Meeting Abstract
We report here on video studies of Northern Goshawks pursuing live, wild prey in natural settings, capturing artificial moving lures and landing on perches. We analyzed both videos of pursuits recorded from videocameras on the ground and recorded by a miniature videocamera mounted on the goshawk’s head while it foraged and pursued prey. Animal-borne videos of chases were analyzed to determine apparent prey positions on the goshawk’s visual fields during pursuits as well as the motion of the prey relative to the optical flow of fixed background objects. Video recorded from the ground was analyzed to determine the predator and prey trajectories in space. These data then were interpreted using computer simulations of pursuit steering laws previously used to interpret pursuits by falcons, insects and mammals. We found goshawks use different strategies for approaching perches and stationary targets vs. chasing moving live prey or lures. Goshawks appear to use hybrid combinations of simple pursuit models to pursue prey in the scenarios studied here.
