Gawk'n Hawks

May 5, 2004 9:34 AM

Gosh, hawks! A live feed of 100% Naked Chicks at the MIT HawkCam. They preen, they sleep, and they watch you watching them. Now to settle in for a long afternoon waiting for Mom to show up.
posted by robocop is bleeding (17 comments total)

oh snap. The mother just landed. Most excitement I've had all day!
posted by trbrts at 9:47 AM on May 5, 2004

fantastic!
posted by soplerfo at 9:47 AM on May 5, 2004

Why is she favoring one and ignoring the other? Poor little guy. I'm starting to get involved here.
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:04 AM on May 5, 2004

[this is extremely good]
posted by LinusMines at 10:05 AM on May 5, 2004

I am very, very lucky to have this right out my window. And the chicks are hardly naked ;) They've gotten a dye job and gone from gray to brown.

Wait until you see the plethora of rats and squirrels that Mom and Dad fly in. Mom's bigger than Dad.
posted by bkdelong at 10:06 AM on May 5, 2004

I know! I was talking to my screen telling her to give the other little guy a bite. Then, I realized I sounded like a raving lunatic.
posted by rlb141 at 10:10 AM on May 5, 2004

Hawks seem to be proliferating dramatically lately, at least in Ohio. A hawk feeding in a tree is an awesome natural sight. They often hold their dead prey on a limb with their feet, tearing off strips and chunks of flesh with those incredible neck and jaw muscles and tilting back their head with each greedy gulp. When the prey is another bird, feeding is accompanied by a slow-motion rain of downy feathers drifting slowly to the ground...
posted by Shane at 10:22 AM on May 5, 2004

We have some hawks that live around the Harvard Business School campus. You know they're out on the prowl when you hear the crows/blackbirds cawing up a storm. They don't rest easy when a hawk grabs one of their own. I've seen four or five actually attack the hawk as it tried to chow down on its lunch.

The hawk tried to fly away with its meal, but the swooping crows jostled it and it dropped the corpse on top of a parked car. Mmmm, tasty.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:32 AM on May 5, 2004

Fantastic. I will be watching this for the rest of the day. (Well, from the corner of my eye on a second monitor.)

I saw a Cooper's Hawk twice in one week eating breakfast about a month ago. Walked upon him/her plucking its prey: once at the end of a dead end road and another in our little woods.

Last year in Paris, I saw this. [self link]
posted by Dick Paris at 10:48 AM on May 5, 2004

You know they're out on the prowl when you hear the crows/blackbirds cawing up a storm.

Amazing, isn't it? Occasionally in my back yard I hear several dozen birds screeching their heads off, just frantically screaming like little warning sirens, and I'll look out and see a hawk calmly sitting in the middle of the yard. The birds all congregate in the safe close-quarter thickets of the surrounding tree limbs. There's almost an air of mass cooperation when a hawk hits the scene.
posted by Shane at 11:02 AM on May 5, 2004

I want audio.
posted by Oddly at 11:11 AM on May 5, 2004

Yeah, audio please
posted by Grod at 11:32 AM on May 5, 2004

I see the parent hawks often outside my workplace -- they started a nest in a tree out front, then ended up moving to the other end of campus. I'm so happy to see they've had babies! I still haven't forgotten one of the adult hawks swooping low over my head one morning.
posted by sarcasticah at 11:32 AM on May 5, 2004

one of the parents is feeding them right now. they both seem to be getting a fair share.
posted by GeekAnimator at 12:10 PM on May 5, 2004

What is that they're eating? They've been tearing that thing apart for a good 30 minutes now, and... Oh, never mind, Mommy Hawk just finished it.
posted by Grod at 12:22 PM on May 5, 2004

Hawks is cool, but my choice to satisfy the bird-of-prey addiction is the Eagle Cam

Yes, it's run by Xcel Energy. No, I don't like Pepsi Blue
posted by jazon at 3:01 PM on May 5, 2004

Back when I was in college, the main entrance of the science building was off of a sort of patio, with a few large windows next to the door. I was walking through the hallway in the science building one day when I heard a tremendous WHAM! from near the entrance. I go towards the entrance to find out what happened, and sitting on the patio, large as life, is a rather dazed-looking red-tailed hawk. All that separated him and me (along with about a half-dozen bemused onlookers) was a pane of glass and about twelve inches. He sat there, casting wary glances at us and getting his feathers back in order, for a good fifteen minutes before flying off.

About a week later, he (or his mate, possibly) came back to the same spot and dismembered a squirrel he had caught while people walked in & out of the building entrance.
posted by Johnny Assay at 3:16 PM on May 5, 2004