A bird researcher strapped a camera to a falcon to record its hunting behavior. The results are pretty cool.

The last 60 seconds are like modern-day dog-fighting. Pretty amazing to think of the life and death duels that take place above us all the time.

Crap, an we thought we knew how to fly..

WOW, Almost fell off my chair trying following this!!

Amazing . . .

But think how much better they could fly if they had an AOA indicator!

As an aside . . .

My house is up against the eastern flank of the Sierra, several springs, aspen groves and foliage, so lots of hawks and critters. A few years back I was sitting in my living room and there was a loud bang. Upstairs I found a large window a mess, not broken but with powder from bird impacts and a plume of seed and fluid on the glass angling down and away from the point of impact. On the driveway below was a dead dove, it's crop torn open (the source of the seed). After searching all over, I found a dead sharp shinned hawk in the roof gutter about 10' away from the window. Apparently he had a talon into the dove at impact and that caused the crop to rupture. I got the hawk down and put him in the sun hoping he'd revive, sadly he didn't.

Target fixation.

bumper