So named because their toot toot call sounds like someone sharpening a saw blade with a whetstone.
A quartet of black vultures at CREW Rookery in south Florida. Did you know that black vultures have a thing for windshield wipers and the rubber seals on your car?
Check out those talons. Amazing!
Arguably the rarest animal I have ever photographed. This was one of 241 California condors in the wild at the time. I was lucky enough to spot this on soaring high above Zion National Park.
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Florida
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Florida
A slightly damp rough-legged hawk comes in for a landing on a potentially undersized perch in eastern Washington.
Unpleasant, but essential and incredibly adapted to their role (they poop on their feet and the ammonia in their excrement kills bacteria from the carcasses they eat).
A handsome red-shouldered hawk carefully watching for prey.
The same red-shouldered hawk lets his/her presence be known.
Oddly, although I see red-tailed hawks far more often than any other raptor, I don’t have any great photos of them.
One of the most beautiful raptors I know, swallow-tailed kites are social and gather in large groups, unlike most raptors. I found this one in southern Florida with a few dozen of its kind.
Great-horned owls prefer woodlands. Barred owls prefer swampy areas, partly because they actively hunt crayfish, as this one has done succesfully.
Similar to the peregrine but a bit smaller, I found this prairie falcon soaring over the desert near Phoenix.
Red-tailed hawks are not endemic to this part of the country. Woodland hawks, like the Cooper’s, are native. The reason we see red-tailed hawks along highways is because it mimics their more open, native territory.
A Cooper’s Hawk surveys the Parklands at Floyds Fork in Louisville. Cooper’s hawks (aka chicken hawks) are a bit of a dilemma for bird lovers. They are, of course, birds, but they also eat almost exclusively birds. Thus your backyard feeders are a bit of a buffet for them.
Screech owls come in two “morphs,” red and gray. This one is obviously the red morph. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen in the wild. Their camouflage is absolutely unbelievable. They are nearly invisible, even from close range.
I was lucky to find this black-and-white owl on a power line over a river in Costa Rica, near the Nicaraguan border. It was using this vantage point to hunt bats.
The South American equivalent of our red-tailed hawk, I found this gray hawk in Costa Rica.
Close-up of a king vulture in Costa Rica. He’s the king because he drives off all the other scavengers when he arrives at a carcass.
The king vulture’s gular pouch is visible - basically built-in food storage. This one is pretty full.
Unbelievable creatures - some of the most sensitive hearing ever tested. Their ears are located at different heights on their head so they can locate sounds not just left and right, but up and down as well. So fortunate to find this bird…
Young birds tend to develop their adult plumage only after the first year (at least), but the intense blue eyes are already present on this juvenile.
A pair of spectacled owls roosts high in the Costa Rican forest.
Probably a 3 or 4 year old on the Skagit River north of Seattle. Bald eagles do not develop their iconic adult plumage until age 5.
Another 4-year old posing on a stump over the rainy Skagit River.
An adult bald eagle searches for an easy meal of dying salmon over the Skagit River in Washington.
A close-up of a 2 or 3-year old bald eagle. Bald eagles have the equivalent of 20/4 vision (vs. 20/20). They can see a rabbit in the brush at 2 miles. Imagine being able to spot a lady bug on a football stadium goal post from the opposite end zone (a yellow lady bug). Not only is their visual acuity supernatural, bald eagles (and many birds) have tetrachromatic vision. Whereas we have trichromatic vision (red, green, and blue), eagles have a 4th type of retinal cell that allows them to see into the UV spectrum.
A 4-year old bald eagle takes flight. They have no reservations about getting in the water and even swimming for a meal. If a fish is too heavy to fly with, they will swim with it in their talons.
A very exciting find near Seattle. This long-eared owl posed just long enough for me to capture one image. Owls are a sensitive species - I waited 3 months to post this on social media. If I had disclosed the location in real-time, 100 birders and photographers would have descended on the spot within hours.
A “pan blur” of a bald eagle grabbing a fish at 40mph.
Male in front, female behind. Notice the size difference. The females are substantially bigger.
This bird can be found in one and only one place - the Galapagos Islands. It is thought to be related to the red-tailed hawk. It is one of only two raptors on the Galapagos, the other being the Galapagos owl (a subspecies of short-tailed owl). I missed seeing the owl by 90 seconds…
Although short-eared owls are one of the more “photographable” owls due to the fact that they are both wide-ranging and more active during the day that other species, I have had very little luck. Still, watching them hunt was pretty cool.
Not really a raptor, the common nighthawk is a nightjar, like the whippoorwill, but I’m including it anyway because it’s cool. Essentially the only bird with white wing bars from front to back of the wing, I was lucky to get this very bad photograph because, like all nightjars, they are nocturnal. I managed to get this one flying away at almost 8:00PM in May.
I searched for this bird in Louisville for 2 years. It’s a rarity hear, but I finally spotted one. It’s family is Falconidae (falcons), one of the 10 groups of raptors along with eagles, osprey, kites, hawks (Accipters - “true” hawks), buzzards (Buteos), harriers, vultures, caracaras, and owls.
One of my favorites, this little owl I found in eastern Washington is about the size of a robin, but still a fierce predator!
A friend and I stumbled upon a very rare find - a communal roost of long-eared owls. The vast majority of owls are solitary, but long-eared owls often roost together. We found between 6 and 10 in this one spot. An incredible experience.
Tiger of the sky. What do great-horned owls eat? Anything they can carry. Anything that doesn’t eat them first. This one posed nicely in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Also known as the sparrow hawk (because it eats small birds), this is my best and only shot of a “sharpie.” Almost identical to a Cooper’s hawk, just smaller.
To go with my lackluster portfolio of red-tailed hawk photos, I have this very mediocre image of the Harlan’s subspecies, distinguished by it’s unusually dark coloration. This was in the amazing Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.
Although there is a nesting pair of peregrine falcons less than 3 miles from my house, my one and only photo of the world’s fastest animal is this one that I happened to spot soaring over a centuries-old cathedral in Poland.
My only image of a broad-winged hawk. These hawks are not native to the midwest, but migrate through. I was lucky to find this one in April, 2020.
Great-horned owls nest in late December, with eggs hatching mid-March and owlets leaving the nest in late April or early May at 6-8 weeks. This pair is not quite ready to separate, but they can already fly and soon they will begin a solitary life on their own.
The crested owls in Costa Rica did not cooperate - they remained high in the trees and hidden behind the thick branches - a fairly common experience when photographing owls.
This fledgling barred owl is probably 6-7 weeks old. It can fly short distances, but mostly climbs and crawls. Owlets like this one are often found on the ground - nothing is wrong! They climb down to hunt bugs and worms, then climb back up their tree when they’re done.
Flight-shot of a red-shouldered hawk, probably the second most common raptor in the midwest after the red-tailed.
One of my favorite birds, the smallest of falcons. This one was in eastern Washington state, but they are everywhere. I don’t know where they perched before there were power lines, because that’s where they are found 99% of the time. Interestingly, this Washington kestrel looks different than the midwest kestrels - it’s larger and the coloring is much bolder.
The “gray ghost,” this is the classic adult male in breeding plumage. Harriers hug the ground, listening for rodents with their owl-like facial disk. I photographed this one near Seattle, but they can be found in the midwest as well.
My one and only golden eagle sighting, this one was near Seattle. People tend to believe that golden eagles are larger than bald eagles, but they are actually about the same size. Golden eagles are being reintroduced in the east. There is a mating pair south of Louisville. They departed their winter home in Canada and headed south on opposite sides of the Great Lakes, then arrived 1,700 miles south at their nest site within 24 hours of one another.
I call this image “Bar Brawl,” because it includes all or part of seven different eagles battling over a salmon carcass. Ultimately the adult females tend to win. Like most raptors, female bald eagles are 25-30% larger than males.