title: Red-tailed hawk

text: As easily one of the most abundant of all American raptorial birds, red-tailed hawks have been recorded as interacting with every other diurnal bird of prey. Due to the extreme dietary plasticity of red-tails, the food habits of other birds of prey regularly overlap considerably with red-tails. Furthermore, due to its ability to nest in varied habitats, home ranges also frequently abut those of other raptor species. The most obvious similar species in their range are other "Buteo" hawks, especially larger species with a similar ecological niche. Two of the larger, more widespread other "Buteos" are the Swainson's hawk and the ferruginous hawks and, as with many other birds of prey, red-tailed hawks occur in almost the entirety of these birds' breeding ranges. These species have broadly similar breeding season diets, especially the ferruginous and red-tailed hawks. In some areas, such as Snake River NCA the diets of the two species consist of more than 90% of the same species and body mass of prey taken was similar. Therefore, all three large "Buteo" hawks defend their territories from each other with almost the same degree of dedication that they defend from others of their own species. In some cases, territorial clashes of Swainson's hawks and red-tailed hawks can last up to 12 hours, however, the birds involved are usually careful to avoid physical contact. Due to the similarities of the foods and their aggressive dispositions towards one another, these "Buteos" need some degree of partitioning in order to persist alongside one another and this usually is given by habitat preferences. The ferruginous hawk prefers open, practically treeless prairie while of these, the red-tailed hawks prefers the most wooded areas with large trees, while the Swainson's hawk prefer roughly intermediate areas. Where the habitat is more open, such as in Cassia County, Idaho, the Swainson's and ferruginous hawks have the advantage in numbers and red-tails are scarce. However, habitat alterations by humans, such as fire suppression and recovering pasture, usually favor the red-tailed hawk and are to the detriment of the other two species. These practices have caused range expansions of many other species of birds but declines in many others. Of these three "Buteo" species, the Swainson's hawk is most dissimilar, being a long-distance migrant which travels to South America each winter and, for much of the year, prefers to prey on insects (except for during breeding, when more nutritious food such as ground squirrels are mainly fed to the young). It also breeds notably later than the other two species. Surprisingly, although it's slightly smaller in body mass and has notably smaller (and presumably weaker) feet than ferruginous and red-tailed hawks, the Swainson's is actually usually (but not invariably) dominant in territorial conflicts over the other two. Part of this advantage is that the Swainson's hawk is apparently a superior flier both in long and short-distance flights, with its more pointed wing shape and lower wing loading allowing it more agile, sustained and speedier flight that the bulkier hawks cannot match. Therefore, in north-central Oregon, Swainson's hawks were shown to be more productive, in prairie located trees, and partially displaced prior-breeding red-tails several times, although overall breeding success rates were not perceptibly decreased in the latter hawk. In the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico, Swainson's hawks usually nested in lowlands and red-tails nested in highlands but interspecies conflicts nevertheless were apparently quite frequent. Usually, the habitat preferences of red-tailed hawks and ferruginous hawks are discrepant enough to keep serious territorial conflicts to a minimum. However, red-tailed hawks and ferruginous hawks occasionally engaged in kleptoparasitism towards one another, usually during winter. Red-tails may be somewhat dominant based on prior reports in food conflicts but the ferruginous hawk may also win these. Where they overlap, the hawk species may adjust their daily routine to minimize contact, which tends to be costly of time and energy and may cause the hawks to abandon their nests for long stretches of time, which in turn leaves their young vulnerable to predation. When habitats change rapidly, often due to human interference, and they nest more closely than natural partitioning would allow, in all three nesting success can decline significantly.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Beyond the Swainson's and ferruginous hawks, six other "Buteos" co-occur with red-tailed hawks in different parts of North America. Many of these are substantially smaller than red-tails and most serious territorial conflicts with them are naturally mitigated by nesting in deeper wooded areas. One other larger species, the rough-legged buzzard, mostly nests far north of the breeding range of red-tailed hawks. However, in Alaska they sometimes nest in the same areas. The rough-legged buzzards are both cliff and tree nesters and areas used by the two species are not necessarily mutually exclusive but each seems to avoid the other, in part by differing breeding schedules. Wintering rough-legged buzzards may regularly come into conflict over food with red-tailed hawks and seem to be subordinate to the red-tails, with several records of them being chased off both kills and carrion by the red-tailed hawks. During winter their hunting habits may keep them somewhat separate, the rough-legged being a much more aerial hunter, but rough-legged buzzards usually withdrew if a red-tailed hawk flew towards them. There is at least one case, however, of a rough-legged buzzard being the victor of a conflict over a kill with a red-tailed hawk. Red-tailed hawks are conspicuously more aggressive and tend to be dominant over slenderer, medium-sized "Buteos" such as red-shouldered hawks and zone-tailed hawks ("Buteo albonotatus"). In Massachusetts, red-shoulder hawks used mixed forests and hardwoods as nesting habitat while red-tails most often used in pitch pine and stunted oaks on Cape Cod. Nesting range overlap here most often occurred on white pine forests. As habitat has opened over time, red-tailed hawks frequently took over former red-shouldered hawk territories, even using their nests in two cases. In north-central Florida, it was found during winter that red-shouldered and red-tailed hawk habitat usage blurred and, because the local habitat favors red-shouldered hawks, they easily outnumbered the number of red-tailed hawks in the area. Therefore, again with sufficient habitat partitioning, the two species can live near one another without negatively effecting one another. In the American southwest and Texas, two relatively large buteonine hawks also live alongside red-tailed hawks, the Harris's hawk ("Parabuteo unicinctus") and the white-tailed hawk ("Geranoaetus albicaudatus"). Usually, habitat preferences kept conflicts to a minimum, with the red-tailed hawk favoring taller, more isolated saguaro cactus for nesting, whereas the other species outnumbered red-tails in areas that were denser and more shrubby. The Harris's hawk was determined to be a superior aerial hunter over red-tailed hawks, and could take down flying birds more routinely.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Hawks and kites from outside the buteonine lineage are usually substantially smaller or at least different enough in diet and habitat to largely avoid heavy conflict with red-tailed hawks. On occasion, northern harriers ("Circus hudsonius") which have much lower wing loading, will mob red-tailed hawks out of their home ranges but in winter the red-tails seem to be dominant over them in conflicts over food. Among "Accipiter" hawks, the most similar to the red-tailed hawk in diet and size is the northern goshawk. In some areas, the prey species of these can be very similar and North American populations of goshawks take many more squirrels and leporids than their Eurasian counterparts do. It was found that the feet and striking force of hunting goshawks was more powerful than that of the red-tailed hawk, despite the red-tails being up to 10% heavier in some parts of North America. Therefore, wild goshawks can dispatch larger prey both on average and at maximum prey size, with some victims of female goshawks such as adult hares and galliforms such as turkey and capercaillie weighing up to or exceeding roughly . In a comparative study in the Kaibab Plateau of Arizona, however, it was found that red-tailed hawks had several population advantages. Red-tails were more flexible in diet, although there was a very broad overlap in prey species selected, and nesting habitat than the goshawks were. As red-tailed hawks in conflict with other more closely related "Buteo" hawks rarely (if ever) result in mortality on either side, goshawks and red-tailed hawks do seem to readily kill one another. Adults of both species have been shown to be able to kill adults of the other.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: The great horned owl occupies a similar ecological niche nocturnally to the red-tailed hawk. There have been many studies that have contrasted the ecology of these two powerful raptors. The great horned owl averages heavier and larger footed, with northern populations averaging up to 26% heavier in the owl than the hawk. However, due in part to the red-tail’s more extensive access to sizable prey such as ground squirrels, several contrasting dietary studies found that the estimated mean prey size of the red-tailed hawk, at , was considerably higher than that of the great horned owl, at . Also, the diet of red-tailed hawk seems to be more flexible by prey type, as only just over 65% of their diet is made of mammals, whereas great horned owls were more restricted feeders on mammals, selecting them 87.6% of the time. However, the overall prey spectrum of great horned owls includes more species of mammals and birds (but far less reptiles) and the great horned owl can attack prey of a wider size range, including much larger prey items than any taken by red-tailed hawks. Mean prey weights in different areas for great horned owls can vary from , so is far more variable than that of red-tailed hawks (at ) and can be much larger (by about 45%) than the largest estimated size known for the red-tailed hawk's mean prey weight but conversely the owl can also subsist on prey communities averaging much smaller in body size than can support the hawk. Some prey killed by great horned owls was estimated to weigh up to . Great horned owls and red-tailed hawks compete not only for food but more seriously over nesting areas and home ranges. Great horned owls are incapable of constructing nests and readily expropriate existing red-tail nests. The habitat preferences of the two species are quite similar and the owl frequently uses old red-tail nests, but they do seem to prefer more enclosed nest locations where available over the generally open situation around red-tailed hawk nests. Sometimes in warmer areas, the owls may nest sufficiently early to have fledged young by the time red-tails start to lay. However, when there is a temporal overlap in reproductive cycles, the owl sometimes takes over an occupied red-tail nest, causing desertion. Red-tailed hawks have an advantage in staple prey flexibility as aforementioned, while great horned owl populations can be stressed when preferred prey is scarce, especially when they rely on leporids such as hares and jackrabbits. For example, in Alberta, when snowshoe hares were at their population peak, red-tailed hawks did not increase in population despite taking many, with only a slight increase in mean clutch size, whereas the owls fluctuated in much more dramatic ways in accordance with snowshoe hare numbers. The red-tails migratory behavior was considered as the likely cause of this lack of effect, whereas great horned owls remained through the winter and was subject to winter-stress and greater risk of starvation. As a nester, great horned owl has the advantage in terms of flexibility, being somewhat spread more evenly across different habitats whereas in undisturbed areas, red-tailed hawks seem to nest more so in clusters where habitat is favorable. Predatory relationships between red-tailed hawks and great horned owls are quite one-sided, with the great horned owl likely the overall major predator of red-tails. On the other hand, red-tailed hawks are rarely (if ever) a threat to the great horned owl. Occasionally a red-tailed hawk can strike down an owl during the day but only in a few singular cases has this killed an owl. Most predation by the owls on the hawks is directed at nestlings at the point where the red-tails' nestlings are old enough that the parents no longer roost around the nest at night. Up to at least 36% of red-tailed hawk nestlings in a population may be lost to great horned owls. Adult and immature red-tailed hawks are also occasionally preyed upon at night by great horned owls in any season. In one case, a great horned owl seemed to have ambushed, killed and fed upon a full-grown migrating red-tail even in broad daylight. Occasionally, both red-tails and great horned owls will engage each other during the day and, even though the red-tailed hawk has the advantage at this time of day, either may succeed in driving away the other. Despite their contentious relations, the two species may nest quite close to one another. For example, in Saskatchewan, the smallest distance between nests was only . In these close proximity areas all owl nests succeeded while only two red-tail nests were successful. In Waterloo, Wisconsin, the two species were largely segregated by nesting times, as returning red-tailed hawks in April–June were usually able to successfully avoid nesting in groves holding great horned owls, which can begin nesting activities as early as February. In Delaware County, Ohio and in central New York state, divergence of hunting and nesting times usually allowed both species to succeed in nesting. In all three areas, any time the red-tails tried to nest closer to great horned owls, their breeding success rates lowered considerably. It is presumable that sparser habitat and prey resources increased the closeness of nesting habits of the two species, to the detriment of the red-tails. Due to nesting proximity to great horned owls, mature red-tails may have losses ranging from 10 to 26%.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Red-tailed hawks may face competition from a very broad range of predatory animals, including birds outside of typically active predatory families, carnivoran mammals and some reptiles such as snakes. Mostly these diverse kinds of predators are segregated by their hunting methods, primary times of activity and habitat preferences. In California, both the red-tails and western diamondback rattlesnakes ("Crotalus atrox") live mainly on California ground squirrel, but the rattlesnake generally attacks the squirrels in and around their burrows, whereas the hawks must wait until they leave the burrows to capture them. Hawks have been observed following American badgers ("Taxidea taxus") to capture prey they flush and the two are considered potential competitors, especially in sparse sub-desert areas where the rodent foods they both favor are scarce. Competition over carcasses may occur with American crows, and several crows, usually about six or more, working together can displace a hawk. Another avian scavenger, the turkey vulture ("Cathartes aura"), is dominated by red-tails and may be followed by red-tails in order to supplant a carcass found by the vulture with their keen sense of smell. In some cases, red-tailed hawks may be considered lessened as food competitors by their lack of specialization. For instance, no serious competition probably occurs between them and Canada lynx ("Lynx canadensis") despite both living on snowshoe hares.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Distinguishing territorial exclusionary behavior and anti-predator behavior is difficult in raptorial birds. However, as opposed to other medium to largish hawks which chase off red-tails most likely as competition, in much smaller raptors such as kestrels and smaller "Accipiter" hawks, their aggressive reaction to red-tailed hawks is almost certainly an anti-predator behavior. Although less prolific than goshawks, some eagles and, especially, great horned owls, red-tailed hawks can and do prey upon smaller birds of prey. The following species of accipitrid have been known to fall prey to red-tailed hawks, potentially including nestlings, fledglings, immatures and/or adults: swallow-tailed kite ("Elanoides forficatus"), Mississippi kite ("Ictinia mississippiensis"), white-tailed kite ("Elanus leucurus"), northern harrier ("Circus hudsonius"), sharp-shinned hawk ("Accipiter striatus"), Cooper's hawk ("Accipiter cooperii"), goshawks, gray hawk ("Buteo plagiatus"), red-shouldered hawk and broad-winged hawk ("Buteo platypterus"). These species range from the sharp-shinned hawk, the smallest North American accipitrid, to the goshawk, which at is nearly red-tailed hawk sized. Additionally, there are records of red-tailed hawks hunting 9 species of owl, ranging in size from the northern saw-whet owl ("Aegolius acadius") to juveniles of the great gray owl ("Strix nebulosa") and seemingly adults of the barred owl ("Strix varia"). Red-tails will also hunt falcons including adult American kestrels ("Falco sparverius") and merlins ("Falco columbarius") and presumed nestlings of the peregrine falcon ("Falco peregrinus"). When hunting other raptorial birds, red-tailed hawks seem to ambush them from a perch, diving suddenly and unexpectedly upon spotting the quarry and tend to have the greatest success when the raptorial prey is distracted, such as those migrating on windy days, feeding on their own prey and tending to their nest.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: In turn, red-tailed hawks may engage in behavior that straddles territorial exclusion and anti-predator behavior to the two much larger raptors in North America which actively hunt, the eagles. Red-tails are most commonly seen flying towards and aggressively displacing both flying bald eagles ("Haliaeetus leucocephalus") and golden eagles ("Aquila chrysaetos"), but may also, to the contrary, unobtrusively duck down out of flight to an inconspicuous perch when an eagle is spotted. The behavioral variation is probably related to the activity of hawks, which may feel the need to protect their nests and food resources while actively breeding but are not usually willing to risk their lives in attacking an eagle while migrating or wintering. At times mobbing behavior of smaller raptors may cause both eagles to turn over and present their large talons to their attacker, which can be dangerous for the smaller hawk. Besides the great horned owl, the two eagle species are the only known animals known to regularly threaten red-tailed hawks of any age. In particular, the golden eagle is probably the greatest daytime threat to fledged immature and adult red-tails, as these have turned up in many dietary studies of the powerful eagle. Less efficient as a predator of red-tails, bald eagles nonetheless have been recording killing adults in some cases or, more often, depredating red-tailed hawk nests. On occasion, this may result in the bald eagle bringing the nestling red-tails to their own nest and, for some reason, not killing them. In some cases, the bald eagles inadvertently actually raise the nestling red-tails themselves and the baby red-tailed hawks may successfully fledge. In one case, a red-tailed hawk was observed to kill a bald eagle chick, whether this was predatory or competitive, it quickly abandoned the dead nestling after the eagle’s parents returned. On several tropical islands, which are often shared only with other hawks, owls and falcons of only medium or small size and typically lack larger raptors or carnivorans, the red-tailed hawk may be the largest native predator and will, in these cases, be considered the apex predator. Other than large birds of prey, extensive records of predation on red-tailed hawks is surprisingly poor, in spite of several populations recording nestlings and eggs disappearing through presumed acts of natural predation. The most likely major predator of eggs and nestlings that disappear is the raccoon which, during its nocturnal foraging, is a notorious enemy of nearly any kind of birds nest. It is also known that unidentified large snakes, probably consisting of the same species that the red-tails so readily predate during broad daylight, will prey upon nestling red-tails. In California, common ravens were recorded preying on the downy young of red-tailed hawks. Other corvids, including blue jays ("Cyanocitta cristata"), California scrub jays ("Aphelocoma californica") and crows, are known to feed on eggs and small nestlings either when nest attendance is atypically low by the hawks or when they can successful harass the parent hawks via mobbing so severely that they temporarily leave the nest. Blackflies ("Simulium canonicolum") have been recorded as killing several red-tail chicks through blood loss. There are also several cases of possible prey turning the tables on red-tailed hawks and either maiming or killing them. This is especially true of snakes, with some prey species of "Pituophis", "Pantherophis" and "Coluber" known to overpower and nearly kill, often the hawk survives only if by human intervention. Not infrequently prey such as coral snakes and rattlesnakes may succeed in killing red-tailed hawks with their venom, even if they themselves are also killed and partially consumed. Peregrine falcons are also known to kill red-tailed hawks that have come too close to their nests by stooping upon them.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Pairs either court for the first time or engage in courtship rituals to strengthen pre-existing pair bonds before going into the breeding. The breeding season usually begins in late February through March, but can commence as early as late December in Arizona and late January in Wisconsin or to the opposite extreme as late as mid-April as in Alberta. In this pre-nesting period, high-circling with much calling will occur. One or both members of a pair may be involved. The courtship display often involves dangling legs, at times the pair will touching each other's wings and male's feet may touch female's back, she may occasionally roll over and present talons. Food passes are rarely reported. High soaring occurs aseasonally. Circling above territory tends to be done noisily and conspicuously, helping insure against possible takeovers. Spring circling of a pair can be a prelude to copulation. A typical sky-dance involves the male hawk climbing high in flight with deep, exaggerated beats and then diving precipitously on half-closed wings at great speed, checking, and shooting back up, or often plunging less steeply and repeating process in a full rollercoaster across the sky. Sky-dances are done on periphery of the pair’s territory and it appears to designate the territory limits, occasionally one male’s sky-dance may also trigger a sky-dance by a neighboring male, who may even run a parallel course in the sky. Sky-dances no longer occur after late incubation. Boundary flight displays may be engaged in by all four birds of 2 adjacent pairs. Cartwheeling with interlocking talons is also seen occasionally in spring, almost always a territorial male expelling an intruding one, the latter often being a second or third year male that is newly mature. A perched display, with fluffed-out breast feathers may too occur at this time. Even males that are in spring migration have been recorded engaging in a separate display: circling at slow speed before partially closing wings, dropping legs with talons spread and tilting from side-to-side. A female hawk is usually around when migrating male does this but she does not engage in this display herself. The area of occupancy of breeding territories by pairs is variable based on regional habitat composition. The highest recorded density of pairs was in California where each pair occurred on , which was actually just ahead of Puerto Rico where pair occupancy averaged in peak habitat. The largest known average territory sizes were surprisingly in Ohio, where the average area of occupancy by pairs was recorded as . In Wisconsin mean ranges for males range from in males and from in females, respectively in summer and winter. Here and elsewhere, both members of the pair stay quite close together throughout winter if they are sedentary. On the other hand, migrant populations tend to separate while migrating and return to the same territory to find its prior mate, sometimes before they reach their home range. In Alaska, returning migrant pairs were able to displace lone red-tailed hawks that had stayed on residence, especially lone males but sometimes even lone females. In general, the red-tailed hawk will only take a new mate when its original mate dies. Although pairs often mate for life, replacement of mates can often be quite fast for this common bird species. In one case in Baja California, when a female was shot on 16 May, the male of that pair was seen to have selected a new mate the following day. In copulation, the female, when perched, tilts forward, allowing the male to land with his feet lodged on her horizontal back. The female twists and moves her tail feathers to one side, while the mounted male twists his cloacal opening around the female's cloaca. Copulation lasts 5 to 10 seconds and during pre-nesting courtship in late winter or early spring can occur numerous times each day.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: The pair constructs a stick nest most often in a large tree off the ground. They may too nest on virtually any man-made structures with some variety of ample ledges or surface space and good views of the surrounding environment (i.e. powerline poles, radio transmission towers, skyscraper buildings). Much variation is recorded in nest usage behavior, many red-tails build new nests every year despite prior nests sometimes being in good standing and unoccupied, some may reuse a nest in subsequent years or may leave a nest for a year and then come back to it the following year. A red-tailed hawk nest is typically located in a gradient zone between woods with tall, mature trees, if available, and openings whether this is composed of shrubland, grassland or agricultural areas. Nest sites vary greatly in topography and vegetative composition. While tree nests are largely preferred, occasionally they nest on cliff ledges may be utilized even where other nest sites are presumably available. Cliff nests may be located at or higher above the nearest flat ground. At times, unlike great horned owls, red-tailed hawks have been recorded nesting in surprisingly unbroken forests. In North Dakota, nest sites tend to be concentrated along wooded river drainages. Compared to Swainson's hawks and ferruginous hawks, red-tailed hawk nests are usually in taller trees and are closer to waterways. In Puerto Rico, nests are most often found in transitional zone between dry lowlands and mountainous cloud forests, with trees typically taller than their neighbors to allow views of more than half of their home ranges. More than 21 tree species were recorded used in Puerto Rico. Tree species is seemingly unimportant to red-tailed hawks. In some parts of Arizona, saguaro cactus were used exclusively as nesting sites. Alternately, old nests of other "Buteo" hawks, corvids, golden eagles and even leaf nests of tree squirrels have also been used by red-tailed hawks. Both members of the pair will build the nests but the female spends more time forming the bowl, with the greatest activity often in the morning and nest building completed in a week or less. The nest is generally in diameter, with a mean of roughly , and can be up to tall after several years use. The inner bowl averages about wide and deep. The nest is constructed of twigs, and lined with bark, pine needles, corn cobs, husks, stalks, aspen catkins, or other plant lining matter. Lining the nest may be for warning other red-tails of the active use of a nest. In moderate to northern climes, red-tailed hawks tend to face to the south or west, presumably to make them less vulnerable to strong northeasterly storm winds.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: In most of the interior contiguous United States the first egg is laid between mid-March and early April, ranging from 3 to 5 weeks after the nest is constructed, with the clutch completed 2 to 5 days after the initial egg is laid. The average date of the laying the first egg can be variable: peaking mid-January in Puerto Rico, averaging 9 March in Arizona, 26 March in the Front Range Urban Corridor and 1 May in Alberta. The mean initiation of clutches may bump weeks later if or more of snow is still on the ground in Wisconsin during March. A clutch of one to three eggs is laid in March or April, depending upon latitude, with four eggs being uncommon and five and perhaps even six increasingly rare. Clutch size depends almost exclusively on the availability of prey for the adults. At the species level, body size also determines clutch size. For example, while the total clutch weighs up to 18% of the females weight and the clutch size averages 2 to 3, a larger raptor like the golden eagle lays a smaller clutch, usually not more than two, that weighs less than 10% in total of the female’s body mass, whereas a smaller raptor like the kestrel lays a larger clutch averaging five that weighs 50% of the females weight. Average clutch size vary from 1.96 in Alaska when prey populations were low up to 2.96 in Washington. Eggs are laid approximately every other day. Average egg sizes in height and width (each with a sample size of 20) are in the following subspecies- "B. j. borealis": ; "B. j. calurus": ; "B. j. fuertesi": . The eggs of red-tailed hawks are mostly white, sometimes with a faint buffy wash; at times the eggs manifest a sparsely or heavily marked with blotches of buff, pale reddish-brown, dark brown, or purple. The markings often appear indistinctly and may combine to form a fine speckling. They are incubated primarily by the female, with the male substituting when she leaves to hunt or merely stretch her wings. Rarely do the males incubate more than four hours of daylight. The male brings most food to the female while she incubates.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: After 28 to 35 days of incubation (averaging about three days longer in the Caribbean as does fledgling as compared to North American red-tails), the eggs hatch over 2 to 4 days. Like most raptorial birds, the nestlings are altricial and nidicolous at hatching. Hatchlings average in body mass with no difference in sizes of the sexes until the young are about 29 days old for mass and 21 days or so for external linear standard measurements such as bill and talon size. The female broods them while the male provides most of the food to the female and the young, which are also known as eyasses (pronounced "EYE-ess-ez"). The female feeds the eyasses after tearing the food into small pieces. The young red-tails are active by the second day when they issue soft peeping calls, bounce, and wave continuously with their wings. By day 7, the bouncing and peeping begin to wane, and young start to peck at prey in their nest. Nestlings emit high whistling notes (usually in response to adults overhead) by day 10, sit up on tarsometatarsi by day 15, become aggressive toward intruders by day 16, strike out with talons and wings by day 21, begin to stretch wings and exercise regularly by day 30. After 42 to 46 days, the eyasses begin to leave the nest and tear apart prey for themselves. The amount of food brought to the nest daily varies considerably, based on brood size and prey availability. In Alberta, an average of is brought each day for 1 to 3 nestlings while in Washington, it was estimated a minimum of per day for 1 surviving nestling and in Wisconsin, an estimated was needed for 1 nestling and for 2. Brooding is strenuous for parent red-tails and both members of the pair usually lose some weight, especially the female. Some females may lose over between hatching and fledging. During brooding the female may become aggressive to intruders, including humans. In the east, red-tailed hawk females rarely defend nests from humans but historically in California and quite often still in Alaska, some female will dive repeatedly and "savagely", sometimes snapping off large branches in her temper, occasionally stunning herself or inadvertently knocking down her own youngster if it is attempting to fledge. Apparently, the less extensive prior exposure they have to humans may make mature females more aggressive towards humans near the nest. Although development is asynchronical in most nests, runting may sometimes be recorded and even siblicide may occur, with the parents feeding the weaker, younger chicks less so and both the siblings and parents occasionally aggressively pecking the "runts" of the nest. Ultimately, the runt in such cases does not usually survive and may be either found crushed in the nest, discarded out of the nest after starvation or consumed by the parents or the siblings. However, as a whole, such killings are fairly rare and only occur when food supplies are extremely low, often this being in sync with poor spring weather (such as overly rainy or cold conditions). If there is too much food, such as California ground squirrels in California, the parents will discard remains after a day or two since decomposition of their prey invites infection, other diseases and blood-sucking insects to the nest that may endanger the nestlings. However, after about four weeks, the female often stops discarding leftover prey and the increased presence of flies may form somewhat of a risk to disease in the young but may also merely get the young to leave the nest sooner. One nest in California had two females and one male attended to; the male performed his usual function but both females would brood and tend to the nest. Additionally, bald eagles have been recorded to occasionally adopt red-tail fledglings into their nests. As recorded in Shoal Harbor Migratory Bird Sanctuary located near Sydney, British Columbia, on 9 June 2017, a juvenile red-tailed hawk was taken by a pair of bald eagles back to their nest, whereupon the chick, originally taken as prey, was accepted into the family by both the parents and the eagles' three fledglings. After surviving six weeks amongst the eagles, the fledgling, nicknamed "Spunky" by birdwatchers, had successfully begun learning to hunt and fly, showing that the aggressive hawk was able to survive amongst a nest of much larger adoptive siblings.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Young typically leave the nest for the first time and attempt their first flights at about 42–46 days after hatching but usually they stay very near the nest for the first few days. During this period, the fledglings remain fairly sedentary, though they may chase parents and beg for food. Parents deliver food directly or, more commonly, drop it near the young. Short flights are typically undertaken for the first 3 weeks after fledgling and the young red-tails activity level often doubles. About 6 to 7 weeks after fledging, the young begin to capture their own prey, which often consists of insects and frogs that the young hawks can drop down to onto the ground with relative ease. At the point they are 15 weeks old, they may start attempts to hunt more difficult mammal and bird prey in sync with their newly developed skills for sustained flight, and most are efficient mammal predators fairly soon after their first attempts at such prey. Shortly thereafter, when the young are around 4 months of age, they become independent of their parents. In some extreme cases, juvenile red-tails may prolong their association with their parents to as long as they are half a year old, as was recorded in Wisconsin. After dispersing from the parental territory, juveniles from several nests may congregate and interact in a juvenile staging area. Although post-fledgling siblings in their parents care are fairly social, they are rarely seen together post distribution from their parents range. Usually, newly independent young hawks leave the breeding area and migrate, if necessary, earlier than adults do, however the opposite was true in the extreme north of Alaska, where adults were recorded to leave first. Immature hawks in migratory populations tend to distribute further in winter than adults from these populations do. Immatures attempting to settle for the winter often are harassed from territory to territory by older red-tails, settling only in small, marginal areas. In some cases, such as near urban regions, immatures may be driven to a small pockets of urban vegetation with less tree cover and limited food resources. When a distant adult appears, immatures may drop from a prominent perch to a more concealed one. In some cases, hungry immature red-tails have been recorded making attempts at hunting prey beyond their capacities, expending valuable energy, such as healthy adults of larger carnivorans such as coyotes ("Canis latrans"), foxes and badgers and healthy flying passerines. There are some cases of red-tailed hawks, presumably younger than two years of age, attempting to breed, often with an adult bird of the opposite sex. Such cases have been recorded in Alberta, Arizona and Wisconsin, with about half of these attempts being successful at producing young. However, while adult plumage and technically sexual maturity is attained at two years old, many red-tails do not first successfully breed until they are around 3 years of age.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Breeding success is variable due to many factors. Estimated nesting success usually falls between 58% and 93%. Nesting success rates are probably drive primarily by prey populations, regional habitat composition, competition levels with other red-tailed hawks, predation rates (often due to great horned owls or perhaps raccoons) and human disturbance levels. In Oregon specifically, nesting success varied primarily based on "dispersion and density of perches" secondarily to ground squirrel abundance and whether the nest of other pairs red-tails was directly visible from a nest. Repeated disturbances at the nest early in the nesting cycle may cause abandonment of eggs or nestlings in some cases, but seemingly pairs are less likely to abandon the young later in the season in cases of human disturbance. 30% of nesting deaths in a study from Wisconsin were from nestlings falling to their death or the nest collapsing. In Puerto Rico, habitat appeared to be the primary driver of breeding success, as in lowland pastures nesting success was 43% producing a mean number of fledglings of 1.5 whereas in cloud forest success was 34% producing a mean of 0.7 fledglings. A modelling study in Puerto Rico showed that, apart from adult survival, nestling survival had the second greatest influence on population growth. In Wyoming, 12 pairs on a 12 square mile tract produced an average of 1.4 young per pair. In comparison, the mean number of fledglings was 0.96 in Michigan, 1.36 in Montana and was 1.4 in the Appalachians. In Wisconsin, the number of young successfully to fledge ranged from 1.1 to 1.8 from year to year probably depending on staple prey numbers. The record lifespan in wild for a red-tailed hawk is 25 years and 5 months from banding studies. In comparison, lifespans of up to 29.5 years have been recorded in captivity. In the wild, other red-tailed hawks have lived for at least 25 years, for example, Pale Male was born in 1990, and in Spring 2014 is still raising eyasses. However, of 5195 banded wild red-tailed hawks in one bander’s recordings, only 31 were reported to have survived to 17 years of age and only 11 survived for 20 years. The average mortality rate at 1 year of age for red-tails is 54% and thereafter is around 20% from banding sources. The estimated average lifespan of red-tailed hawks who attain maturity, per Palmer (1988), was claimed as only 6 to 7 years. The main causes of mortality considered as electrocution on power lines, other collisions, shooting, consumption of poisoned baits set for other animals and collision with vehicles and other crafts. While most mortality of young red-tails is at least mainly due to natural causes, mortality of fledged or older red-tails is now mostly attributable to human killing, accidental or intentional, as well as flying into manmade materials. Hawks in urban areas are threatened by the use of rat traps and poisoned bait to kill rodents. This generally consists of warfarin cookies which induce internal bleeding in rats and mice, and a hawk that ingests rodents who have consumed rat poison can itself be affected. Red-tailed hawks are also vulnerable to fatal bacterial infections include peritonitis, myocarditis, granulamotous, sarcocystosis and mycobateriosis as well as some forms of viral infection, to which immature hawks especially, as they often have less access to coverage in poor weather conditions, are most vulnerable. Neither this nor other "Buteo" hawks were found to be highly susceptible to long-term DDT egg-shell thinning due to being part, generally, of relatively short, terrestrial-based food chains.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: The red-tailed hawk is a popular bird in falconry, particularly in the United States where the sport of falconry is tightly regulated; this type of hawk is widely available and is frequently assigned to apprentice falconers. Red-tailed hawks are highly tameable and trainable, with a more social disposition than all other falcons or hawks other than the Harris's hawk. They are also long lived and fairly disease resistant, allowing a falconer to maintain a red-tailed hawk as a hunting companion for potentially up to two decades. There are fewer than 5,000 falconers in the United States, so despite their popularity any effect on the red-tailed hawk population, estimated to be about one million in the United States, is negligible.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: Not being as swift as falcons or accipiters, red-tailed hawks are usually used to hunt small game such as rabbits and squirrels, as well as larger quarry such as Hares. However, some individuals may learn to ambush game birds on the ground before they are able to take off and accelerate to full speed, or as they have fly into cover after a chase. Some have even learned to use a falcon-like diving stoop to capture challenging game birds such as pheasants in open country.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: In the course of a typical hunt, a falconer using a red-tailed hawk most commonly releases the hawk and allows it to perch in a tree or other high vantage point. The falconer, who may be aided by a dog, then attempts to flush prey by stirring up ground cover. A well-trained red-tailed hawk will follow the falconer and dog, realizing that their activities produce opportunities to catch game. Once a raptor catches game, it does not bring it back to the falconer. Instead, the falconer must locate the bird and its captured prey, "make in" (carefully approach) and trade the bird off its kill in exchange for a piece of offered meat.


title: Red-tailed hawk

text: The feathers and other parts of the red-tailed hawk are considered sacred to many indigenous people and, like the feathers of the bald eagle and golden eagle, are sometimes used in religious ceremonies and found adorning the regalia of many Native Americans in the United States; these parts, most especially their distinctive tail feathers, are a popular item in the Native American community. As with the other two species, the feathers and parts of the red-tailed hawk are regulated by the eagle feather law, which governs the possession of feathers and parts of migratory birds.


title: Chain rule

text: In calculus, the chain rule is a formula that expresses the derivative of the composition of two differentiable functions and in terms of the derivatives of and . More precisely, if formula_1 is the function such that formula_2 for every , then the chain rule is, in Lagrange's notation,


title: Chain rule

text: The chain rule may also be expressed in Leibniz's notation. If a variable depends on the variable , which itself depends on the variable (that is, and are dependent variables), then depends on as well, via the intermediate variable . In this case, the chain rule is expressed as


title: Chain rule

text: Intuitively, the chain rule states that knowing the instantaneous rate of change of relative to and that of relative to allows one to calculate the instantaneous rate of change of relative to as the product of the two rates of change.


title: Chain rule

text: As put by George F. Simmons: "if a car travels twice as fast as a bicycle and the bicycle is four times as fast as a walking man, then the car travels 2 × 4 = 8 times as fast as the man."


title: Chain rule

text: The relationship between this example and the chain rule is as follows. Let , and be the (variable) positions of the car, the bicycle, and the walking man, respectively. The rate of change of relative positions of the car and the bicycle is formula_7 Similarly, formula_8 So, the rate of change of the relative positions of the car and the walking man is


title: Chain rule

text: The rate of change of positions is the ratio of the speeds, and the speed is the derivative of the position with respect to the time; that is,


title: Chain rule

text: The chain rule seems to have first been used by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He used it to calculate the derivative of formula_12 as the composite of the square root function and the function formula_13. He first mentioned it in a 1676 memoir (with a sign error in the calculation). The common notation of the chain rule is due to Leibniz. Guillaume de l'Hôpital used the chain rule implicitly in his "Analyse des infiniment petits". The chain rule does not appear in any of Leonhard Euler's analysis books, even though they were written over a hundred years after Leibniz's discovery.


title: Chain rule

text: The simplest form of the chain rule is for real-valued functions of one real variable. It states that if ' is a function that is differentiable at a point ' (i.e. the derivative exists) and ' is a function that is differentiable at , then the composite function formula_14 is differentiable at ', and the derivative is


title: Chain rule

text: Carrying the same reasoning further, given " functions formula_19 with the composite function formula_20, if each function formula_21 is differentiable at its immediate input, then the composite function is also differentiable by the repeated application of Chain Rule, where the derivative is (in Leibniz's notation):


title: Chain rule

text: The chain rule can be applied to composites of more than two functions. To take the derivative of a composite of more than two functions, notice that the composite of , , and ' (in that order) is the composite of with . The chain rule states that to compute the derivative of , it is sufficient to compute the derivative of ' and the derivative of . The derivative of " can be calculated directly, and the derivative of can be calculated by applying the chain rule again.


title: Chain rule

text: Another way of computing this derivative is to view the composite function as the composite of and "h". Applying the chain rule in this manner would yield:


title: Chain rule

text: Sometimes, it is necessary to differentiate an arbitrarily long composition of the form formula_31. In this case, define


title: Chain rule

text: The chain rule can be used to derive some well-known differentiation rules. For example, the quotient rule is a consequence of the chain rule and the product rule. To see this, write the function as the product . First apply the product rule:


title: Chain rule

text: To compute the derivative of , notice that it is the composite of with the reciprocal function, that is, the function that sends to . The derivative of the reciprocal function is formula_39. By applying the chain rule, the last expression becomes:


title: Chain rule

text: Suppose that has an inverse function. Call its inverse function so that we have . There is a formula for the derivative of in terms of the derivative of . To see this, note that and satisfy the formula


title: Chain rule

text: And because the functions formula_42 and are equal, their derivatives must be equal. The derivative of is the constant function with value 1, and the derivative of formula_42 is determined by the chain rule. Therefore, we have that:


title: Chain rule

text: To express as a function of an independent variable , we substitute formula_45 for wherever it appears. Then we can solve for .


title: Chain rule

text: This formula is true whenever is differentiable and its inverse is also differentiable. This formula can fail when one of these conditions is not true. For example, consider . Its inverse is , which is not differentiable at zero. If we attempt to use the above formula to compute the derivative of at zero, then we must evaluate . Since and , we must evaluate 1/0, which is undefined. Therefore, the formula fails in this case. This is not surprising because is not differentiable at zero.


title: Chain rule

text: Faà di Bruno's formula generalizes the chain rule to higher derivatives. Assuming that and , then the first few derivatives are:


title: Chain rule

text: One proof of the chain rule begins by defining the derivative of the composite function , where we take the limit of the difference quotient for as approaches :


title: Chain rule

text: Assume for the moment that formula_50 does not equal formula_51 for any near . Then the previous expression is equal to the product of two factors:


title: Chain rule

text: If formula_53 oscillates near , then it might happen that no matter how close one gets to , there is always an even closer such that . For example, this happens near for the continuous function defined by for and otherwise. Whenever this happens, the above expression is undefined because it involves division by zero. To work around this, introduce a function formula_54 as follows:


title: Chain rule

text: Whenever is not equal to , this is clear because the factors of cancel. When equals , then the difference quotient for is zero because equals , and the above product is zero because it equals times zero. So the above product is always equal to the difference quotient, and to show that the derivative of at exists and to determine its value, we need only show that the limit as goes to of the above product exists and determine its value.


title: Chain rule

text: To do this, recall that the limit of a product exists if the limits of its factors exist. When this happens, the limit of the product of these two factors will equal the product of the limits of the factors. The two factors are and . The latter is the difference quotient for at , and because is differentiable at by assumption, its limit as tends to exists and equals .


title: Chain rule

text: As for , notice that is defined wherever ' is. Furthermore, ' is differentiable at by assumption, so is continuous at , by definition of the derivative. The function is continuous at because it is differentiable at , and therefore is continuous at . So its limit as ' goes to ' exists and equals , which is .


title: Chain rule

text: This shows that the limits of both factors exist and that they equal and , respectively. Therefore, the derivative of at "a" exists and equals .


title: Chain rule

text: Another way of proving the chain rule is to measure the error in the linear approximation determined by the derivative. This proof has the advantage that it generalizes to several variables. It relies on the following equivalent definition of differentiability at a point: A function "g" is differentiable at "a" if there exists a real number "g"′("a") and a function "ε"("h") that tends to zero as "h" tends to zero, and furthermore


title: Chain rule

text: Here the left-hand side represents the true difference between the value of "g" at "a" and at , whereas the right-hand side represents the approximation determined by the derivative plus an error term.


title: Chain rule

text: In the situation of the chain rule, such a function "ε" exists because "g" is assumed to be differentiable at "a". Again by assumption, a similar function also exists for "f" at "g"("a"). Calling this function "η", we have


title: Chain rule

text: The above definition imposes no constraints on "η"(0), even though it is assumed that "η"("k") tends to zero as "k" tends to zero. If we set , then "η" is continuous at 0.


title: Chain rule

text: Proving the theorem requires studying the difference as "h" tends to zero. The first step is to substitute for using the definition of differentiability of "g" at "a":


title: Chain rule

text: The next step is to use the definition of differentiability of "f" at "g"("a"). This requires a term of the form for some "k". In the above equation, the correct "k" varies with "h". Set and the right hand side becomes . Applying the definition of the derivative gives:


title: Chain rule

text: To study the behavior of this expression as "h" tends to zero, expand "k". After regrouping the terms, the right-hand side becomes:


title: Chain rule

text: Because "ε"("h") and "η"("k") tend to zero as "h" tends to zero, the first two bracketed terms tend to zero as "h" tends to zero. Applying the same theorem on products of limits as in the first proof, the third bracketed term also tends zero. Because the above expression is equal to the difference , by the definition of the derivative is differentiable at "a" and its derivative is


title: Chain rule

text: Constantin Carathéodory's alternative definition of the differentiability of a function can be used to give an elegant proof of the chain rule.


title: Chain rule

text: Under this definition, a function is differentiable at a point if and only if there is a function , continuous at and such that . There is at most one such function, and if is differentiable at then .


title: Chain rule

text: Given the assumptions of the chain rule and the fact that differentiable functions and compositions of continuous functions are continuous, we have that there exist functions , continuous at , and , continuous at , and such that,


title: Chain rule

text: A similar approach works for continuously differentiable (vector-)functions of many variables. This method of factoring also allows a unified approach to stronger forms of differentiability, when the derivative is required to be Lipschitz continuous, Hölder continuous, etc. Differentiation itself can be viewed as the polynomial remainder theorem (the little Bézout theorem, or factor theorem), generalized to an appropriate class of functions.


title: Chain rule

text: If formula_67 and formula_68 then choosing infinitesimal formula_69 we compute the corresponding formula_70 and then the corresponding formula_71, so that


title: Chain rule

text: The generalization of the chain rule to multi-variable functions is rather technical. However, it is simpler to write in the case of functions of the form


title: Chain rule

text: As this case occurs often in the study of functions of a single variable, it is worth describing it separately.


title: Chain rule

text: one needs the partial derivatives of with respect to its arguments. The usual notations for partial derivatives involve names for the arguments of the function. As these arguments are not named in the above formula, it is simpler and clearer to denote by


title: Chain rule

text: The simplest way for writing the chain rule in the general case is to use the total derivative, which is a linear transformation that captures all directional derivatives in a single formula. Consider differentiable functions and , and a point in . Let denote the total derivative of at and denote the total derivative of at . These two derivatives are linear transformations and , respectively, so they can be composed. The chain rule for total derivatives is that their composite is the total derivative of at :


title: Chain rule

text: The higher-dimensional chain rule can be proved using a technique similar to the second proof given above.


title: Chain rule

text: Because the total derivative is a linear transformation, the functions appearing in the formula can be rewritten as matrices. The matrix corresponding to a total derivative is called a Jacobian matrix, and the composite of two derivatives corresponds to the product of their Jacobian matrices. From this perspective the chain rule therefore says:


title: Chain rule

text: That is, the Jacobian of a composite function is the product of the Jacobians of the composed functions (evaluated at the appropriate points).


title: Chain rule

text: The higher-dimensional chain rule is a generalization of the one-dimensional chain rule. If "k", "m", and "n" are 1, so that and , then the Jacobian matrices of "f" and "g" are . Specifically, they are:


title: Chain rule

text: The Jacobian of "f" ∘ "g" is the product of these matrices, so it is , as expected from the one-dimensional chain rule. In the language of linear transformations, "D"("g") is the function which scales a vector by a factor of "g"′("a") and "D"("f") is the function which scales a vector by a factor of "f"′("g"("a")). The chain rule says that the composite of these two linear transformations is the linear transformation , and therefore it is the function that scales a vector by "f"′("g"("a"))⋅"g"′("a").


title: Chain rule

text: Another way of writing the chain rule is used when "f" and "g" are expressed in terms of their components as and . In this case, the above rule for Jacobian matrices is usually written as:


title: Chain rule

text: The chain rule for total derivatives implies a chain rule for partial derivatives. Recall that when the total derivative exists, the partial derivative in the "i"th coordinate direction is found by multiplying the Jacobian matrix by the "i"th basis vector. By doing this to the formula above, we find:


title: Chain rule

text: Since the entries of the Jacobian matrix are partial derivatives, we may simplify the above formula to get:


title: Chain rule

text: More conceptually, this rule expresses the fact that a change in the "x" direction may change all of "g" through "g", and any of these changes may affect "f".


title: Chain rule

text: In the special case where , so that "f" is a real-valued function, then this formula simplifies even further:


title: Chain rule

text: This can be rewritten as a dot product. Recalling that , the partial derivative is also a vector, and the chain rule says that:


title: Chain rule

text: Faà di Bruno's formula for higher-order derivatives of single-variable functions generalizes to the multivariable case. If is a function of as above, then the second derivative of is:


title: Chain rule

text: All extensions of calculus have a chain rule. In most of these, the formula remains the same, though the meaning of that formula may be vastly different.


title: Chain rule

text: One generalization is to manifolds. In this situation, the chain rule represents the fact that the derivative of is the composite of the derivative of "f" and the derivative of "g". This theorem is an immediate consequence of the higher dimensional chain rule given above, and it has exactly the same formula.


title: Chain rule

text: The chain rule is also valid for Fréchet derivatives in Banach spaces. The same formula holds as before. This case and the previous one admit a simultaneous generalization to Banach manifolds.


title: Chain rule

text: In differential algebra, the derivative is interpreted as a morphism of modules of Kähler differentials. A ring homomorphism of commutative rings determines a morphism of Kähler differentials which sends an element "dr" to "d"("f"("r")), the exterior differential of "f"("r"). The formula holds in this context as well.


title: Chain rule

text: The common feature of these examples is that they are expressions of the idea that the derivative is part of a functor. A functor is an operation on spaces and functions between them. It associates to each space a new space and to each function between two spaces a new function between the corresponding new spaces. In each of the above cases, the functor sends each space to its tangent bundle and it sends each function to its derivative. For example, in the manifold case, the derivative sends a "C"-manifold to a "C"-manifold (its tangent bundle) and a "C"-function to its total derivative. There is one requirement for this to be a functor, namely that the derivative of a composite must be the composite of the derivatives. This is exactly the formula .


title: Chain rule

text: There are also chain rules in stochastic calculus. One of these, Itō's lemma, expresses the composite of an Itō process (or more generally a semimartingale) "dX" with a twice-differentiable function "f". In Itō's lemma, the derivative of the composite function depends not only on "dX" and the derivative of "f" but also on the second derivative of "f". The dependence on the second derivative is a consequence of the non-zero quadratic variation of the stochastic process, which broadly speaking means that the process can move up and down in a very rough way. This variant of the chain rule is not an example of a functor because the two functions being composed are of different types.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: A Saucerful of Secrets is the second studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 28 June 1968 by EMI Columbia in the United Kingdom and on 27 July 1968 in the United States by Tower Records. During recording, the mental health of singer and guitarist Syd Barrett deteriorated, so David Gilmour was recruited; Barrett left the band before the album's completion.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: Whereas Barrett had been the primary songwriter on Pink Floyd's debut album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967), on "A Saucerful of Secrets" each member contributed songwriting and lead vocals. Gilmour appeared on all but two songs, while Barrett contributed to three. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" is the only song on which all five members appear.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: "A Saucerful of Secrets" reached number nine in the UK charts, but did not chart in the US until April 2019, peaking at number 158. It received mostly positive reviews, though many critics have deemed it inferior to "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: Pink Floyd released their debut album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," in August 1967. Work began on "A Saucerful of Secrets" in the same month, at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London, with producer Norman Smith. The first songs recorded were "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "Scream Thy Last Scream", both recorded on 7–8 August 1967. The tracks were planned for release as a single on 8 September, but this was vetoed by Pink Floyd's record company, EMI.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: The band recorded "Vegetable Man" at De Lane Lea Studios in Soho on 9–11 October, and returned on 19 October to record "Jugband Blues", with Smith booking a Salvation Army band. During these sessions, bandleader Syd Barrett overdubbed slide guitar onto "Remember a Day", an outtake from "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn". The band took a break to record "Apples and Oranges" on 26 and 27 October. A few days later, they recorded what would become the B-side, "Paint Box", before leaving for a US tour. In November, "Apples and Oranges" was released as a single but failed to chart.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: Around this time, the mental health of guitarist Syd Barrett was deteriorating; he was often unresponsive and would not play, leading to the cancellation of several performances and Pink Floyd's first US tour. In December 1967, reaching a crisis point with Barrett, Pink Floyd added guitarist David Gilmour as the fifth member. According to Jenner, the group planned that Gilmour would "cover for [Barrett's] eccentricities". When this proved unworkable, "Syd was just going to write. Just to try to keep him involved."


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: For two days from 10 January 1968, Pink Floyd reconvened at EMI Studios, attempting to work on older tracks: Waters' vocals and keyboardist Richard Wright's organ were overdubbed onto "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun", while drummer Nick Mason added vocals to "Scream Thy Last Scream".


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: From 12 January till the 20th, Pink Floyd performed briefly as a five-piece. Gilmour played and sang while Barrett wandered around on stage, occasionally joining in with the playing. Between these gigs, the group rehearsed new songs written by Waters on 15 and 16 January. During the next session, on 18 January, the band jammed on rhythm tracks, joined by Smith; Barrett did not attend. On 24 and 25 January, they recorded a song logged as "The Most Boring Song I've Ever Heard Bar 2" at EMI. The band recorded "Let There Be More Light", "Corporal Clegg" (which features lead vocals by Mason), and "See-Saw" all without Barrett, though manager Andrew King said Barrett performed the slide solo at the end of "Let There Be More Light".


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: On 26 January 1968, when the band was driving to a show at Southampton University, they decided not to pick up Barrett. Barrett was finally ousted in late January 1968, leaving the band to finish the album without him. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" is the only song on which all five band members appeared. The band struggled to come up with new material, but in February 1968 recorded Wright's "It Would Be So Nice" and Waters' "Julia Dream". In early February, it was announced Waters’ track "Corporal Clegg" would be the next single; however, due to pressure from the label, the song was earmarked for the album, and "It Would Be So Nice" was released in April, with "Julia Dream" on the B-side.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: Throughout April, the band took stock of their work. Waters blocked "Vegetable Man" and "Scream Thy Last Scream" from the album, but they retained "Jugband Blues" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". Without enough material to fill an album, the band started putting together music that became the title track. Mason and Waters planned it out as if it were an architectural design, including peaks and troughs. Smith did not approve, telling them they had to stick to three-minute songs. On 25 June, the band recorded another session for the BBC radio show "Top Gear", including two tracks from the album: the session featured two tracks from Saucerful: "Let There Be More Light" and an abridged version of the title track, "The Massed Gadgets of Hercules".


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: Unlike "The" "Piper at the Gates of Dawn", which was dominated by Barrett's compositions, "A Saucerful of Secrets" contains only one Barrett original: "Jugband Blues". AllMusic described that with "A Saucerful of Secrets", "the band begin to map out the dark and repetitive pulses that would characterize their next few records." Wright sings or shares lead vocals on four of the album's seven songs, and contributes vocals on the eleven-and-a-half-minute instrumental opus "A Saucerful of Secrets", making this the only Pink Floyd album where his vocal contributions outnumber those of the rest of the band.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: With Barrett seemingly detached from proceedings, it came down to Waters and Wright to provide adequate material. The opening, "Let There Be More Light", written by Waters, continues the space rock approach established by Barrett. "Let There Be More Light" evolved from a bass riff that was part of "Interstellar Overdrive". Both "Remember a Day" and "See-Saw" use the childlike approach that was established on their debut. Wright remained critical of his early contributions to the band.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" was first performed with Barrett in 1967. The success of the track was such that it remained in their live setlist until 1973 where it appeared in a greatly extended form. Waters later performed the track during solo concerts from 1984 and later. Waters borrowed the lyrics from a book of Chinese poetry from the Tang Dynasty, like Barrett had used in "Chapter 24".


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: "Corporal Clegg" is the first Pink Floyd song to address issues of war, a theme which would endure throughout the career of Waters as a songwriter for the band, culminating on the 1983 album "The Final Cut". The title track was originally written as a new version of "Nick's Boogie". The track is titled as four parts on "Ummagumma". A staple in the band's live set until summer 1972, a live version of the song was recorded on 27 April 1969 at the Mothers Club in Birmingham for inclusion on "Ummagumma".


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: "Jugband Blues" is often thought to refer to Barrett's departure from the group ("It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here / And I'm most obliged to you for making it clear that I'm not here"). A promotional video was recorded for the track. The band's management wanted to release the song as a single, but it was vetoed by the band and Smith.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: As well as "Jugband Blues", the album was to include "Vegetable Man", another Barrett composition. The song was to appear on a single as the B-side to Barrett's "Scream Thy Last Scream". The band performed "Jugband Blues", "Vegetable Man" and "Scream Thy Last Scream" for a "Top Gear" session, recorded on 20 December 1967, and broadcast on the 31st. Two additional Barrett songs, "In the Beechwoods", and "No Title" (frequently referred to on bootlegs as "Sunshine"), were recorded early in the album sessions. After years of only being available via bootlegs, "Vegetable Man", "Scream Thy Last Scream", and "In the Beechwoods" were officially released on "The Early Years 1965–1972" compilation. At least one other song, "John Latham", was recorded during these sessions and has been released.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: "A Saucerful of Secrets" was the first of several Pink Floyd album covers created by the design group Hipgnosis. After the Beatles, it was the second time that EMI had permitted one of their acts to hire outside designers for an album jacket. The cover, designed by Storm Thorgerson, contains an image of Doctor Strange from issue #158 of the comic book "Strange Tales", illustrated by Marie Severin.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: The album was released in the UK on Monday, 1 July 1968 on EMI's Columbia label, reaching number 9 in the UK charts. It was released in the US by the Tower Records division of Capitol, where it was the only Pink Floyd album not to chart until 2019, when it peaked at 158. However, when reissued as "A Nice Pair" with the original version of "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" after the success of "The Dark Side of the Moon", the album did chart at number 36 on the "Billboard" 200. "Let There Be More Light" was released as a single, backed with "Remember a Day", in the US on 19 August 1968. "Rolling Stone" was unfavourable, writing that the album was "not as interesting as their first" and "rather mediocre", highlighting the reduced contributions from Barrett.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: The stereo mix of the album was first released on CD in 1988, and in 1992 was digitally remastered and reissued as part of the "Shine On" box set. The remastered stereo CD was released on its own in 1994 in the UK and the US. The mono version of the album has never been officially released on CD. The stereo mix was remastered and re-issued in 2011 by Capitol/EMI as part of the "Why Pink Floyd: Discovery" series, and again in 2016 by Sony Music under the Pink Floyd Records label. The mono mix was reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day in April, 2019 by Sony Music and Warner Music Group under the Pink Floyd Records label. The album finally charted on the Billboard 200 as a standalone peaking at No. 158 when the mono mix was re-released for Record Store Day.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger draws attention to the album's "gentle, fairy-tale ambience", with songs that move from "concise and vivid" to "spacy, ethereal material with lengthy instrumental passages". In a review for BBC Music, Daryl Easlea said "Saucerful" was "not without filler", adding that "Jugband Blues" was "the most chilling" song on the album.


title: A Saucerful of Secrets

text: In 2014, Mason named "A Saucerful of Secrets" his favourite Pink Floyd album: "I think there are ideas contained there that we have continued to use all the way through our career. I think [it] was a quite good way of marking Syd's departure and Dave's arrival. It's rather nice to have it on one record, where you get both things. It's a cross-fade rather than a cut."


title: Strategy

text: Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία "stratēgia", "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art of the general", which included several subsets of skills including military tactics, siegecraft, logistics etc., the term came into use in the 6th century C.E. in Eastern Roman terminology, and was translated into Western vernacular languages only in the 18th century. From then until the 20th century, the word "strategy" came to denote "a comprehensive way to try to pursue political ends, including the threat or actual use of force, in a dialectic of wills" in a military conflict, in which both adversaries interact.


title: Strategy

text: Strategy is important because the resources available to achieve goals are usually limited. Strategy generally involves setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources). Strategy can be intended or can emerge as a pattern of activity as the organization adapts to its environment or competes. It involves activities such as strategic planning and strategic thinking.


title: Strategy

text: Henry Mintzberg from McGill University defined strategy as a pattern in a stream of decisions to contrast with a view of strategy as planning, while Henrik von Scheel defines the essence of strategy as the activities to deliver a unique mix of value – choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals. while Max McKeown (2011) argues that "strategy is about shaping the future" and is the human attempt to get to "desirable ends with available means". Vladimir Kvint defines strategy as "a system of finding, formulating, and developing a doctrine that will ensure long-term success if followed faithfully." Complexity theorists define strategy as the unfolding of the internal and external aspects of the organization that results in actions in a socio-economic context.


title: Strategy

text: Professor Richard P. Rumelt described strategy as a type of problem solving in 2011. He wrote that good strategy has an underlying structure he called a "kernel". The kernel has three parts: 1) A "diagnosis" that defines or explains the nature of the challenge; 2) A "guiding policy" for dealing with the challenge; and 3) Coherent "actions" designed to carry out the guiding policy.


title: Strategy

text: President Kennedy illustrated these three elements of strategy in his Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation of 22 October 1962:


title: Strategy

text: Rumelt wrote in 2011 that three important aspects of strategy include "premeditation, the anticipation of others' behavior, and the purposeful design of coordinated actions." He described strategy as solving a design problem, with trade-offs among various elements that must be arranged, adjusted and coordinated, rather than a plan or choice.


title: Strategy

text: Strategy typically involves two major processes: "formulation" and "implementation". "Formulation" involves analyzing the environment or situation, making a diagnosis, and developing guiding policies. It includes such activities as strategic planning and strategic thinking. "Implementation" refers to the action plans taken to achieve the goals established by the guiding policy.


title: Strategy

text: Bruce Henderson wrote in 1981 that: "Strategy depends upon the ability to foresee future consequences of present initiatives." He wrote that the basic requirements for strategy development include, among other factors: 1) extensive knowledge about the environment, market and competitors;


title: Strategy

text: 3) the imagination and logic to choose between specific alternatives. Henderson wrote that strategy was valuable because of: "finite resources, uncertainty about an adversary's capability and intentions; the irreversible commitment of resources; necessity of coordinating action over time and distance; uncertainty about control of the initiative; and the nature of adversaries' mutual perceptions of each other."


title: Strategy

text: In military theory, strategy is "the utilization during both peace and war, of all of the nation's forces, through large scale, long-range planning and development, to ensure security and victory" ("Random House Dictionary").


title: Strategy

text: The father of Western modern strategic study, Carl von Clausewitz, defined military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of war." B. H. Liddell Hart's definition put less emphasis on battles, defining strategy as "the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy". Hence, both gave the pre-eminence to political aims over military goals. U.S. Naval War College instructor Andrew Wilson defined strategy as the "process by which political purpose is translated into military action." Lawrence Freedman defined strategy as the "art of creating power."


title: Strategy

text: Eastern military philosophy dates back much further, with examples such as "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu dated around 500 B.C.


title: Strategy

text: Modern business strategy emerged as a field of study and practice in the 1960s; prior to that time, the words "strategy" and "competition" rarely appeared in the most prominent management literature.


title: Strategy

text: Alfred Chandler wrote in 1962 that: "Strategy is the determination of the basic long-term goals of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals." Michael Porter defined strategy in 1980 as the "...broad formula for how a business is going to compete, what its goals should be, and what policies will be needed to carry out those goals" and the "...combination of the "ends" (goals) for which the firm is striving and the "means" (policies) by which it is seeking to get there."


title: Strategy

text: In game theory, a "strategy" refers to the rules that a player uses to choose between the available actionable options. Every player in a non-trivial game has a set of possible strategies to use when choosing what moves to make.


title: Strategy

text: A strategy may recursively look ahead and consider what actions can happen in each contingent state of the game—e.g. if the player takes action 1, then that presents the opponent with a certain situation, which might be good or bad, whereas if the player takes action 2 then the opponents will be presented with a different situation, and in each case the choices they make will determine their own future situation.


title: Strategy

text: Strategies in game theory may be random (mixed) or deterministic (pure). Pure strategies can be thought of as a special case of mixed strategies, in which only probabilities 0 or 1 are assigned to actions.


title: Strategy

text: Strategy based games generally require a player to think through a sequence of solutions to determine the best way to defeat their opponent.


title: Strategy

text: Because counterterrorism involves the synchronized efforts of numerous competing bureaucratic entities, national governments frequently create overarching counterterrorism strategies at the national level. A national counterterrorism strategy is a government's plan to use the instruments of national power to neutralize terrorists, their organizations, and their networks in order to render them incapable of using violence to instill fear and to coerce the government or its citizens to react in accordance with the terrorists' goals. The United States has had several such strategies in the past, including the "United States National Strategy for Counterterrorism" (2018); the Obama-era "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" (2011); and the "National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism" (2003). There have also been a number of ancillary or supporting plans, such as the 2014 "Strategy to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", and the 2016 "Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States". Similarly, the United Kingdom's counterterrorism strategy, CONTEST, seeks "to reduce the risk to the UK and its citizens and interests overseas from terrorism, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence."


title: Ball culture

text: The Ballroom Scene (also known as the Ballroom community, Ballroom culture, or just Ballroom) is an African-American and Latino underground LGBTQ+ subculture that originated in New York City. Beginning in the late 20th century, Black and Latino drag queens began to organize their own pageants in opposition to racism experienced in established drag queen pageant circuits. Though racially integrated for the participants, the judges of these circuits were mostly white people. While the initial establishment of Ballroom mimicked these drag queen pageants, the inclusion of gay men and trans women would transform the Ballroom scene into what it is today: a multitude of categories that all LGBTQ+ people can participate in.


title: Ball culture

text: Attendees "walk" these categories for trophies and cash prizes. Most participants in Ballroom belong to groups known as "houses," where chosen families of friends form relationships and communities separate from their families of origin, from which they may be estranged.<ref name="HIV/AIDS risk reduction strategies for"></ref>


title: Ball culture

text: Houses function as alternative families, primarily consisting of Black and Latino LGBTQ+ individuals, and provide shelter for those who feel ostracized by conventional support systems. Houses are led by "mothers" and "fathers" who are experienced members of the ballroom scene, typically drag queens, gay men or transgender women, who provide guidance and support for their house "children". The children of a House are each other's "siblings".


title: Ball culture

text: All houses were founded in U.S. cities, mostly in the Northeast. These include New York City, Newark, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, GA as well as Chicago and Oakland, California. Houses that win trophies and gain recognition through years of participation (usually ten years) reach the rank of legendary. Houses with 20+ years of participation are deemed iconic. Typically, house members adopt the name of their house as their last name. Those currently not in a house carry the last name "007."


title: Ball culture

text: To compete against each other, Houses walk a plethora of categories at a given ball. Participants dress according to the guidelines of the category in which they are competing. These guidelines are created by the promoters of a Ball and may/may not adhere to an overall theme for the Ball. Regardless, participants are expected to display appropriate adherence to the rules of a category. Balls range in scale from "mini balls" (typically characterized by a small selection of categories, few people walking, and a runtime of 1 to 2 hours) to mainstream events (characterized by the presence of most, if not all, categories in Ballroom, a significant number of participants for each category, and a runtime exceeding 4 hours with the largest of Balls capping at 8 hours).


title: Ball culture

text: Categories are split into demographics of the participants. Flyers will always tell contestants how each category will be demographically divided. These demographics are:


title: Ball culture

text: Genny Beemyn wrote in their book "Trans Bodies, Trans Selves" that members of the underground LGBTQ+ community in large cities of the late nineteenth century began to organize masquerade balls known as "drags" in direct defiance of laws banning citizens from wearing clothes of the opposite gender. William Dorsey Swann, the first person known to describe himself as a drag queen, organized a series of drag balls in Washington, D.C. during the 1880s and 1890s. Most of the attendees of Swann's gatherings were men who were formerly enslaved. Because these events were secretive, invitations were often quietly made at places like the YMCA. Swann was arrested in police raids numerous times, including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888.


title: Ball culture

text: In his essay "Spectacles of Colors," Langston Hughes describes his experience at a New York drag ball in the 1920s."Strangest and gaudiest of all Harlem spectacles in the '20s, and still the strangest and gaudiest, is the annual Hamilton Club Lodge Ball at Rockland Palace Casino. I once attended as a guest of A'Lelia Walker. It is the ball where men dress as women and women dress as men. During the height of the New Negro era and the tourist invasion of Harlem, it was fashionable for the intelligentsia and social leaders of both Harlem and the downtown area to occupy boxes at this ball and look down from above at the queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor, males in flowing gowns and feathered headdresses and females in tuxedoes and box-back suits." —Langston Hughes


title: Ball culture

text: The first known ball at the Hamilton Lodge was integrated, at a time where racial segregation was upheld in the United States. Although the ball was integrated, racism was still present. Few Black performers received prizes. There were no Black judges and many believed that the balls were rigged so that only Whites could win. This racial discrimination prompted Black and Latino attendees to form their own balls, and modern ballroom culture began to develop out of Harlem in the late 1960s, and expanded rapidly to other major cities. In New Orleans in the 1950s, they appeared at Mardi Gras celebrations as krewes. "The Sons of Tennessee Williams", a documentary by Tim Wolff released in 2010, follows their history.


title: Ball culture

text: Ball culture was first captured and shown to a mainstream audience in Jennie Livingston's documentary "Paris is Burning" (1990). With the rise of social media, ball culture has migrated to such countries as Canada, Japan, and the UK.


title: Ball culture

text: New York City is the center of the world's drag ball culture. Cross dressing balls have existed in the city since the 1920s, consisting of primarily white men. They competed in fashion shows in bars two or three times a year. Black queens would sometimes participate but rarely won prizes due to discrimination. In the 1970s, Black queens Crystal LaBeija and her friend, Lottie, began their own drag ball titled House of LaBeija, kickstarting the current ballroom scene in New York. Crystal and Lottie are credited with founding the first House in ballroom. In 1989, The House of Latex was created as a call to action in the ballroom community to bridge the gap between HIV and STI prevention and ballroom culture.


title: Ball culture

text: This account from the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area describes how ball culture and drag houses developed about 1960:


title: Ball culture

text: The dance styles which later characterized drag houses had not been developed; competitions between houses involved standard drag performances in which entertainers lip-synced or, rarely, sang. In contrast to the New York houses in "Paris Is Burning", some of the Washington, D.C. house mothers were white. African-American drag queens were a prominent part of the community:


title: Ball culture

text: The Washington, D.C. ball community consists primarily of African-American and Latino participants, and has adopted many attributes seen in "Paris Is Burning". Nineteen-sixties-style drag shows and competitions still exist, with their own audience. Ball patrons will find similar categories (such as "banjee thug realness" and "vogue") as an audience member.


title: Ball culture

text: The Washington ballroom scene was created by Icon Founder Lowell Khanh (Lowell Thomas Hickman, (1987)) and Icon Eric Christian-Bazaar. The House of Khanh was the first House outside of New York that wasn't a part of a New York house. From the House of Khanh came the House of Milan.


title: Ball culture

text: During the 1990s, more houses appeared in the area due to the efforts of Twain Miyake-Mugler ("father" of the House of Miyake Mugler, D.C. Chapter), Icon Harold Balenciaga (founder of the house of Balenciaga), Icons Shannon Garcon and Whitney Garcon (founders of the House of Garcon and charter members of The Legendary House of Miyake-Mugler). The city hosts a series of annual balls, in which contestants compete for trophies and cash prizes.


title: Ball culture

text: In 1931, the newspaper "Baltimore Afro-American" covered a local drag ball. The article detailed the "coming out of new debutantes into gay society." By the 1930s, the drag ball culture was starting to emerge in the Black communities in major cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York. "The Afro" reported that "The coming out of new debutantes into homosexual society was the outstanding feature of Baltimore's eighth annual frolic of the pansies when the art club was host to the neuter gender at the Elks' Hall."


title: Ball culture

text: Philadelphia has a well-established ball community. Philadelphia's first ball was the Oynx Ball which took place in August 1989.


title: Ball culture

text: Several balls are held in Atlanta each year. Also several major houses established in other major cities have opened chapters in Atlanta.


title: Ball culture

text: Most of St. Louis' ballroom scene is intertwined within the drag scene since the ballroom scene is not as major as the other metropolitation cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, etc. According to Mapping LGBTQ STL, the first ball in St. Louis, was called 'Miss Fannie's Artists' Ball', which was organized by the Jolly Jesters Social Group, and the ball helped to raise funds for charitable institutions in the Black community. This was at a time where those participating were called 'female impersonators' which we refer today as drag performers. Now there is a distinct separation of both drag culture and performers and ball culture and performers, even though as stated previously, most artists and performers participate in both.


title: Ball culture

text: There is also a Kiki scene in St. Louis, smaller than both the drag and ballroom scene, but emerging. One of the organizers for the Kiki and mainstream balls is Maven Logik Lee and one of the commentators/MC is Meko Lee Burr. A major ballroom house in the scene is the House of Ebony, St. Louis chapter, founded by Spirit Ebony.


title: Ball culture

text: The ball community has been heavily impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic as transgender people of color and men who have sex with men (MSM) are the highest risk communities for contracting the virus in the U.S. Out of all estimated HIV diagnoses in males, MSM make up 78%. In the United States, MSM represent 61% of all diagnosis of HIV. Young black men are especially at risk for contracting the virus. In 2009, the percentage of black MSM, aged 13–29, who were diagnosed with HIV increased by 48%. Many health care providers and medical service professionals have since reached out to the community to perform research, teach sex education, offer free testing, and host balls to promote safe sex, such as the Latex Ball that is hosted by the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York.


title: Ball culture

text: Researchers with ProjectVOGUE also reached out to the ball community for assistance with vaccine trials and testing because minority participation is generally very low. This low participation stems from a historical distrust that African-Americans and Latinos have had of the government, that results from government-sponsored projects such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. ProjectVOGUE is led by researchers and professionals from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Florida International University, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the MOCHA (Men of Color Health Association) Center. They aimed to create a partnership with the Western New York ball community and held monthly meetings where safe sex methods were taught along with information about the HIV trial vaccine. Community members were initially incentivized to attend with $25 gift cards and transportation vouchers.


title: Ball culture

text: These joint meeting sessions also branched out to cover topics such as substance abuse, STI prevention, violence within the ball community, and more. ProjectVOGUE researchers utilized the House "family" structure by taking 15 "mothers," "fathers," founders, and more on a retreat to gauge the community's knowledge of HIV, while encouraging them to teach their "children" about HIV prevention. At the end of the study, participants had an increased knowledge about HIV, HIV vaccine research, and were more likely to participate in a study.


title: Ball culture

text: This is just one of the many partnerships that have formed across the country between the health care industry and the ball community to encourage HIV prevention. Overall, HIV/AIDS took, and continues to take, the lives of many ball participants, but that trauma has caused the community to grow tighter as members mourned, grieved, and celebrated the lives of their friends together.


title: Ball culture

text: New York's ballroom culture has had a highly significant cultural impact from the 1980s to the present day.


title: Ball culture

text: The most notable influence of ball culture on mainstream society is voguing, a dance style originating in Harlem ballrooms during the latter half of the 20th century. It appeared in the video for Malcolm McLaren's "Deep in Vogue", released in 1989, and Madonna's "Vogue," released in 1990 (one year before the documentary "Paris Is Burning"). The dance group Vogue Evolution, from "America's Best Dance Crew", has again sparked interest in voguing.


title: Ball culture

text: Voguing started in Drag Balls held by the queer community of color. The competitions were divided up into Houses that then competed in different categories, in which one of the categories was voguing. Named after "Vogue" magazine, voguing required dancers to mirror the poses held by models, with emphasis placed on arm and hand movements. Dancers would play out elaborate scenes such as applying makeup or taking phone calls while dancing down the catwalk. Dancer and choreographer Willi Ninja has been recognized as the "Grandfather of Vogue" and the dance, as well as Ninja himself, were covered in the documentary "Paris is Burning".


title: Ball culture

text: The legacy of ball culture on current drag is extensive. Language that grew out of it is common among the LGBTQ+ community as a whole (terms such as "reading" and "shade" meaning insults used in battles of wit, and "spilling tea" meaning gossiping). The use of categories and judging can be seen on popular reality TV programs such as "RuPaul's Drag Race". The structure of Houses is widely used among drag queens today, as well as associated notions of community and family. Attitudes of defiance and subversion that were necessary for black, Latino, queer, and trans participants, as they navigated discrimination, exclusion, and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, form an essential part of drag culture as a whole.


title: Ball culture

text: Ballroom dialect became more widely used in gay slang, fashion industry jargon and mainstream colloquial language.


title: Ball culture

text: A key element of balls is also the music, which is typically characterized by distinct, up tempo beats that are overlaid with the "raps" of commentators or emcees. Lyrics are just as stylized as the beats and often praise queerness and femininity through typically vulgar language and usage of words like "cunt" and "pussy". Historically, the music featured at balls has been whatever is popular within the black LGBT community at the time, ranging from disco, to club music, to house, to rap and R&B. House music, the primary sound of the balls, is always upwards of 120 beats per minute and has African roots, which is reflected in the rhythm.


title: Ball culture

text: Today, it is common for older house classics like "Work This Pussy" by Ellis D, "Cunty" by Kevin Aviance, and "The Ha Dance" by Masters at Work to be remixed into new hits by the current wave of DJs and producers. Djs Vjuan Allure, a ballroom pioneer, and MikeQ were some of the DJs considered to have developed the ballroom sound. Overall, ball culture has been fertile ground for new forms of house music and other genres of electronic dance music through its DJs.


title: Ball culture

text: According to PBS Sound Field interview with MikeQ, one of ball music pioneers, ball music started as house music being played at ballroom parties. Over time, distinct features of ball music emerged, for instance the "Ha" crash, being placed on the every fourth of 4 beats and the minimal repetitive vocals, provided by ball commentators. The "Ha" crash cymbals often signify the time for ball dancers to strike a pose or hit the floor. Modern vogue music, along with house, incroporates elements of disco, funk, hip hop, contemporary R&B, Jersey club and other electronic music.


title: Ball culture

text: The culture has also influenced a wave of queer hip hop artists such as Zebra Katz, House of Ladosha, and Le1f.


title: Ball culture

text: Ball culture has influenced "the über-puffed-up peacock sexuality" of contemporary mainstream hip hop. A professor at New York University said about gay black culture, "Today's queer mania for ghetto fabulousness and bling masks its elemental but silent relationship to even more queer impulses toward fabulousness in the 1980s."