Birds of Prey

Okay, so this was a fun and extensive episode to film.  I spent more time on this one than any of the others.  Most of the time was spent with the falconer and his hawk.  Yes, you do falconry with hawks as well as falcons or any bird of prey for that matter.  I went on a lot of hunts with this falconer and I was only able to film two successful ones.  I guess that's the way it is with hunting.  One hunt wasn't successful until it started getting dark so most of that footage wasn't any good but I actually got the shot of the hawk catching the squirrel.  The first one caught the squirrel out of sight but I was able to run over and film everything after the kill.  So I just threw the two kill scenes together into one thing.

My favorite scene was the vulture scene.  I had been thinking about how I would do this and one day it was just served to me on a silver platter.  I was going down a country road and saw a freshly killed snapping turtle.  She was real big too.  I hate seeing turtles dead on the road but I hate seeing scavengers dead next to them even more.  I pulled off and tossed the turtle in the back of my truck and brought it to the cow pasture near my house.  I set it out and waited.  After about half an hour the black vultures started coming down.  The turkey vultures stayed in the air.  I think they're a lot more shy of humans and once the black vultures are on a carcass the turkey vultures kind of get bullied a lot.  They can be aggressive.  Once one hit the ground several others came down too and it was just a squabbling mess.  Anyway, here's the video and you can see how all that went down

Until next time, find a new way to appreciate nature!