Gray Hawks

[jdc40]

I live in southern Kansas and about two weeks ago we had 3 birds that we identified thru the internet as gray hawks, they stayed in are trees for about two weeks, but haven't seen them since. We were wondering if anyone had any information on these hawks, couldn't find very much on the net. Thanks Jerry

[Pat]

Hmmm, Have you paid your internet dues? When I (member in GOOD STANDING") GOOGLE on Grey Hawk (and Gray Hawk) I get several good hits with info on their range, appearance, food, courtship habits, and on and on.

Synopisis is that they are migratory in your area and permanent residents further south and southwest in the US and range widely below the border. They are migratory here also (south central Oklahoma) A pair just showed up day before yesterday and they spend considerable time perching in trees in our back yard as well as just fliting about after one another.

The hoards of songbirds of many species that are attracted to our feeders seem to vanish when the hawks are close to the back of the house, especially if airborn.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[jdc40]

Thanks Pat, Several of the sites I went to only gave descriptions of the hawks and not much information. We had never seen them before so I was wondering if they were migrating birds. Thanks again, Jerry

[Pat]

Jerry, The ones that recently showed up here are sure active. The pair frequenting our back yard chase each other around like it was spring.

On the topic of birds... Audubon is considered by many to be America's greatest naturalist in the field of birds. His paintings of birds are highly prized for realism. One of the reasons he could paint the birds in such anatomically pricise of a manner is that he went out on field trips and shot several of each bird so he could study them first hand.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[jdc40]

We had three hawks here and they sure made some of the smaller birds disappear, what I found interesting is they weren't really scared of us watching them. Jerry

[Pat]

Jerry, How close did they let you get to them and were you on foot, driving, or what?

Most of the time here the Cooper's, Sharp shinned, grey, and red tail etc will perch on the power wires along the section line but will fly away befor the car makes its closest approach. I have left some pretty tall dead trees at the rear of the back yard because the woodpeckers like them and the hawks and even great blue herons like to land and sit at the very top. Too far from the back porch for a nice picture. Need about 40X magnification to get a decent shot and I don't want to leave my BIG LENSE on its tripod on the back porch (8 inch diameter, 2000mm focal length, f-10.) Maybe I will have to sand bag the tripod legs against strong winds and cover it with a tarp till a photo op comes along.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[jdc40]

We have a elm tree(actually several) that two of them perched in for several days the other one prefered a dead tree down in the creek, I would say the elm was 30ft. tall and we were stood looking at the hawk for at least 10 minutes, my wife even took a picture with her digital camera.

[Pat]

jdc, We never seem to be close enough for our digicam to get a decent picture (not enough zoom.) I bought a BinoCam that has 10 binocs with a 10X camera on top so whatever you look at you can take a snap or a film clip (.avi) but 10X still isn't enough. The Binocam is 10X fixed, no zoom.

Yesterday I ordered a combination camcorder/digicam with 10X zoom and a 2X accessory lense to double the 10X up to 20X optical zoom which is useful and it has a lot of digital zoom which is sometimes moderately useful. It has image stabilization so hopefully the 20X shots won't be too blured by our unsteady hands. It shoots video at 1080i (full HDTV resolution) so I hope to get some nice video. The still picture function is the equivalent of a run of the mill 4 megapixel digicam. It is for my wife. I call it a coma camera because it is so automatic that you can operate it while in a coma. I prefer some manual controlability as I have been a long term 35mm SLR buff.

Could you post the shot of the Hawk?

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[jdc40]

Pat I will see if I can get my wife to post one, they aren't as close of a picture that I was hoping for, but I'll try to get her to post it sometime. Jerry

[Pat]

Jerry, if you have the software to crop the picture so you don't waste your pictutre posting file size allowance on non-essential detail that would help a bunch.

If you don't have easy to use software to do that there are several free ones that work just fine. My personal favorite now for several years is IrfanView, easy to use and has lots of good features besides being a free download.

www.irfanview.com/

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]