Sunday, June 12, 2005

Hawk eye contact?


photo by D. Bruce Yolton

Donna Browne writes:

Marie,

If you look closely at Bruce's photo, Junior and
Charlotte have eye contact. It's one of those
examples I've talked about. It's communicative
in some way, and I'd be fascinated to have enough
examples of that moment, one leaving the nest,
the other on, the eye contact position, and then where
the departing bird goes to figure this out a bit.

It tends to happen when one is on its way and they
aren't physically standing on the nest together. In
fact it's almost like eye contact on the nest is
avoided, at least in Pale Male and Lola's case. I
haven't observed Junior and Charlotte enough to know.

It's also interesting, (okay, at least to me) that
Junior and Charlotte are much more likely to do beak
carrying as opposed to talon carrying which is the
preference of Pale Male and company.

Donna

PS from Marie: I've looked closely at the photo [reprinted above yet again for convenience] and I think I see what Donna's talking about...

And talking about communication, yesterday Donna and another hawkwatcher were able to see the nest from a window just above the nest at the Trump Parc. Donna climbed on the window sill and partly hung out the open window thirty-five floors above the ground while someone kept a tight hold on her legs. She reports that she could hear the two chicks emitting little cheep-cheep sounds.