On Friday morning at about 10:45, I watched a light-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK at the intersection of West King and Sandbank Roads in south Ithaca. The hawk hovered and kited in the wind, a few times floating dozens of meters straight backward as if projected from a rewinding film reel.
Then a Red-tailed Hawk flew in and struck with flashing talons at the Rough-legged Hawk. The two birds tumbled together a few times, eventually settling on the ground out of my view for about 20 seconds of suspense. Finally the hawks separated and rose to rest in some neighboring trees. At the same time, a bench-clearing brawl broke out, with two American Crows attacking a second Red-tailed Hawk that had appeared out of nowhere. Today is the start of the Great Backyard Bird Count, which runs through Monday. This year, participants can choose to enter GBBC sightings straight from eBird! Mark Chao -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
