This morning I got a call from a neighbor: a largish raptor had landed in the back yard sometime during the night, and was still there. So I wandered over (my lungs aren’t up to spec by a long shot, but they’re good enough to allow for a brief hike) with my camera and took a bunch of closeups. I don;t know… the bird was stunned or stupid or something. Humans poked and prodded it, the homeowner even picked it up bare-handed and it didn’t attack. I figured I’d wind up with lots of photos of bloody stumps, but the bird just… let it happen. It did, eventually, and of its own volition, fly away. It is, I think, a juvenile, and not a good flyer… probably got itself good and lost, and had to gin up the courage to take to the air again.
10 Responses to “Yardbird”
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Trained perhaps? Are there any falconers around there?
Jim
“My great-nth granddaddy was a dinosaur, goddamnit! SHOW SOME RESPECT!”
That appears to be a juvenile Golden Eagle, so, DO NOT keep any feathers from it, or go around telling people you handled it. Fed wildlife jackoffs get soggy and hard to light over that sort of thing!
Its possible it ran into something in flight and was stunned. A few years ago I saw a redtail hawk hit a car windshield and it was groggy for quite awhile afterwords, we picked it up and moved it, stretched its wings to see if they moved alright, and after an hour or so it straightened up, screeched irritably at us and flew away.
He’s probably young enough that he’s on his own for the first time and like any teenager, of any species, he’s not sure just what to do!
Could be a trained bird that’s used to being handled by humans. Maybe it made a bid for freedom and had no idea what to do next.
Nice pictures, regardless.
Wow. Those people were braver than I would be.
That’s one fierce looking bird. If it’s a Golden Eagle I suppose you’re lucky one of your critters didn’t try to bring it home. 😉
Award winning pictures tere son. Should submitt tem some place.
Dad
Zoom in and you can see your reflection in the hawk’s eye
It looks young, it still has a slight remnant of the extra skin baby birds have on the sides of their mouths to catch all the food from Mom and Dad
When I was young, we found a young Bald Eagle lying on a beach on Vancouver Island that some idiot had shot in the wing. After calming it down, we placed a t-shirt around his head and I had the honor of holding onto the raptor in the back seat while my dad drove us to the local vet, who also happened to run a wild bird sanctuary. The eagle didn’t make any fuss.
The wing mended and the eagle was back to doing what it does best, eating salmon, flying around and looking noble 🙂
I have to say I was pretty upset (I was about 10) that someone would do such a thing but I was sure glad to hear that the bird was able to fly again.