Went to the Converse Cemetery yesterday, and there was an old friend, a red tail, leaving from the round-about cedar I was seeking for some shade. He didn't seem perturbed, and left for distance, with no vocal protest.

There is a very impressive word, anthropomorphism, to dissuade a researcher from becoming too familiar with himself or herself in terms of the observed.
Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Fearless Fly, Yogi Bear, and Sherman and Peabody, defined the term, animals functioning as humans in a human world.
Then Beavis and Butthead began an extended run on MTV, and anthropomorphism was compromised, was neutered, because the show characterised these "stars" as humans.

The birds and animals we admire, the birds we seek, the animals we love, Condors and Polar Bears and Baby Seals, the Siberian Tigers and Panda Bears and everybody else is in danger of extinction, except for refuges and zoos, and is that living? Reproducing for reintroduction into a disappeared habitat?

The Baby Seal cause is laudable, but, know, they kill the mother first, as she will inflict grievous harm on nest robbers. And the seal is left on the floe, and the pup is skinned, cured, and the babyhide makes children's booties and that shit people hang on rearview mirrors. I have seen this and know it is true: drainage ditches piled high, dammed, with seal carcasses, skinned, just skinned. It is the same abomination as when President U. S. Grant determined to discomfit the Lakota tribes of the Dakatoa by launching the first biological war, a siege without borders, as over-armed "heroes" piled up carcasses along railroads through Indian Territory, their territory until we want it.
In contremps, as the Newfoundlander continues to maim and butcher and waste every part but the baby fur, supplemental income, the Lakota live on some of their traditional lands, with no bison, live in the poorest counties in the US.
Next time you're in the area, Southeast Montana and Northwest and-central South Dakota, check out the Little Bighorn Monument. According to "Son of the Morning Star", Custer was making hay off a totally mediocre Civil War Cavalry Commander Career, and was being promoted as a possible Presidential candidate. He attempted to defeat an amassed Lakota Sioux encampment, and was outnumbered, underprepared, ignorant. He raced ahead of his supply trains, and fragmented the force that could have harmlessly extricated itself from this colossal mistake. These detachments were swiftly disposed, leading to "the glorious destruction" of the 7th Cavalry.
Retribution was murderous: on the morning of December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry, which included 4 Hotchkiss artillery pieces, opened up on the Village of Wounded Knee. 300 men, women, and children were killed. Other accounts suggest the men had crept away in the night, trusting the US not to slaughter women and children.
Mistake

The Custer Monument in Montana is a living celebration of one arrogant, incompetent nincompoop general.
The Wounded Knee site is a Church on a hill with a graveyard, and there is not a pop-machine to be found on the dirt streets of the village. We didn't care then, hell, we bragged, we never cared, we don't care now, and we will never care.

This is the end of Anthropomorphism. It has no meaning, no veracity.
Anthropomorphism died with this report: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article5877764.ece
discusses a chimpanzee who shapes and hoards stones to later throw at zoogoers.

It ain't talking English, like we feel people must do to live here, while not listening to this chimp's language is just going to make you that much fucking stupider.

I saw a hawk on a cross-bar, new hawk, not my familiar red tail. It had bold stripes on the underside of the tail, and I, myopically, seized on this as a "distinguishing feature". And I was hoping for a Red Shouldered Hawk, but the tail bars on the underside were not.
Not a Red Shouldered Hawk.
Best guess, a Cooper's Hawk, even if she shouldn't have been there.
And this evening in a dead tree by some low ground was a Sharp-Shinned Hawk.
Maybe not. Long range, weak glass, but if I wanted to trap and fly a sharp-shinned hawk, I would try to trap this one.
Several weeks ago there was a Turkey Vulture spread out like it was nailed to a tree at Red Bridge. It looked like that bird in The Third Reich whitepower movies. The term for this is "sunning", spreading as widely as possible.
It is most impressive.
This evening I saw that a large plastic trash bag had been tossed into the same tree , except it was a stretched Turkey Vulture, sunning, and went on.
These birds are too easily dismissed, "buzzards", but are very watchable.
One glided across the inside face of Mississinewa Dam as I slowed and followed, about a mile and a half, the huge bird using the heat of the reservoir and a light easterly breeze for occasional lift: in a mile and a half, over the open water, never in the least flapped, never used the wings to make lift or propulsion, only to glide, lift when there was any from the drafts.

Everything you know about Turkey Vultures is wrong. Without a large population of large falcons, cruising at 3000, 4000, 5000, feet or more, hunting, we have no other magnificent kiters, birds that soar for minutes and minutes and more, with an occasional bent of feather.
There seems to be a wealth of free meals for a carrion cleaner, and they are largely provided by people in overpowered automobiles reluctant to slow for any problems, someone else's problems.