The final art challenge for October is entitled “predator.” I’ll start with the head of a Gyrfalcon that I have used previously.
Raptor feet and their talons are impressive.
For the past two years we have been able to watch a pair of Osprey attempt to nest on a cell tower that we can see from our house in Ann Arbor. They are impressive birds.
Somehow I never finished this illustration of a Northern Goshawk.
With the Accipiters, the upper one is a Northern Goshawk, lower left is a Sharp-shinned Hawk, lower right is a Cooper’s Hawk – all to scale.
The upper birds is a Red-tailed Hawk, the lower a Sharp-shinned Hawk.
Many bird-watchers have great difficulty telling apart a Sharp-shinned Hawk and a Cooper’s Hawk. First of all there is a long standing misconception that there is an overlap in the size of the birds. This is not true. Females are larger than males, which is typical of all raptors. And Male Cooper’s Hawks are bigger than female Sharp-shinned Hawks. When gliding between flaps, the head-extension of a Cooper’s Hawk is greater than a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Also, the tail of a Cooper’s Hawk is longer and rounded terminally.
I wrote the above on FaceBook in 2009. Humans and other animals have been swapping diseases for millennia, not just recently with SARS (Covid-19).
Not quite sure what tomorrow will bring, but it might prove to be interesting.
More then…
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