Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Lonesome Bird

I was walking alone this morning on Sunset Drive when I spotted this lonesome bird perched on a large aerial tree root at this canal. Without a good reference, I can't tell its gender but pretty sure it's a falcon, a species of raptor in the genus Falco with about 37 species, widely distributed throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. These birds are also sexually dimorphic.

In Miami, you can sometime see flock of birds of prey flying high looking for food. If this is one of those birds, it is a kestrel, which hovers while hunting. One species, the Peregrine falcon has been recorded diving at speeds of 200 miles per hour (320 km/h), making it the fastest-moving creatures on Earth. Being birds of prey, falcons have exceptional powers of vision; the visual acuity of one such species has been measured at 2.6 times that of a normal human. This thought brings me back to the reason why I am walking this road... I am visiting my ophthalmologist to log a complaint of why I can't see as well as a falcon.
Falcon

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