#daemonfinder

1) about 145

Nice. Okay, going with “raptor” as “members of Falconiformes, Accipitriformes, and Strigiformes, here’s my list.1. Aplomado Falcon. Most juvenile birds of prey look vaguely unfinished, but I prefer the plumage of the juvie aplomado over its adult coloration. There’s just something nice about the rich umber colors working together. They’re just supremely pretty.

2. Augur Buzzard. Now this is buzzard in the “everywhere but America” sense, which is to refer to a hawk with broad wings, as opposed to the short-winged forest hawks like sparrowhawks. It’s essentially an African version of the red-tailed hawk that comes in slatey colors along with that red tail, but the name is really cool to me, since “augur” means “one who determines the will of the gods based on the flights of birds.” It’s also where we get “auspices” and therefore “auspicious” from.

3. Northern Crested Caracara. I love these weird leggy plains-walking scavenging falcon-cousins and I even got to meet a few wild ones when I lived in Texas. One I met in bird rehab would flirt with me by making this rattly sound and tossing his head back. He was a smooth talker. I’ve also seen them happily make a meal out of discarded Whataburger fries, and that’s just very delightful to me. 

4. Harris’s Hawk. There’s something incredibly cool about a raptor that shrugs at the idea that they’re supposed to be asocial and tolerant of company only for the purposes of breeding and migrating. Pack-hunting hawks. For real. They hunt in groups, flushing prey in the scrubby desert, and if the jackrabbit or whatever else it is manages to outmaneuver one, there’s another waiting to dive in. This social nature makes them super popular as falconry birds, because they have the groundwork there to form a cooperative bond with their handler, whereas most birds of prey only tolerate humans at best. Also they do something silly/cool called backstanding, where one bird will stand on the back of another, sometimes making a hawk tower. It’s presumed to give them higher vantage points to look for prey, but it’s also just really cool. And finally, they’re pretty. I seem to like rich browns and bays in my birds of prey.

5. Greater Sooty Owl. I almost went with the most familiar tyto owl, the barn owl, but it’s also a bird that already gets a lot of press. Sooties, much less so. They’re really lovely Australian owls, and the white speckling on their feathers looks like tiny hearts to me. Overall they have the appearance of an owl made out of the night sky, and that’s a killer aesthetic.