Occupy red-tailed hawks

A friend mentioned hearing red-tailed hawks screaming the other day. Asked what that was about, he found this link to explain:

It’s all the work of a pair of Red-tailed Hawks and their offspring. At least one young bird, fully fledged and flying around, has been screaming for the better part of a week. Actually, most of the noise occurred last week. I haven’t heard much here over the last few days, but on Wednesday I watched a young Red-tail on Sandbank Road in Watertown sitting on a snag and screaming while an adult circled overhead.

Call it separation anxiety. The young hawks, now as big as their parents, haven’t quite gotten over the idea of having food brought to them. The parents are getting over the idea without too much trouble.

You see what’s happening? The young hawks are being treated as adults, having to fend for themselves like normal adults, and they don’t like it. So they sit around and scream at the productive adults. Perhaps they threaten that they will only get louder. At some point, however, they realize they’re getting nowhere and that they’ll have to spread their wings and fly.