Welcome to Hawk Talk!

 

 

 

 

During the summer of 2018, a group of volunteer cam watchers spent weeks observing the Red-tailed Hawk cam, brainstorming questions about what they were seeing, discussing with each other and scientists, and ultimately voting on a question to investigate:

Do hawks use different kinds of calls in different situations at the nest?

Even though Red-tailed Hawks are one of the most widespread North American birds, scientists still have so much to discover about their behavior and vocalizations. Previous researchers that have documented Red-tailed vocalizations have been mostly limited to what they can hear on the ground or when briefly checking a nest. The 24/7 Red-tailed Hawks cam gives us the chance to document vocalizations right at the nest for the entire season without disturbing the birds!

Previous researchers that have documented Red-tailed vocalizations have been mostly limited to what they can hear on the ground or when briefly checking a nest. The 24/7 Red-tailed Hawk cam gives us the chance to document vocalizations right at the nest for the entire season without disturbing the birds!

From January to August 2019, we collaborated with the Zooniverse community to record vocalizations and behaviors in 10-second clips from the first week of the 2018 Red-tailed Hawk season. Zooniverse is a free and easy-to-use platform that hosts hundreds of other citizen-science projects. 

Then we explored the Zooniverse data using interactive visualizations. The community came together with scientists in forums and a live question and answer session to see what the data could tell us with respect to our research question.

We wrapped up the investigation in March 2020 by summarizing the findings and the investigation itself in a final summary.