{"id":25423,"date":"2010-05-07T17:53:54","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T17:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2010\/05\/07\/hawk-pwns-moth-crowd-cheers\/"},"modified":"2010-05-07T17:53:54","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T17:53:54","slug":"hawk-pwns-moth-crowd-cheers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/07\/hawk-pwns-moth-crowd-cheers\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird Pwns Moth, Crowd Cheers!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have now been out for two drives in a row during which I did NOT see a bald eagle. Until now, almost every drive I’ve been on this year had yielded at least one. But, there is always something: last night a big red tail and the other day the usual egrets and an urban vulture.<\/p>\n

But I would have had very different, and interesting luck had I gone to the Twins game last night.
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\nA miniature falcon, which I assume was a kestrel, found a hunting perch in the stadium, and from that location grabbed and consumed a number of moths, as the fans watched and cheered. There are two especially interesting things about this event, as far as I can tell. First, hawks are more interesting than oriels. The Minnesota twins were playing Baltimore, and most people spent more time watching the hawk, and cheering him when he caught a moth (if you listen to the crowd in the video below, you can hear this at about 35 seconds). It turns out that instead of a multi-zillion dollar out door stadium (just built) we could have entertained the masses with a bit of park land and a couple of bird feeders. Which I already knew, but apparently some other people didn’t.<\/p>\n

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The second thing was that this was happening at night. A kestrel invading the bat niche. What I hear is that this bird is hunting at this location regularly. I wonder what will happen if some bats show up some evening?<\/p>\n

I suppose there will be some poetic justice, given that we’re talking about baseball. You know, baseball, played with bats? Get it? (I dunno, maybe I’m off base, but I think that’s funny. Hey, blogging is no walk in the park, you know! I can’t hit a home run every time!)<\/p>\n

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments area below, and I’ll try to field them. If they’re not totally out of left field, that is.<\/p>\n

(I use the term “hawk” in the vernacular sense as it is used locally, which is probably a bad thing. A kestrel is a falcon, which is a sister group of the hawks. But at some level, they are all dinosaurs, of course. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have now been out for two drives in a row during which I did NOT see a bald eagle. Until now, almost every drive I’ve been on this year had yielded at least one. But, there is always something: last night a big red tail and the other day the usual egrets and an … Continue reading Bird Pwns Moth, Crowd Cheers!!!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[27],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6C3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}