Yellowstone National Park Shares Rare Image of a Hawk in 'Goggles Mode' Moments Before Hunting
Hailing from the ancestry of dinosaurs, a red-tailed hawk is one of the mightiest assailants. From an eyesight that can spy a mouse from hundreds of feet up in the sky to an angled beak that acts as a biological box cutter to butcher the prey once it has been seized. Dubbed “Buteo jamaicensis” by scientists, the bird is an unforgiving predator that doesn’t even make a sound when dive-bombing to grab a kill. The Yellowstone National Park (@yellowstonenps) recently posted some pictures of a red-tailed hawk perched dispassionately on top of a dying tree, secretly lapping what is its “third eyelid” as if wearing goggles. Viewers have called the pictures “gorgeous” and “regal.”
Falling midway between north and south, Yellowstone is a popular migration corridor where these hawks like to stop by while migrating south for the winter, the park writes on Instagram. Some of them are permanent residents. Visitors and bird enthusiasts often flock to the park to station themselves along the ridgelines around sites like Hayden Valley, Dunraven Pass, Mount Washburn, and Swan Lake Flats, to behold these majestic raptors soar into flight. Oftentimes, the birds are spotted springing and swooshing downwards, with a snake or a rodent clinging to their beaks, two of their favorite meals.
And although its menu can include everything from bushy squirrels to cringy grasshoppers, the hawk’s favorite meal is snakes, partly because they are tasty and partly because they are packed with protein. From gopher snakes to garter snakes and even the venom-laced rattlesnakes become the victim of these hawks, who deploy a clever book of tactics to quietly pounce upon them. People from the northern foothills to the humid southern grasslands gear up with their binoculars and phone cameras to capture red-tailed hawks circling above roadside poles, telephone booths, or highways.
In Yellowstone, they are observed sailing and fanning above woods, fields, valleys, and plateaus, with rabbits, rodents, snakes, or mammals dangling from their mouths, begging to be set free. Many of them will quietly swoop down and splash into the water pools to pluck a fish or two for a protein-rich meal for themselves or their chicks. With their characteristic raspy “kree-ee-arrh” screams, they alert each other when prey is around, so the team can prep for the ambush.
The pictures shared by the park depict a proud red-tailed hawk perched on a weathered snag, blinking its third eyelid, something which the park says is a “translucent shield that protects its eyes from dust, debris, and injury while still allowing it to see.” The third eyelid gives the look as if the hawk has a built-in “goggles mode,” but it is just another biological quirk that keeps its vision sharp and focused as it hunts and combs the landscape for a potential victim.
According to the National Audubon Society, this third eyelid is known as a “nictitating membrane.” The bird can close this extra eyelid when perched to shield its eyes from the wind or for protection when gearing up for a kill. When mating or displaying courtship rituals, the male and the female hawks fly in circles together, locking their talons, and making a dramatic spiraling dive towards the ground to pounce upon the prey together and choke it to a tormenting death. In Yellowstone, these birds exhibit a good population density and reproductive success, particularly in areas like the Blacktail Deer Plateau, which hosts tantalizing flocks as they make a stopover during their flight to the south.
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