first note, the sun was almost directly overhead and I was looking up at the bird (sun was behind me at a few degrees off top and the bird was at about 70 degrees which means he would be somewhat shadowed. I really tried to ID the bird. I looked closely at its head, flight feathers, tail, It looked like a Turkey Vulture except I didn't see any white and it looked like it had a head about the same color as the body... At the Chattanooga nature center, they have two red tails that are not releaseable and in a cage (way too small if you ask me) The biggest one is only a bit smaller than the Eagle in the next cage (much bigger cage) and it (red tail) had no white that I could see. it is an old bird and it has light feathers but no white. After seeing that captive red tail, I tend to agree that the big bird I saw was a red tail. one thing for sure, if its a red tail, its not going too far away and I should get the chance to see it again. Here is a link that might be useful: Photos from the edge, of Tennessee

ok, i have waited this long because i couldn't narrow it down. my first love at a raptor dates back to kindergarten- the bald eagle. actually it is pretty "ironic": i can remember asking my mom for a quarter to "help save the bald eagles" i don't know if it was the teacher, or if it was the school, but i remember i needed to take it to class. so, here i was 30 years later, fighting development of plum island as a preserve for their winter and nesting sight. i am proof that educating children and raising their awareness works! now, on the other extreme, i just love the kestrel. this is strange for me because i am a "bigger the better" kind of person- irish wolfhound definitely preferred over a small dg, give me a horse- make it a "heavy horse" there is just something about the spirit of the bird being bigger than its size. i really think they have taht warrior spirit despite that apparant fragility i have heard of when kept captive. although i have never had experience with them. owl are just too tough to decide between. again, the raptors seem to win me over despite size- oh, that screech owl's song! a am partial to barn owls simply because ot the endangered/threatened status. i have never seen one! the great horned does win over the barred, but that doesn't make the barred any less "endearing." i do like the turkey vulture, too. so that about sums it up (love red tails in flight calls, they are always saying something) i ahven't gone in to many species. mostly i am trying to stick to the ones of my area. but, the harpy eagle, now there is a magnificent bird! anyone see jeff corwin with the harpy on his arm? it kept pecking his head. i say pecking because with that kind of strenght it was more like a love tap!

Oh my goodness, 8 likes! (I thought I'd do it if there were 5 or more..) There's not a lot to it, but don't read it if you're squeamish. Newly married, my now ex and I were at Agra Fort on the Yamuna river, taking time out to view the Taj Mahal several miles downstream, where it appeared to hover on the distant riverbank like an impossibly lovely white waterbird. We'd already visited it the day before, staying from mid-morning to closing time to gaze in fascination at its ever-changing shades of white as the sun moved round, to admire the magnificent marble work from elaborately carved perforated screens to exquisitely detailed, naturalistic relief carvings of flowers, and to observe the interesting optical illusion in the design of the minarets we'd been told about, which I'd wanted to see for myself. So after viewing the Fort, we'd wandered down to the riverbank to take in yet another view of the Taj, with a tragic love story in mind. After the untimely death of his beloved wife, the grief-stricken Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan had commissioned the building, the artistic masterpiece of his reign, to house her tomb, and as an eternal monument to her beauty of body and spirit. But, before long he would be prevented from visiting her there, when his usurping son saw fit to ensure his hold on power by imprisoning his father for life at Agra Fort. For the rest of his life, the still grieving Shah Jahan could only gaze from afar, every day from his cell window, at his dear wife's wonderful tomb by the river. Entranced with the beauty and the romantic history, I gazed out across the sluggish river and was surprised to see a large vulture silhouetted against the setting sun, floating slowly downstream, perched aboard a shiny black log-shaped floating platform. As I watched, he appeared to be picking and pulling at something near his feet, eventually hoisting up a quantity of black rubber tubing. As he feasted, my eyes adjusted; the floating log became distinctly less log-like and... with a shock, revealed itself to be a blackened human corpse, whose intestines he'd been busily removing... I learnt later that they burn the dead at sacred sites further upriver, and sometimes apparently the corpses, or bits of them, can end up, half-burned, floating in the river. (I hope that is what happened, better than if some unfortunate lonely traveller had fallen in and drowned. Or the body of an anonymous beggar no-one cared about was disposed of into the river with the garbage, without a funeral rite...) It's a striking aspect of India; its capacity to veer suddenly from transcendental beauty one moment to abject horror, at least to Western eyes, the next. And its people's apparent ability to accept and embrace that whole spectrum of life's highs and lows with remarkable equanimity and cheerfulness. Unless they're cocooned away from it all in their international 5-star hotels, Western visitors to India seem to either love the place passionately or hate it and can't wait to get away. I confess to being one of the former.

Thanks everyone. I am being cautious with him and will continue to do so. I will not leave him by himself outside, in fact, I'll probably use a leash for a while. I'm also taking down the feeders to make the area less attractive to the hawks. Writers, I agree with you about a Red tailed hawk not being able to carry a 18 lb dog. My understanding is that they really can't carry more than their own weight. But they could do serious talon-injury to the dog in the process as you pointed out. We also have foxes and coyotes here, but our Great Pyr, and a 5 ft split rail fence lined with heavy duty wire seem to keep everything out. Even the deer won't go near the fenced in plants.