Posted on 06/16/2023 11:30:50 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A Gilroy-based bird photographer has captured a rare phenomenon of bald eagles raising baby red-tail hawks.
Doug Gillard had been photographing a Santa Clara County bald eagle nest for several months when he caught an incredible image: An eagle coming back to the nest carrying a living red-tailed hawk. Gillard, knowing how cruel nature can be, thought the young hawk was dinner.
"I couldn't believe what mom brought back to junior for lunch," wrote Gillard on Facebook.
A week later Gillard went back to photograph the hawks and came across the rare phenomenon.
"I'm happy to report that the bald eagles I follow ARE RAISING THE BABY [red tail hawk] and she was not killed," wrote Gillard.
The eagle couple already had an eaglet of their own, a little bit older than the newly adopted hawk.
This is not the first time such an adoption has been reported. Last year, the Canadian Broadcast Company reported that it had been documented twice in British Columbia, Canada.
Later, Gillard was able to see that two baby hawks, also called eyass, were actually rescued. Unfortunately, one of the eyasses was killed by an adult eagle.
Now, weeks later, the first hawk is still thriving, and its older sibling, the eaglet, has just had its first flight.
What’s next, dogs and cats living together?
I think progressives are against interracial adoption. Unless it’s a celebrity.
Gay eagles in the bay area ??
Male and female Bald Eagles.
Not the first baby bird stolen from a nest. IIRC, there’s a particular bird that does it as a habit.
—> Male and female Bald Eagles.
You are assuming their gender!
And it could be ahomoeagle and lesboeagle…
Cuckoos lay their eggs in other bird’s nests. Shakespeare mentions it.
Do you think Mama and Daddy RT Hawk are happy with the adoption? Are they in mourning or did they meet an unfortunate demise, so the baby hawks were in need of adoption? Just wondering.
I don’t know if Shakespeare mentions it, but so do cowbirds. They kill one of the eggs of the original brood, and replace it with their own, to be fed by the unsuspecting mother and father. Very often the cowbird survives and the other babies are underfed, because the baby cowbird is so much bigger. After the fledgling cowbird becomes a juvenile, it finds its own kind, and mates and starts the cycle anew. I think they are considered invasive in the US.
That’s really weird. Eagles usually lay two eggs, and very often only the stronger eaglet survives, by hogging all the food or being preferentially fed.
Now the eagles adopt a smaller weaker baby?
What happened to the redtail parents?
I had assumed that something happened to the parents of this hawk, or it was abandoned.
What happened to the redtail parents?
Perhaps the observers are not differentiating between the raising of young and ranching?
I guess there’s no real way of knowing.
Cow birds are native to the US but may be pushing into new areas.
Mama cowbird watches the nest, and if the host parents recognize her egg as foreign and push it out or cover it, she will attack and destroy the other eggs.
Real Mafia mama. Nice nest you got there for your family, shame if something should happen to them.
Shakespeare mentions cuckoos in several plays, but I think of what the Fool said in King Lear:
For you know, nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it had it head bit off by it young.
The Old French word for cuckoo lead to the English word cuckold, aka a man whose wife commits adultery.
I dislike Cowbirds very much. I’ve seen Cardinals and even Wrens raise Cowbirds, to the detriment of their own babies.
Every time I see the word cuckold lately, I think of Will Smith.
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