Wet Kay makes strange head movements (edited)

Sitting in her nest, with two eggs under her in the early evening on 3/27/09, Kay the Tulsa red tailed hawk had endured several hours of cold, near-freezing rain when she started making strange, orbital head-bobbing motions. I've edited out about 1:30 of her doing nothing, thus the abrupt jumps in the image. Anybody know what this is? (From the live cam at http://www.kjrh.com/content/news/hawks/default.aspx )

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• hawk
• raptor
• urban wildlife
• nest cam
• KJRH
• red tail
• Tulsa
• incubation

[bobdmac]

Thanks, Joe. That's what someone else said, and it sounds reasonable, but this is the first time anyone has seen her do this, and we're now in the second season of watching her. Plus, she'd been stuck on the nest for a long time. Also, it's odd that no one has seen her do this before, don't you think? We've had a LOT of people watching.

[joeballone]

I usually see this in my falconry RT if she has a large meal, typically with bones. It doesn't happen often and I'm guessing the fact that she's laying down made it more difficult for her to move the food to her stomach.

[bobdmac]

Thanks. I'm glad to hear you've seen this first-hand, and it's interesting that it's infrequent. Appreciate your comment.

[joeballone]

Looks like she's "putting over" her crop, ie. moving the crop contents into her stomach.