Urban naturalist sounds like a contradiction in terms, but a lot of people live in cities who can’t always afford a weekend photo safari. Those of us who stay sane either don’t expect much (deer! turkey!), or have a pro’s knowledge of where to look. Birders, for example, love water treatment plants. Any other attitude just gets in the way of appreciating the artificial homecooked flavor in your seven-layer burrito.
Anyhow, this afternoon as I stepped out the back of my seriously urban Pittsburgh apartment something big took off from my porch/fire escape landing and landed in a tree close by.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that is a juvenile bald eagle. Pale Male can suck eggs if the new neighbor starts snatching live fish out of the Monongahela.
***Update***
If you think that is a hawk, suggest what kind of hawk it might be. I don’t know many that grow three-fourths as big as a turkey.
***Update***
Awright, it’s probably a red-tailed hawk. This pic did it for me. Also this comment:
I can never tell which is which except one makes you say “God damn, that’s [a] huge bird!” and the other is merely large.
It sure seems like a big bird when it’s flying twenty feet over your head.
oh really
It’s not a very clear photograph, but I think it’s a hawk, not an eagle. The beak looks too small, and I’ve never seen a juvenile bald eagle with that much white, especially on the throat and breast.
TheFountainHead
That’s pretty damn cool.
In Los Angeles they have Peregrine (sp?) Falcons that have adapted to nesting in tall buildings and living off the local pigeon population.
Beej
From what I can see, the beak looks wrong for any kind of raptor. It looks more like a grouse, or ptarmigan, or, dare I say it, a partridge. Is that a pear tree?
Beej
Well, with more study, I guess that could be a raptor’s beak. I give up. Neat bird though.
TrishB
I’m not seeing it in the beak, but it does look a lot like this dude’s younger sibling: Juvenile redtail
Anne Laurie
I would have guessed a big ol’ female redtailed hawk — here in New England they hang around the two-lane highways waiting for us motorists to kill them some lunch. The Wikipedia page says the girls can get up to 26 inches long, and the color variations of their breast barring is so variable that the only *sure* identifier is their red-on-top, pink-underneath tail.
I am no birder (twitcher?), just a casual viewer like you, but if there were really a bald eagle wandering around urban Pittsburgh, I think the local media would have mentioned it as a filler during this slow news season. Even if it is a “horse” instead of a zebra, I’d still say having a redtail in your concrete backyard was pretty cool!
TrishB
I forgot to mention in my last post, if that poor critter starts snatching any food out of the Monongahela, it’ll end up like the critters that ate out of the Mohawk – dead or mutant.
myiq2xu
Could it be “Little Stephen” Colbert?
BTW – Pigeons are rats with wings. They are filthy creatures.
oh really
I lean toward the Red-tailed Hawk.
cbear
I can’t be sure, but that looks like a Brown-Tailed Shit Hawk to me. They tend to migrate with their food sources and are especially fond of carrion.
Do you have a lot of Bush-backing Republicans living in the neighborhood? Romney supporters?
NickM
It might be a red shouldered hawk or a female Northern Harrier – particularly because of the white stripe over the eye. It isn’t an immature bald eagle, though – they’re darker and have much larger beaks. Bald Eagles can live in pretty urban environments though. I once saw one flying pretty close to National Airport/the Pentagon.
kmblue
Whatever it is, it’s beautiful.
Jay
It’s a Large-Breasted Rod-Gobbler!
Seriously though, you must have Pygmy Turkeys in Pittsburgh because using the wires and insulators as reference that critter ain’t that big.
Juvenile Northern Goshawk.
Abe Froman
In my best FogHorn Leghorn voice:
“Now Pay attention to me boy, that don’t looks like no chicken hawk”
Antonius
For comparison,
Juvenile bald eagles:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=juvenile+bald+eagle&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
Hawks (some facial similarity to Coorper’s Hawk?)
http://images.google.com/images?q=hawk&gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&start=20&sa=N&ndsp=20
myiq2xu
Whatever the fuck it is, I’ll bet it tastes like chicken!
zmulls
Picture of a redtail hawk on this page.
Pretty sure that’s what you’ve got.
We see them on the highway around on the way to work (NW suburbs of Philly); but I’ve seen one in our yards on occasion, eyeing the birdfeeders….
Sinister eyebrow
I say red tailed hawk. We’ve got plenty of those along with plenty of eagles and osprey in my neighborhood in NC, and it looks like a hawk. The beak is much heavier on an eagle and they are brown(er) on the breast when they’re juvenilles. Young eagles also have pretty big heads, unlike the raptor in the picture.
Good to have them around, though. Eagles are pretty nifty to look at but hawks keep the rat population down (I’ve never had much trouble with fish invading my basement).
Jake
Hawk: red-tailed or shouldered. I can never tell which is which except one makes you say “God damn, that’s huge bird!” and the other is merely large. I’ve seen both around DC and I’m sure they live in Rock Creek Park.
Either way that’s very cool unless you’re a fan of pigeons, sparrows and starlings.
RSA
Cool. Back in grad school, I was in class one day in one of the high-rise buildings. The window ledges attracted a fair number of pigeons, and everyone was aware of the hawks that nested somewhere near the roof. We were all a bit shocked, however, to see one of the hawks on the ledge outside tearing apart and eating a pigeon it had just killed. That was quite a diversion from the class material.
Face
There’s a joke here…somewhere in this…but I’m too reluctant to go for it….
Bill H
In Los Angeles they have Peregrine Falcons…
In San Diego too. I have a pair the raised a brood in my back yard. Beautiful. Drove my cat banannas, but the Falcons were unimpressed by Molly completely: she was too big for lunch and too small to pose a threat.
Peregrines were at one time endangered, but have made a terrific comeback all on their own. All we had to do was quit shooting them and poisoning them with DDT.
Gus
I see a redtail (I’m guessing it’s the same one) all the time on a light pole right over I-94 right where St. Paul meets Minneapolis. It’s one of the busiest areas traffic-wise in the Twin Cities. I’m guessing that he (or they) feed on pigeons, but there’s no shortage of rabbits around either. Also see tons of bald eagles by the Mississippi about 5 blocks from my house. You’re right, it’s nice to have that urban wildlife.
Phillip J. Birmingham
Piling on here, but I see red-tails all the time, including one on my porch a couple of years ago. That’s almost certainly what you’ve got.
demimondian
Last winter, I was lucky enough to see a pair of bald eagles courting in rural Washington state.
That’s a hawk. T’aint no eagle, bub.
(OTOH, having hawks in downtown Pittsburgh is a huge step forward. Not too many years ago, the air would’ve melted their feathers as they flew.)
Randy Paul
I had a similar experience once, but was without my camera at the time.
Krista
What a lovely creature. It’s so neat to see them in unexpected places – sort of reminds us that yes, we do share the planet.
The Trans-Canada Trail is near us, and on one part of it, there’s a little truss bridge passing over the river. Ospreys have had a nest on top of that bridge for years. It cracks me up, because that trail has a fair amount of foot, bicycle and 4-wheeler traffic. But when you go over the bridge, the birds don’t take off — they just scold you from their nest, and then settle down peacefully when you’re far enough away again. I guess they’ve gotten pretty used to humans.
Jake
It might have been watching for live prey but they won’t turn up their beaks at road kill, which pisses off the crows no end. “Hey, that’s my squashed raccoon!”
Dreggas
I was walking home one day (here in so-cal) and saw a partially consumed pigeon on the ground and a bird flying away from it, looked up to where the bird flew and there was a peregrine falcon pearched on an antenna. It had caught the pigeon and was having a nice meal of squab on someone’s front lawn.
It also was not uncommon to see red-tail hawks perched on street light posts along the freeways, they’d hunt rodents in the little strips of plants near on-ramps.
cripto9t
Thats a red tailed hawk. I’ve spotted them in cities from coast to coast. Besides rodents they will take small cats and lapdogs.
Cybershaman
Red-tailed hawk. We’ve got them all around here. Noisey chicks though. Constantly screaching for food. They do well in small cities with lots of trees … and pigeons.
Original Lee
One more vote for red-tailed hawk. I think it looks big in the body because it has fluffed up its feathers in the cold. If it were a juvenile bald eagle, the beak and head would be proportionate to the body, it would be somewhat darker, and I think the beak would be more definitely yellow. (I can’t remember when the beak turns yellow on bald eagles, though.)
Jake
Thanks for the link (an’ cleanin’ up my grammer), the photos and descriptions in my Audubon bird guide aren’t that clear. I now know the red-tailed hawk is what scares the crap out of the neighborhood birds and possibly the cats.
Birdzilla
Thats a hawk for sure a bald eagle eben a juvinile is larger then that and he is looking for spotted owls to eat
Krista
The expert has spoken.
What’s with no caps, Bird? Feeling blue?
MonkeyBoy
Tim F, you say you are int Pittsburgh.
There is a red-tailed hawk or family of them that live in the belltower of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church.
I’ve seen one of them often times, and on two occasions I’ve seen one snacking one a pigeon at the roof edge of a low roofed building while there is an extra murdered pigeon on the sidewalk below.
This thrills all the school kids who go to the nearby East Liberty Library.
MonkeyBoy
When I lived in southern California we had an indoor cat.
One of her favorite activities was to get on a windowsill, watch the outdoors, and if she saw any small animals like sparrows she would start making some chirping noises which we understood to mean that if she was out there she thought she could catch them and eat.
One day I went into the back bedroom and of course the cat followed me but she decided she really was there to look out the window. So when I heard some crazy chirping from the window I look out to see what has gotten her so excited.
It was some enormous hawk or eagle that was sitting on the peak of our garage. After I saw it the fraidy cat decided that the bird was too big and scary and ran away.
From what I saw the bird was enormous but it feathers still made it look like a juvenile.
CaseyL
Raptors are making an amazing come-back in large cities. Peregrines everywhere, and now red-tailed hawks.
BTW, Seattle used to be still have enough greenbelt and wetland areas within the city that at least one pair of bald eagles nested at Greenlake, and could be seen wheeling gracefully in the skies above University of Washington on a clear day. I haven’t seen them for years. They might still be there, or the manic development of every spare patch of land over the past 5 years might have driven them away.
Chuck Butcher
Urbanites crack me up, since I live in falcon, hawk, and eagle country with multiple versions of all three. I think “rural” might be a modern understatement of my home. People can easily get lost and die or very nearly die – ask Doris Anderson.
Oh, yep, redtail.
Birdzilla
Have you seen PIXLARS award winning FOR THE BIRDS? kind of funny with that big goofy bird he is so heavy he makes the power line sag SQUAWK SQUAWK ITS THE INCREDIBLE HAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK
MonkeyBoy
Tim F. (I don’t know if this will get to you).
The other day I was in East Liberty and I saw 3 !!! hawks flying pretty high up and screeching (I heard the calls which was why I looked up). They weren’t fighting, just flying in big circles and they all eventually went to the nest in the Presbyterian Church bell tower.
I knew mates were monogamous but I have not been able to find out how long offspring stay in the nest.