Assorted North American
Birds of Prey

Intro text: why birds of prey, why North American focus (TL;DR: Animorphs).

Red-tailed hawks

Mention Pale Male in NYC in the 1990s

Then name-drop the Fenway hawks

Peregrine falcons

Yes, we know, they're fast, and we have to talk about that.

The UMass Amherst WEB DuBois Library falcons.

Frightful the falcon in My Side of the Mountain.

Bald eagles and how they think they can get away with anything because they're the national symbol

History as national bird

Including how that has helped it be a useful symbol for conservation in the USA, esp with the Endangered Species Act and banning of DDT.

Also they make little tweety-bird sounds that aren't majestic at all, so link to an audio or video clip of that, and also link to the captive bird that's trying to incubate a rock.

Eating people's cats in Alaska

Dive-bombing children in Forest Park in the 1960s or whenever

But also that time an eagle took down a CIA surveillance drone

Also that poor bird that got caught in someone's car grille in Hurricane Matthew. It was absolutely not a metaphor.

Vultures

Intelligent and social birds

Fill a vital ecological niche

Don't look down on scavengers...we probably descended from them too!

Crested caracaras

History of how they ended up in the United States

Symbiotic relationships with vultures