Animal Facts: Pick another animal or return to overview:

Other campus and zoo animals

Red-Tailed Hawks

Around campus and downtown there are several (1-5??) red-tailed hawks that prey on pigeons and squirrels. Students have seen them catch pigeons in the middle of the afternoon at Kennedy Plaza and tear apart a squirrel's nest in front of the Sciences Library.

One of the best ways to find these hawks is to listen for the cries of crows or blue jays. These birds, especially the crows, will mob hawks. The interaction between these mobbers and hawks is, in itself, a great observation to make. It is also the basis of a neat brainstorm. Why are the crows and jays mobbing these hawks? What are the possible reasons and how might you test each one?

A pair of red-tails were roosting on a ledge of Metcalf (near corner of Thayer and Waterman) last year (1999).

Zoo Animals:

Some time during the semester -- after watching campus animals -- you should take a trip to the Roger Williams Park Zoo (Here is their web page: http://users.ids.net/~rwpz/). The zoo is located in Roger Williams Park which is also a good place to watch animals (squirrels, ducks and geese abound -- so do people, so go with someone and be careful).

The problem with zoos is tha there are too many things to watch and so you tend to spend only a few minutes with each animal. Don't! Pick an animal to watch and spend enough time with it to actually see it do something besides sleep or react to people or pace around its cage.

Here are some good possibilities:

Flamingos -- they are individually marked!! That means you can really look at interactions among known individuals.

The Elephants --

The three females each have ratrher different behaviors and since they too differ (Alice is the small one, Kate has a piece of her ear missing, and Ginny is the other one ...) you should be able to see each personality and the differences in the ways they interact with each other.

Ducks ---

This is your best bet and you do not even have to go into the zoo. Check the ponds around Roger Williams Park (or the Turner Resivoir in East Providence) or along the Bike Path. You will find many places to watch ducks, geese and swans. They will do a lot. Just try to avoid times and places where people are feeding them -- chaos!!

In the fall, males will often be seen in groups going through "social displays". Watch carefully for individual bits of behavior -- tail wags, bill dips, heads-up-tails-up (like the duck in the center of the photo), and so on. Lots of details to get here. Also follw a pair and describe their actions and interactions with other ducks.

Polar Bears -- the picture says it all...

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