We saw 30-40 falcons flying in clusters over vineyards. We’ve seen a hawk or 2 or 3 do this before when they see food, but never so much! Because??
Falcons don’t fly like that.
You have seen vultures. Probably red-headed vultures.
1. Are you sure they are hawks? Red-headed vultures look a lot like hawks, but their wings are erect in a V-shape. Red-headed vultures fly together in large family groups! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_vultures
2. If they are definitely not vultures, they may be migrating. Many hawks/eagles fly south during fall migration. In some places you can see thousands flying in a single day. They can use the same thermal to lift them.
These hawks migrate and their behavior is called a “boiler” or thermal rise. As the sun heats the ground, the air above expands and rises, creating an updraft called thermal. By gliding in warm air like an elevator to gain altitude, hawks and other migratory birds can save energy by gliding instead of flapping their wings. When the altitude drops too much, they look for another thermal to navigate.
Broad-winged hawks may do this hundreds of times each fall as they migrate between their breeding grounds in North America and their wintering grounds in South America, but non-migrating hawks and other large birds use also this strategy to gain altitude for flights over shorter distances. (between night roosts and feeding areas, for example).
There were about 30 hawks circling the house today. They had a white band on the middle forms of the tail. I don’t know what kind they were. Maybe someone could tell me what type they were.
Migrating falcons will. What they do is find a thermal (an updraft) by picking it up and gaining height so they can hover. I have seen literally thousands of them in these “kettles”, as hawk watchers call them. Here is a photo I took a few weeks ago in Corpus Christi, Texas, one of the main falcon migration sites in the United States.
http://www.flickr. com/photos/sngcanary/2874519892/
Answer 6
Hawks are migratory in one form or another. Thermals are looking for thermals to walk around while traveling..
They also have the gift of memory…they remember things like other people, young people, hunting grounds, available food sources, that sort of thing.
They also have communication skills, and they use it…they visit, chat, and woo each other while traveling and even in random get-togethers.
Amazing birds. beautiful too.
Answer 7
THAT’S A LOT OF CATS
Maybe they suffer from the delusion that they are actually vultures and train when something dies.