Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!shelby!polya!lucid.com!pab
From: pab@lucid.com (Peter Benson)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Suburban Raptors
Message-ID: <2161@heavens-gate.lucid.com>
Date: 29 Nov 89 23:58:51 GMT
References: <1989Nov29.032434.9233@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Lucid, Inc. Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 33

In article <1989Nov29.032434.9233@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kehaar) writes:

   You are probably right about your cat getting eaten by a red-tailed hawk.  
   However, I find it extremely odd that a red-tail would drop the talons and
   rectrices (tailfeathers) of a eaten sharp-shinned hawk, for two reasons.
   One, 
   the sharp-shin is highly manuverable--far more so than a big buteo.
    Further, 
   the red-tail is not generally considered a bird-eater, but preys
   primarily on 
   rodents.  However, a hawk will take whatever is easiest, and if it came upon
   a sick or wounded sharp-shin, the sharp-shin would probably become dinner.
   The other reason that this is odd, though, is the way this red-tail handled
   it's prey.  First, most bird-eaters will swallow the rectrices along
   with the 
   pygostyle (the muscle group which controls the tailfeathers).  Also, a
   red-tail 
   will _always_ take apart it's prey on the ground, and never (at least that I
   heard of) carry the inedible remains of their prey around.


The redtail had been in a tree and I disturbed it.  It dropped the remains
on the truck as it flew off.  As I remember I was very sure it was a sharpy
after looking carefully at the feathers and studying the books that I had.
Around the same time I disturbed another hawk (probably redtail) while
eating a snake and it dropped it in front of my car.  Things were feeling
very ominous at that time.  It could have been a coyote or a great horned
owl that got the cat, but that incident convinced me that it could easily
have been a redtail.  This was in a very remote section of canyon country
in southern Utah. 

-ptr-
pab@lucid.com


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