Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Oldest Living Red-tail on Record, 27 Years and 9 Months


Photograph courtesy of Yana Poskova of The New York Times

Robin of Illinois sent in this link about a female Red-tail currently under the care of Dr. Len Soucy over at The Raptor Trust. She's banded and is believed to be the oldest live wild Red-tailed Hawk on record in North America, 27 years, 9 months She was found in rural New York, north of New York City.

If you think about it, she's old enough to be Pale Male's great great grandmother. It's a total stretch but, who knows, she could even be his great great grandmother. (Pale Male appeared in NYC in 1991 as a Brown-tail.) She rather makes Pale Male seem like a spring chicken in comparison.

Do check out the story in The New York Times --
By PETER APPLEBOME
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/nyregion/columns/peterapplebome/index.html?inline=nyt-per


Having not had a chance to watch the total lunar eclipse due to the snow storm, Wood Henge Frog sits with his feast fires and waits for the dawn.

M E R R Y S O L S T I C E

Donegal Browne
P.S. If you haven't seen the other blog that was posted today about the Crows vs the Red-tail keep scrolling down.

2 comments:

Karen Anne said...

Cloudy here, so no glimpse of the eclipse either, sigh.

Wood Henge Frog is delightful, is he yours?

Donegal Browne said...

I'm his caretaker for the year. He ordinarily sits in a little wood henge in the camp of the principality of Ostgardr (mundanely that translates to those participants who are from NYC) at the Pennsic War but this year the Viceroy and Vicerine had packed all their gear at the end of the War and suddenly realized that Henge Frog was still sitting in his wood henge instead of being packed in their vehicle. I was still packing so he came home with me.

I find him pretty whimsical myself. I'm particularly partial to his little antler head gear.