Active Kill Zone
I put Isaac down for his morning nap (not that he's sleeping yet) and carted things down to the kitchen and the trash and I'm standing at the sink washing my hands and notice odd movement in the backyard. Now, mind you, I'm near-sighted and almost never wear my glasses (they are for TV and movies only) so I'm standing there for a minute trying to decide what this is without being able to really see it. Whatever it is, it's the same color as the leaves in the backyard and moving rhythmically. It's not spazzy and gray, so it's not a squirrel and it's too big to be any of the birds I expect to see... I go get my glasses.
It's a young hawk eating a squirrel it apparently bagged in my backyard. I am quite psyched by this. I love raptors... I enjoy most predators in general, in fact. Cute and cuddly is fine, but I like fierce and strong. So I watch it until it notices me, picks up the remains of its breakfast and flies off into the pine trees.
Very cool.
If I'd seen this years ago I'd have been intentionally feeding the squirrels... fattening the buggers up for the hawks and waiting with a camera on standby. And really, now that I think about it, we get lots of neat things in this backyard. Lots of different woodpeckers, all sorts of birds (I have a feeder), toads, and even a marmot one spring (I was sad when it didn't move in). There's a skunk that comes to visit sometimes (he and I skirt around each other carefully) and once we had baby rabbits too. Hopefully the new house in Ramsey will be even more diverse, but without the feral cats. Next house, I don't care what anyone says, if there are feral cats I am boxing their butts up and taking them down to the humane society.
Anyway, at the new place I want to put up a bat-box or two, find a good place for my bird-feeders and someplace to set up for the toads that I can peek into now and again to see if I have a tenant.
And maybe I'll check around and see if I can put a platform or something up for the hawks to nest on...
It's a young hawk eating a squirrel it apparently bagged in my backyard. I am quite psyched by this. I love raptors... I enjoy most predators in general, in fact. Cute and cuddly is fine, but I like fierce and strong. So I watch it until it notices me, picks up the remains of its breakfast and flies off into the pine trees.
Very cool.
If I'd seen this years ago I'd have been intentionally feeding the squirrels... fattening the buggers up for the hawks and waiting with a camera on standby. And really, now that I think about it, we get lots of neat things in this backyard. Lots of different woodpeckers, all sorts of birds (I have a feeder), toads, and even a marmot one spring (I was sad when it didn't move in). There's a skunk that comes to visit sometimes (he and I skirt around each other carefully) and once we had baby rabbits too. Hopefully the new house in Ramsey will be even more diverse, but without the feral cats. Next house, I don't care what anyone says, if there are feral cats I am boxing their butts up and taking them down to the humane society.
Anyway, at the new place I want to put up a bat-box or two, find a good place for my bird-feeders and someplace to set up for the toads that I can peek into now and again to see if I have a tenant.
And maybe I'll check around and see if I can put a platform or something up for the hawks to nest on...