THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 1997 TAG: 9701140008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: 61 lines
Among wild creatures, the Red-tailed Hawk is a standout. Despite man's clearings and constructions, this high-flying predator is still a high-profile part of our world.
The Red-tail is one of several large ``buteo'' hawks that, lucklessly, have often been vilified by farmers and others as ``chicken hawks.'' Nowadays, under protective laws and with better human understanding of the balances in nature, this handsome bird of prey gets better marks.
And sightings, however frequent, are pretty exciting to a lot of people, including me.
Perched in magnificent silhouette on a tall, bare limb, or doing dipsy-doodles high in the air with one of its acrobatic kin, or getting what-for from a flock of crows, or (perhaps out of sight) making its presence known with its distinctive, high-pitched scream - in all of these roles of the moment, the Red-tail is quite the outdoor performer.
Several weeks ago, I was out in our yard (miles within Norfolk's city limits), when the hysterical clamor of an approaching band of crows suggested that the harassment of a big hawk was in progress.
Sure enough, there was a large raptor in the middle of the aerial commotion, circling time after time only a few hundred feet above our house. So I got a very good look. Only trouble was that despite its familiar outline, size and behavior, the crows' target didn't have the coloring of any Red-tail I had ever seen. Its underside had no dark areas at all; the whole expanse was creamy, with the very lightest of speckles. If there was any of the characteristic rusty red in the tail feathers, it must have been on the top side, where the red is always the most visible anyhow.
It took a bird book to clear up the mystery. Instead of some exotic hawk that I half expected to have strayed into our territory, this bird was a Red-tail all right - a ``light phase'' of the species; the guidebook had a picture, from below, of a spread-winged creature that was almost a twin of the one I had been watching.
The Red-tail - dark or light - draws attention to itself in all kinds of ways, but few are more impressive than one of its hunting habits that my wife and I have become aware of in recent years.
Any driver or car passenger who is reasonably alert these days can spot a half-dozen or more of them in even a short cross-country spin. They often show up like carefully spaced sentinels alongside stretches of pavement out in rural or suburban areas. They may choose tall trees, or utility poles, or even the tops of fenceposts only a few feet from the ground. But there they inevitably appear - darkly outlined against sky, foliage or fields, motionless except for the turning of head and eyes in search of roadside prey.
Not long ago, during a break on a car trip, we happened to comment on this phenomenon while talking to someone else with a similar interest in the ways of birds.
Oh, yes, he said, informing us that the Red-tail had even acquired a new identity in some places.
It is more and more widely known as the Freeway Hawk.
Not bad.
A little breezier than the old common name. Much easier to say and remember than buteo jamaicensis. And a whole heck of a lot better than chicken hawk. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk.