This makes me suspicious, though of what I don't know. :D

That is interesting. Maybe there's something the raptors are communicating to me through the artwork; that you don't get from them in 'real life'? I don't know. There have been some animals I would never have looked at twice (beyond the fact that they're animals), until I illustrated. And others that I really loved I began to click with less after illustration, like something in the process of genuinely engaging with the energy took the romanticism away for me.