 |
| Sunning Red-tailed Hawk, Golden Gate Park |
It was probably in a journalism class that I first heard the saying about sunlight being the best disinfectant, used in the context of California's open-meeting laws under the Brown Act. But the saying came along much earlier and is attributed to the early 20th-century Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis.
In any event, birds have been onto sunshine as a kind of disinfectant since long before our proto-human ancestors climbed down out of the trees. Although sunning does help a bird warm up, according to Audubon, "[A] growing body of research now points to one largely understudied purpose: to rid themselves of pesky parasites living on their skin and feathers."
Today's sighting of a sunning red-tail was my second in less than a week, with the first one being at the Cliff House. This one occurred in the Horseshoe Courts within the Oak Woodlands of Golden Gate Park. I first saw the hawk perched in a pine tree, having been alerted to its presence by nearby bird alarms. While I was admiring the hawk it suddenly dove off its branch, whizzed right by me, and landed on a railing. I figured it had spotted a gopher, but then it jumped to the ground and waddled over to a flat, sandy, open area and lay flat as a pancake.
 |
| Banded Red-tailed Hawk in Pine Tree |
 |
| Dive! |
 |
| The red-tail didn't go immediately to the ground. |
 |
| But it didn't take long before doing so. |
Video clips of the red-tail sunning itself (with a brief clip from Lily Lake at the end, where some little fish are glad the green heron is gone).
 |
| Woodland Skipper at Lily Lake |
 |
| Grebelet in the Water |
 |
| The other little chick was sitting on the nearby nest with its mother. |
I found a crow feather in the yard and stuck it in the ground, but it kept getting plucked out and dropped nearby. I wondered who was doing the plucking. Today I couldn't find the feather at all. Incidentally, the other day I found pieces of flour tortilla in the water bowl. In one of the clips above, a raven (or is it a big crow?) appears to be eating some small plants it pulled out by their roots.
* * *
Posts
