From what I've read, the red-tailed hawk occurs in Central America but not in South America. When I was growing up in the 1950s, I was a big fan of Disney's True Life Adventure films, one of which was The Living Desert. Though it's been about 60 years since I've seen the film, I have a clear memory of a sequence in which a red-tailed hawk dove through a flying mass of bats that were either just departing from or returning to the cave in which they roosted by day. As I recall, the red-tail eventually caught a bat after repeated failures. I'm sure an accipiter could have done better!
Lindsay Goodloe I think one of the BBC specials shows red-tailed hawks catching bats. Big bats, in South America...I think. David Diaz Tburg, NY > On Aug 10, 2014, at 8:51 PM, "Kevin Loope" <kj...@cornell.edu> wrote: > > Sitting on my porch at around 8:15 this evening, I noticed a silhouetted > accipiter (female sharp-shinned or male cooper's?) atop the utility pole in > the TCAT parking lot in Varna. It was pulling apart what I thought was a > small bird, but when it tossed it off and flew away I found the fresh remains > of a bat (mostly wings) at the base of the pole, plus the remains of at least > two more bats that were slightly less fresh. Do they "hawk" the bats in > flight?? What a remarkable feat that would be! Anyone ever witnessed it? > > Cheers, > Kevin Loope -- 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/ --
