Our red-tailed hawk chicks are growing bigger every day, and trading fluff for feathers as well. Their bodies are almost completely feathered by now, which makes their heads look small and strange, as though the heads are developing more slowly than the rest of the body. Given that the head is where the brain is located, maybe it actually is growing at a different rate from the body.
For quite long stretches of time now, both parents are away from the nest. Usually the chicks are just lazing around, napping below the level of the nest rim so that we can’t see them. But occasionally they stand up and look around. Already they’ve got that “eyes like a hawk” thing going, and they’ll stare back at us through the spotting scope. And we can tell when the parents are approaching with food before we can see them, because the chicks make a holy hell of a racket. From what I’ve observed, they’ve been eating a lot of rodents lately. Good hawks! Eat all the gophers!
Sometimes the chicks get up and stretch. They need to build strength in their growing flight muscles, so they stretch up and flap their wings a bit. They’re pretty long-legged and gangly now. They look sort of like bald eagles, but that’s only because they don’t have feathers on their heads yet.
Watch this:
Having never kept close eyes on baby red-tailed hawks before, I can’t guess how long it’ll be until these chicks fledge. My experience watching peregrine falcons fledge at the marine lab tells me that, for those raptors at least, fledging doesn’t occur until the head is more completely feathered. If that also holds for red-taileds, then these guys have a bit of feather-growing to do. Besides, the more time they spend stretching and flapping, the better shape their muscles will be in for when they take that eventual first journey into the air.
I’ve been told what to expect when these guys get close to fledging, and what to do if one of them ends up on the ground. I’ll keep you posted!