Birds

I've been watching for the hawk that I mentioned in the last post. I've been doing a terrible job of it. What caught my attention instead was a shriek from aloft as I was walking away from the parking lot.

About a week ago, I was talking to a friend about the Prince of Persia trailer. This led to a discussion about Assassin's Creed (AC)--Prince of Persia and AC both games are published by Ubisoft. I was upfront in saying that I had not played AC, but had only seen some of it. After the conversation, I felt bad about my limited knowledge, and searched youTube for a complete walkthrough. I'm now about two-thirds of the way through the game.

What does this have to do with hawk shrieks? It happens that an eagle shriek is a core sound effect in the game. And since I have been watching too much game footage recently, what caught my ear in the parking lot was the shriek. See, video games are educational!

In game, I believe the sound effect is that of a red-tailed hawk. But from what I could see of the bird, it did not appear to me to have a red tail. The cry was similar, and the bird was quite insistent on it, so I'm going to identify it as a red-shouldered hawk, for now. And now, you have my first experience with birding!

I had a professor a couple of years ago, a member of the Audubon Society, who had identified over 1000 bird species. I find that remarkable.