"Hey, Ma...Weese gonna have us some possum stew tonight!"

Nice capture!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.....Oppossum.......

Great picture..sure is a beauty..Claire

Wonderful Shot!

Great picture. Glad you turned around.

Good picture, feel sorry for that RT eating that ugly possum though. ;-)

Blake
WA

As nice a picture as it is it holds a bit of ironry in it as well. RTs are very opportunistic creatures by habbit and are related to your common buzzards and have been known to feed right along with them. But a healthy RT perfers to hunt and kill its food. A RT that has brought itsself to eating road kill is probably on the verge of starvation. Another factor supporting this is the fact that it is a Mature bird that has had plenty of time to realize that humans and cars are bad business, as far as they are concerned. By him not abandoning the "prize" it shows that he is more concerned with eating than his own protection. But I do have to commend you on a well taken picture it was almost as if he were posing for it.

Common buzzard you mena by vulutre (for those in Europe). If you want to get REALLY technical, the red-tailed hawk and other buteos are not "hawks" they are buzzards. A hawk refers to accipiters. That's getting seriously technical and the oldies (at leats in falconry) sometimes refer to the RT as a buzzard. :-)

Blake
WA

Rampager,

Blake's right...there's no such thing as a buzzard in the USA. There are Buzzards in Europe that are very similar to our Red-tail in the Buteo genus and are their closest relatives. I think you might be referring to the Vultures and their habit of eating roadkill...but they're not related to Hawks at all. Recent systematic studies have shown they are most closely related to storks in the family Ciconiidae.

Scott

I can see why so many end up getting hit by cars.

When I clicked on the link, I was unable to view the pic. I'd be interested in seeing it.

I just uploaded the picture back on to my site.

Chris.

Thanks for reposting pic. Great shot!

Nice shot. If its a matter of eating or not eating hungry birds will resort to roadkill. Hopefully this redtail doesn't wind up as roadkill.

Richard

Wow that's a fantastic photo!

He looks as if he is saying, "ya wanna make something of it?"

It is a real nice shot. The Red Tail evidently was hungry and wasn't going to pass up a free meal. Me personally, I would have to pass on possum.

Richard

Maybe technically there aren't buzzards in the U.S., but try telling that to some of the old-timers down here! You're considered a city slicker if you say "vulture", kinda like saying "violin" instead of fiddle!

Send that guy to my house for dinner---found one munching under the bird feeders last night! We startled one another when I closed a window. And to think I was blaming a coon on stealing the seed cakes I made for the woodpeckers!

Susanne

Turkey Vultures have always been called Turkey Buzzards in the South. (U.S.) My aunt in Virginia called me a "buzzard" once, when I was a teenager, and apologized for weeks. A refined lady calling someone a buzzard is about as bad as it gets, in the South. (No telling WHAT I had said or done.)
I certainly agree with rampager. That's the boldest Red Tail I've ever seen, or one of the hungriest. In my area (Maryland-Virginia), I've never seen a hawk stay on a dead animal in the road while a car passed--that's unheard of. Last summer in Virginia, driving down a country road, I passed a power line right-of-way, and off to my left, about 50 yards away on the ground under the power line, sat a Red Tailed Hawk, a buzzard (Turkey Vulture), and a crow. The Red Tail was on a dead rabbit, and the buzzard and crow were at a respectable distance of about 15 feet away, each, just sort of waiting for seconds and thirds, I guess. I believe I got pictures of it. I had never seen three different predators around a small-animal kill, previously. I dont' know whether the hawk killed the rabbit, but I'm assuming it did. Possibly it was wounded by a car, and dragged itself 50 yards away. It's a cinch the buzzard and or crow didn't kill it.
Twenty years ago, driving from Los Angeles to San Diego in the wee hours of the morning (at daylight) near San Diego, I rounded a curve on the interstate, and ALMOST hit a Golden Eagle flying off a road-kill jack rabbit. Just missed him by inches, but he was TRYING to get out of the way.