During an attempt to study the phenomenon known as mobbing - where small birds team up to harass or attack a larger predatory bird - a team of researchers came across valuable information on the hunting tactics of falcons.
Haverford College biological physicist Suzanne Amador Kane wanted to study how small birds cooperate to evade attacks by larger birds of prey. But in order to do so, she first had to understand the mechanics of how birds of prey hunt.
By affixing small cameras to falcons and releasing them into the air, Kane's team was able to gain insight into the hunting practices of these birds of prey, finding that falcons use a special aerial strategy called "motion camouflage" to succeed while on the hunt.
To study falcon's hunting tactics, Kane recruited a network of falconers around the world who agreed to mount tiny cameras on their birds. These tiny cameras are not too dissimilar from the popular GoPro cameras used in adventure photography,
"They work like standard cameras in high-definition, and they have very good resolution, so we got sharp pictures," Kane said in a LiveScience interview. "The falconers we worked with made custom hoods so that the cameras were snug but didn't impede vision. We had some birds who didn't want to wear them, but overall most were unconcerned with the cameras and tolerated the equipment just fine."
Kane said that the falcon's-eye videos of the birds on the hunt were "very exciting."
"I can still say that, even though I have spent hours studying them frame by frame using image analysis software," she said in a news release from Haverford College. "This is truly nature red in tooth and claw. There is something really primal and moving about watching that elemental struggle between predator and prey."
The videos, taken by eight falcons at sites around the world, revealed previously unknown information about the birds of prey.
"During pursuit, the falcons appear to head off their prey using a strategy called motion camouflage that intercepts the prey in the least amount of time while also masking the falcon's approach," Haverford College said, adding that the videos document "how the falcon uses its complex visual field during pursuits, and suggests that some seemingly dangerous maneuvers prey use to escape can be interpreted as a way to prevent motion camouflage."
Kane and her colleagues' research is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.