View Animals in the Wild through the Zoo's New Global Camera-Traps

The Smithsonian National Zoo has unveiled a new website that will display more than 200,000 "camera trap" photos taken from all over the world. Camera traps are motion-activated, and the photos you see are exactly as seen by the scientists when retrieved from the camera in its location out in the wild.  Sometimes you may even see poachers.

The camera trap website displays both still photos and video clips of more than 200 species of mammals and birds, and provides links through social media such as Flickr, Twitter and Facebook to allow the public to share and comment on the photos. The site also provides reference links from each photo to corresponding species pages at the Encyclopedia of Life, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History's own North American Mammals page.

The site is part of the Smithsonian's Web 2.0 initiative to make Smithsonian science and resources more accessible to the public.

Hawks (Not Doves) Flying Around Nation's Capital

Photo by Mr. T in DC

New York City has its famous red-tailed hawks, Pale Male and Lola. Now it looks as if DC has more than enough to compete, given the number of sightings recently reported on the Cleveland Park Listserv. However, one hawk-spotter has suggested that they're not all red-tails. Some may be red-shouldered hawks. Comments by hawk-specializing ornithologists would be particularly welcome, as are links to photos. Meanwhile, here's a sampling of what DC residents have spotted:

This afternoon around 3:45 I spotted what I think was a red-tailed hawk on the corner of 36th and Newark. He had a squirrel in his talons and sat on a branch for a while before taking off. Has anyone else seen a hawk in the neighborhood?

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Yes! We've seen it. It's very large. I actually think I saw an example of group behavior in squirrels that I've never seen. The hawk was ruffling a squirrel nest in a tree on our hillside, (is this the baby time?) when a whole group of squirrels began squeaking, running up and down branches, and as far as I could see, trying to distract the hawk. I banged on a metal pan, and the hawk slowly and disdainfully flew to a very high tree across the street, where it stayed for more than an hour as still as a statue, before disappearing. During that time, a group of about 8-10 squirrels ran crazily up and down several trees, across the top of our fence, everywhere but the tree where the nest is, almost without interruption. It seems the hawk got its squirrel, though!

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