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Film Featuring a Red-tailed Hawk (2006)

Paul Giamatti ‘The Hawk is Dying’ (click pic for reviews)

I just came across this film starring Paul Giamatti (‘Sideways’, ‘Cinderella Man’, ‘Private Parts’ …) released in 2006 called The Hawk is Dying.

Here's the plot outline from IMDb: “A Gainesville Florida auto upholsterer (Giamatti) attempts to subvert his mundane life by training a wild, red-tailed hawk.”

From the IMDb biography of Paul Giamatti — “During the shooting of the upcoming The Hawk Is Dying (2006), which is mainly about his character and a Red-Tailed Hawk, he became a raptor-enthusiast.”

An interview at the A.V. Club features some questions on the movie. Towards the end of page 2 and the beginning of 3 are comments from Paul on the film. Here's one quote from the A.V. Club interview:

PG: I like that movie a lot. If anyone tells me they've seen it, I'm curious as to what they thought about it. People seemed to have a hard time with it at Sundance, so I was curious as to why. It's not that strange of a movie. It didn't feel like it was.

The Wikipedia article on the movie mentions that “The Hawk Is Dying is based on the book by Harry Crews.“

Here are some reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.

Central Park: Pied-billed Grebe 3-Feb-2007

Pied-billed Grebe — adult plumage
CENTRAL PARK — RESERVOIR
Image by BEN CACACE
(Click image for a larger view)

This Pied-billed Grebe is possibly the same bird that appeared on the reservoir for the 2006/2007 ‘winter season’ the day I was out birding with Omar Morales on 30-Sep-2006. It arrived in juvenile plumage and has recently begun to acquire its adult plumage as noted by Jack Meyer in a recent post to eBirds NYC.

Here's a link to a photo by Cal Vornberger taken of the juvenile on the reservoir on 11-Dec-2006.

Scroll down a bit at the following link for 2 photos from 9-Dec-2006 taken by Bruce Yolton.

Central Park Reservoir: Brant 28-Jan-2007

Flock of Brant (Branta bernicla)
CENTRAL PARK — RESERVOIR
Images by BEN CACACE
(Click images for a larger view)

A flock of 22 Brant landed on the reservoir around 8:30a on Sunday 28-Jan-2007. The flock left by 8:50a.

Scaup Identification Question: 28-Jan-2007

Scaup species — female
Central Park — Reservoir
Images by BEN CACACE

This scaup was on the reservoir this morning (Sun, 28 Jan 2007) briefly from at least 9:30a after I completed a loop of the reservoir. I left the area around 9:45a. The bird was not seen again by other birders I mentioned the sighting to.

Are there enough details in the two photos to ID this as Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)? The images are cropped from the original without any additional compression other than the normal in-camera JPEG compression.

Thanks in advance and feel free to comment here or via email. See contact information in left sidebar.

Blog Carnival &mdash I and the Bird #41

The lastest issue of ‘I and the Bird’ — edition #41 — has just been released from ‘down under’ hosted by Snail from A Snail's Eye View.

This is a blog carnival for birds & birding. Below is a blogging definition from Wiktionary:

Blog Carnival: A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.

Adirondack Birding Using Google Map API

A new site has been added to the left sidebar under ‘Birding Sites’. After searching for maps similar to the one I developed yesterday I came across a very nice implementation of a birding related Google Map API.

The site is called Birding in the Adirondacks from visitadironacks.com. To view the map click ‘Search by Map’ at the birding site.

The map is draggable and zoomable. There's an additional feature to search for birds using drop down lists. The bird chosen will filter the markers to those featuring the bird in question.

Clicking on any of the map markers will display the name of the location with an option to link to additional site details with driving directions.

Enjoy!

Great Kills Park, Staten Island 20-Jan-2007

Feel free to leave a comment. It would be good to know if this does or doesn't work on your browser.

The map above makes use of the Google Map Javascript API.

The marker descriptions relate to a recent outing to Staten Island's Great Kills Park on Saturday, January 20th. The experience was completely unexpected. I didn't realize there was a place like this so accessible from Manhattan. Needless to say it was good day!

Here's a link to the original report submitted to eBirds NYC. Public transportation was used to get to the site. We took the Staten Island Ferry to the S78 bus from ramp ‘D’.

• The zoom feature (+/-) works and the map is draggable.
• The choice between street ‘map’, ‘satellite’ view & ‘hybrid’ of satellite with street overlay is active.
• Click on markers for descriptions. To clear the box click on the map or click on another marker.
• Double click on map to center location.

Resources:

• Google Maps API with add’l links incl. documentation
• Mike Williams — Google Maps API Tutorial
• GMapEZ — Google Maps the easy way

Blog Carnival on Birds & Birding

Click the banner to read the latest 'I and the Bird' — edition #40. This is a blog carnival for birds & birding. Below is a blogging definition from Wiktionary:

Blog Carnival: A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.

Red-Tailed Hawk vs. Bald Eagle (Flickr)

Red-Tailed Hawk vs. Bald Eagle - II
Originally uploaded by tsmzth.

This is an attempt to blog directly from Flickr using Flickr's built in 'Blog This' icon.

This and another 2 images show a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk interacting with a sub-adult Bald Eagle. I've never seen a photo like this with both raptors in the same frame.

One time I watched as an adult Red-tailed Hawk harassed a juvenile Bald Eagle as it passed through the RT's territory. The territory belonged to the south end of Central Park nesting Red-tailed Hawks.

Here are links to all 3 images [BE-RT1], [BE-RT2] & [BE-RT3].

Bald Eagles Over Central Park 2006

Below are 2 photos taken in 2006 of adult Bald Eagles flying over Central Park.

The 1st image is by Cal Vornberger taken on January 16th at the north end of the park near the Harlem Meer.

The 2nd photo is by Lincoln Karim and was taken today (Dec. 27th) from a spot southwest of the Great Lawn.

Can anyone ID the fish in the eagle's talons to species?


Bald Eagle (16 Jan 2006)
Central Park's Harlem Meer, New York City
Image by CAL VORNBERGER
(source image at Cal's site)


Bald Eagle (27 Dec 2006)
Central Park SW of Great Lawn, New York City
Image by LINCOLN KARIM
(source image at Lincoln's site)

Riverside Park: Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed Woodpecker
Riverside Park, New York City
Image by CAL VORNBERGER
(add'l RHWO images by Cal — at his site click image to advance)

This afternoon (24 Dec) I headed over to Riverside Park after spending some time in Central Park at the reservoir to view the Common Loon. The loon was located on the east side of the divide and was feeding for a good portion of the time I was observing it.

At Riverside Park there is an immature Red-headed Woodpecker which was discovered on December 15th by Lenore Swenson.

Today was my first attempt to see it. At 2:45pm I arrived at the spot, just west of 92nd St. and Riverside Drive, and was lucky enough to observe it before I was able to get my binoculars out.

The majority of the activity, including an evening roost hole, is located just west of the road where the M5 bus runs. The territory extends at least from 91st to 93rd St.

Here's a link to a Google Earth map showing the location.

In direct sunlight this bird shows a small amount of red behind the eye and some red along the base of the neck. It is actively defending a territory chasing off many Tufted Titmice and the occasional starling.

It spent most of the time managing its food cache either by adding to it or by moving items from one site to another. At one point it made use of some fibers to help seal in a spot which was just filled with an acorn.

Woodpecker vs. Starling

There was an incident between a starling and the woodpecker. Around 4:10pm a starling was perched near the freshly made roost hole created by the woodpecker. When the woodpecker flew a short distance away from the hole the starling beelined it to the hole and made itself at home.

Almost immediately the Red-headed Woodpecker flew to the edge of the hole, peered in a few times and then entered it and somehow came up with a starling. When the intruder was brought to the edge of the hole both birds started to fall and just before hitting the ground they separated. The starling flew back up to a perch near the hole.

The woodpecker returned and perched at the hole's edge. The woodpecker peered in it a few times and then entered but left a few moments later. The starling was still in the same location above the hole. At this point the woodpecker decided to fly at the starling a few times which eventually drove it off towards the north. The starling never returned to bother the woodpecker.

Roost Hole

I went to the site tonight to see if it was possible to find out where the woodpecker would roost for the night. I've followed the roosting activities of wintering Red-headed Woodpeckers in Central Park and found this a rewarding activity.

Tonight the event took longer than I thought it would. In the past, I recalled the Red-heads would go to roost well before sunset. In those days I would watch a Red-headed go to roost and then would have plenty of time to arrive at the Long-eared Owl roost to watch them fly out.

Tonight at 4:38pm, 5 minutes after sunset, the Red-headed Woodpecker entered the hole the starling attempted to take and after dipping its head in and out roughly 30 times it entered for the evening. The woodpecker was visible for a short time afterwards since it poked its head out a few times giving three by-standers great looks in the waning light. Also at the post fly-in were Mike and Marie Winn.

I have a feeling the starling had something to pass on to its roost mates.

Life Lists and Double Stars

Lately I've been busy with a few ‘keyboard projects’. One involves retooling all posts on my blog to fit in with the new format. The changes mainly deal with colors, table sizes and the addition of labels. So far 2006 is complete which includes 50 out of 89 posts. I'm currently working on the remaining 39 posts for 2005.

Another project involves creating a ‘life list’ of all birds species I've seen to date. I've never known what this number was and have tried to get the process rolling but didn't have the proper software to get the job done right. It's a fairly involved process when you want to know where, when and how many birds were seen.

Recently I tested out eBird, which is run by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, and feel it has enough features to warrant placing all of my birding observations there. A side benefit will be to have this information pooled with others to spot population trends.

I'm adding the most recent sightings first and have completed 15 daily checklists for a current total of 90 species.

The compilation of Couteau's double star list is still in on-going. 315 of his list of 744 stars have been added to the database. The data is cleaned up and brought up to date plus additional information is being added for each star. Processing each takes from 4 to 10 minutes apiece.

Birding, Bollywood & Subtitles = Funny!

Found this bit of comedy by following a link from John's ‘Bird Stuff’ blog talking about the history of birding blogs. His link to ‘SwampBlog’ contains the post ‘ Bollywood Goes Birding‘ which has a link for a short movie clip originally found at ‘George Bristow's Secret Freezer’.

Here's the clip ... Fire it up!

Central Park: Juv. Pied-billed Grebe 7-Dec

Pied-billed Grebe (Juvenile)
Central Park — Reservoir
Image by BEN CACACE
(Click image for a larger view)

This image taken on December 7th at 12:38pm EST at the south end of the reservoir. Focal length in 35mm film equivalent is 420mm, exposure time 1/100s, hand held with image stabilization at f/5.6.

Moving Blog to Blogger Beta

It's a good time to move to Blogger Beta since it will allow me to incorporate features that I find helpful in developing a working blog i.e. labels.

I have done extensive testing on a new blogger template that incorporates hacks developed by others. I've adapted it to have a fluid design which expands and contracts based on the users monitor resolution.

Here are some things to look for:

1. It is now a 3 column blog with a left and right sidebar.
2. The blog is 'fluid'. If you minimize the window you'll see the columns adjust. This works for monitor resolutions greater than 800px wide.
3. My favorite feature is LABELS. I've added a few. You can test them by clicking any of the 3 images under 'MULTI-STYLE LABELS' in the left sidebar. Each is a different style: an alphabetized list, a drop-down menu & a cloud-like list relating font-size to the number of entries.
4. Choose one of the labels and it'll bring you to another nice feature called 'peek-a-boo posts'. Each post will display only the title with a [+/-] for expanding and collapsing.
5. Both this post & the post 'Central Park: Looking South 9-Nov' have 'Read More...' at the bottom of the posts. Click 'Read More ...' to ... read more. This is more elegant than the old way.
6. At the bottom you can 'Collapse...' the post and it will bring you to the top of the entry again. A nice set of hacks I found on the web.

Credits:

• The 3-column Blogger Beta version of Minima which I converted to Minima Blue along with the hacks for ‘Multi-style Labels’ & ‘Peek-a-boo Posts’ goes to Ramani at Hackosphere. Here's Ramani's page for other Blogger Beta hacks.
• Han's at ‘Beautiful Beta’ worked with Ramani on ‘peek-a-boo’ posts.
• The idea for incorporating the fluid design is from Annie at ‘Blog U’.

Let me know what you think.

Missing NavBar: Blogger Beta 18-Nov

Above is what I sometimes see when I'm in preview mode.

Here is what I see on my computer screen when I bring up any of my blogs. The navigation bar is clearly missing. Only sometimes does it show up when I'm in preview mode.

Here is an print screen of the Page Elements showing how the NavBar is clearly shorter than the width of the 3 sections below it i.e. left sidebar, body posts & right sidebar. I'm not sure how to resolve this within the Blogger Beta layout template.

Central Park: Looking South 9-Nov

Southern View from TotL (detail)
Central Park South from the Great Lawn, New York City
Image by BEN CACACE

Click the picture above for a wide-angle view of Central Park South taken from our observing site.

The image is from the ‘Top of the Lawn’ where we do most of our Central Park observing. It was taken shortly before Charlie arrived and was inspired by the handheld panorama he took of the same scene.

Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (Southern Fish), is visible in the photo in the extreme upper left hand corner. The view is looking south southwest down the spine of Manhattan. The center of the photo is roughly 210 degrees in azimuth.

The left edge of the image is just east of 180 degrees and the right is close to 240 degrees making the width of the image nearly 60 degrees.

The photo was taken at 7:49pm EST on the 9th of November. The exposure was 6 seconds at f/2.8. The focal length in 35mm equivalent was 38mm. The camera used is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30.

At the time of the photo Fomalhaut was at azimuth 182.6 degrees and 19.6 degrees above the horizon. The brightest building in the center of the skyline is ‘30 Rockefeller Plaza’ home of ‘Saturday Night Live’ and is also known as the ‘G.E. Building’.

The star in the upper left corner, Fomalhaut (magnitude 1.2 — alpha Pisces Austrini), is in the Southern Fish constellation. When I look closely at the original 5.3 megapixel image I can see stars down to mag. 5.9 in the area around Fomalhaut including delta (m4.2), gamma (m4.5) & epsilon (4.2) Piscis Austrini plus the 5.9 mag star HIP 114366 (not shown).

The image above is a slightly compressed from the original showing the stars visible around Fomalhaut. The wide-angle view is one third the size of the original.

Blogger Beta: NavBar Missing

I can see the navigation bar at the top of the blog when I preview the template but it disappears when I view the blog directly. My browser is Firefox version 1.5.0.8. If anyone knows how to get the navbar back this would be much appreciated!

Ed said...
If by navigation bar you mean the thingy at the top that says Search Blog / Flag Blog / Next Blog etc, it's still there when viewed in IE6.

Ed, thanks for the feedback. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. I just loaded IE6 and it also doesn't display the navbar. Must be something with my PC. I can see it when I preview. Go figure.

Thanks again.

Central Park: 1st Night Observing 9-Nov

The astronomy season has just begun! At soon as ‘Daylight Saving Time’ ends my ability to go birding after work ends also.

The astronomy season seems to kick in as the ‘Cheshire Cat’ asterism is seen rising face up in Auriga. Since Central Park is where I do most of my observing this is where I wound up on Thursday night.

All of ‘team’ TotL eventually arrived at the ‘Top of the Lawn’. I arrived a bit early at 7:30p followed by Charlie, Peter and then Kin. We were fortunate enough to have clear skies for the entire session.

The air was a bit moist but not too saturated. Objects sitting out in the open didn't moisten up too badly. On a bad night an unpacked book will expand like a wet sponge.

A number of objects were observed over the course of the night. One of the first was an asteroid Charlie picked up with his tripod mounted 15x50 Canon IS binoculars. I didn't sketch the field but did display the object and the surrounding stars on the PDA program ‘Planetarium’.

An almost straight line was formed by two stars (HIP 15552 & HIP 15380) below the asteroid with a dimmer star (HIP 15181) just above Iris. Iris was bright at mag. 6.9 and I will definitely check it out next time I'm out with the Televue-76. The time of the observation was around 9pm.

I get a kick out of spotting and confirming minor planets. So far I've seen and confirmed 6 asteroids. If you have the time after finishing this post here's a write-up of these observations which doesn't include 7 Iris yet.

A couple from New Zealand were walking a dog and stopped by to talk and to take a look through the telescopes. They enjoyed the three standard showpieces of the night — the Double Cluster in Perseus, the Pleiades and the Moon.

During their visit Peter was observing a distant open cluster in the Tak-102. I didn't note down which one he had but the New Zealander's noted the hazy appearance of the grouping. It was a nice view in the 4" refractor.

I didn't catch the names of the Kiwi's but the woman had just run the N.Y.C. Marathon. This was the reason they came to the U.S. Because of this I was surprised to see they were walking a dog. Was it their dog? No! Dog sitting was part of the deal while renting the apartment. Luckily it was a good one, the dog that is. It didn't treat our equipment rudely.

Shortly after this we had a first time visit from ‘Tammy with the Lights in her Hair’. She stuck around for a bit. She arrived via bicycle and had passed team TotL many times in the past but never stopped to take a peek through the optics. She thoroughly enjoyed the views of the standard three and she and Peter got to witness the lone meteor of the night moving away from M45 heading north.

I noticed that the heat from the lights in Tammy's hair created a warm cloud of aroma that temporarily engulfed Peter. All I could remember after this encounter was that he kept talking about mountains and flowers. Go figure! ;-D

You can read Peter's full report on his blog.

During the flowers and mountains discussion I was deep into locating a multiple star in Auriga. I made nice use of a black towel that's used to protect the Televue-76. The towel blocked out the surrounding lights and also allowed me to keep my left eye open while viewing with the right one. This was a tremendous help.

The star in question was omega Aurigae a.k.a. 4 ω Aurigae or STF 616. Locating it was easy enough since it is close to the short side of ‘The Kids’ in Auriga. A short hop to a 21 arc minute wide ‘double’ (6 & 5 Aur) points the way to 4 Aur which is the apex of a 2° long isosceles triangle. Check out this chart for a quick star hop to omega Aurigae.

I spent some time on the surrounding field to test how deep I could see with the 22mm and the 12mm eyepieces. Both are Nagler Type IVs with a generous 82° apparent field of view — 3.7° & 2.0° true FOV respectively. The magnifications are 22x and 40x. After spending a few minutes viewing with these eyepieces I was able to see stars down to mag. 9.9 with the 22mm. With the 12mm stars to mag. 10.8 were visible.

While studying the star field I noticed a group of people gathering around. The double star field couldn't be that exciting for first timers so I interrupted the session to show the Moon to this group of four young girls. They truly enjoyed the view of the nearly 19 day old Moon at 40x.

After this I returned to omega Aurigae viewing it with the 6mm Radian. At 80x the dimmer companion was sitting practically on the lone diffraction ring created by the primary. The secondary appeared blue to me and Peter saw it the same way. I've read that some see the secondary as red but this wasn't apparent in the TV-76 at 80x. I'm sure we'll get to see this star in the Tak-102 in the future. The separation of the components is 4.7 arc seconds (WDS 2004) and the magnitudes are 5.0 and 8.2.

Overall it was a satisfying night out with a great group of amateur astronomers at the ‘Top of the Lawn’. Sharing conversation and views with the public is a highly recommended way to spend a Fall evening.

LINKS:

• Here's a photo of the group taken by Kin and posted on Peter's blog.
• Check out Charlie's report for the night here.

Central Park: Northern Pintail 17-Sep

Northern Pintail (Adult Non-breeding Male)
Central Park — Turtle Pond
Image by BEN CACACE
(Click image for detail)

This image taken on September 17th at 5:42pm EDT under low light conditions. Focal length in 35mm film equivalent was 420mm, exposure time was 1/80s, hand held with image stabilization at f/2.8.

Central Park: Reservoir 30-Aug-2006

An Eastern Clearing (detail)
Central Park — Reservoir
Images by BEN CACACE
(Click image for a wide-angle view)

The skies starting clearing while birding the reservoir tonight. No new migrants seen. Gadwall and Laughing Gull continue.

Photo taken around 6:45pm EDT from the running track on the reservoir's west edge — shutter speed 1/100s, f/4.5 with a focal length in 35mm equivalent of 38mm. Sunset was at 7:31pm EDT.

Juvenile Barn Swallows 18-Aug-2006

Fledgling Barn Swallows (detail)
Central Park — Reservoir
Images by BEN CACACE
(Click image for a wide-angle view)

Above are Barn Swallow fledglings from a nesting at the north end of Central Park's reservoir. This nest produced two broods this summer as did the nest at the reservoir's south end. Two swallows appear in the detail and four are in the wide angle view.

The image was taken on August 18th at 4:15pm EDT. Focal length in 35mm film equivalent is 420mm, exposure time is 1/160s, hand held with image stabilization at f/2.8.

Central Park: Prelude to a Storm 10-Aug

Reservoir Before a Storm (detail)
Central Park — Reservoir
Images by BEN CACACE
(Click image for a wide-angle view)

Tonight a storm roared through New York City shortly after I finished a tour of the reservoir. Seventeen species and nothing new seen.

The lightening was close by and it felt a bit dangerous being out there in the middle of it all.

For times like these I carry a dry bag to protect the camera. It's big enough to hold everything that can be damaged in a downpour inside my backpack.

Central Park: Sub-adult Red-tailed Hawk

Sub-adult Red-tailed Hawk
Central Park, NYC near Winterdale Arch
Image by BEN CACACE
(click image above / additional photos below)

A young Red-tailed Hawk showed up in Central Park this summer. On the 4th of July this hawk was photographed by Lincoln Karim. Lincoln has posted 10 photos of this one year old hawk which has just started to grow in its adult red tail feathers.

A Red-tailed's juvenile feathers drop out as the adult ones grow in after its first year. Lincoln's photos demonstrate this is a first year hawk and is considered a sub-adult. According to the books, adult plumage is acquired in a hawk's second year. A sub-adult may retain some juvenile wing and tail feathers before its second year molt.

The tail feathers (retrices) of a Red-tailed Hawk are numbered 1 through 6 starting from the center making up a total of 12 feathers. Each feather is paired symmetrically and preceded with the letter ‘r’. The r1 tail feathers are the centermost ones. When the tail is folded these feathers are visible when viewing a hawk from behind. The r6 tail feathers are the outermost ones and are visible on the folded tail when viewing a hawk from the front.

The tail feathers on this hawk, from the 4th of July photos, appears to have only adult r1s & r2s.

A few weeks after Lincoln's photos I spotted this hawk on the 18th, 19th & 23rd of July. At the time of these observations the r1, r2 & r6 tail feathers were red. The r6s were much shorter than the r1s & r2s.

I spotted this hawk again on August 4th which is when I took these photos near Winterdale Arch east of ‘Locust Grove’. In these images both the r3 & r4 feathers have grown in since the 23rd of July. The only juvenile tail feathers appear to be the r5s. Even with binoculars I wasn't able to pick up other juvenile feathers.

Will these r5 feathers remain until this hawk molts again next summer?

Click images for an uncompressed view of the tail