Red-shouldered Hawks at the Palace of Fine Arts got accustomed to catching pigeons for a living.
Bird Hunter
Caught by the leg and the wing, a Pigeon goes for a ride courtesy a Red-shouldered Hawk. The mobbing Crow caused the hawk to drop its prey and the Pigeon swam to shore and survived.
Redshoulder Fishing
A Red-shouldered Hawk goes fishing! The first photographic documentation of this behaviour.
Predation Series #10
Firmly grasping a gopher, this young Red-tailed Hawk departs with its prize. (click the image to see this one bigger)
Predation Series #9
This Great Blue Heron looks nonchalant as it swings a gopher into position to swallow it head first.
Predation Series #8
A Great Blue Heron dips a large gopher into the water to help it go down a bit easier.
Predation Series #4
A Great Egret subdues a Three-spined Stickleback at the edge of Lloyd Lake in Golden Gate Park.
Predation Series #1
A female Red-tailed Hawk soars off with an early evening meal at Sutro Baths in San Francisco. This is the first in a daily series of predation related photos interspersed with other blog posts.