14 February 2017

Museums inspire me.

The first time I saw the ornate hawk-eagle specimen at Carnegie Museum I didn’t even know the bird existed.  Its beauty impressed me (ornate legs shown above) and that was before I learned what he can do with his head feathers!  (photo below from Wikimedia Commons)

I hoped to see this bird in the wild some day, but I never expected it would happen.

Ornate hawk-eagles (Spizaetus ornatus) live in the rainforest from southeastern Mexico to Colombia but are rarely seen.  Their numbers are declining because of deforestation, so it was quite a thrill when our Road Scholar birding group saw one at San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica on 4 February 2017.  We learned afterward that none had been seen in the area since a flyover two years before and prior to that 10 years.  We were very lucky.

This video from the Organization for Tropical Studies shows how beautiful they are.

Ornate hawk-eagle voices are high pitched, similar to those of bald eagles and ospreys.  The bird we saw made no sound.

(credits are in the captions)