MetaChat - Driveway terror!!!

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30 July 2012

Driveway terror!!! →[More:]So, this evening, I look out my back door and glance through the lilac bushes toward the driveway and spy what looks to be an immature Sharp-Shinned Hawk* just standing at the end of the walkway to the drive. It does a quick leap and pounces back down. It's then that I see that it's chasing/pecking/tossing at some tiny prey...a sparrow!

The hawk spends a good 15 minutes playing with the sparrow, in the same way my cat would "play" with a mouse it has cornered. Occasionally, the hawk would stop and glance around, then go back to torturing the sparrow, tossing it up in the air and pecking at it when hits the ground.

Eventually, the Sharp-Shinned grabs the lifeless sparrow and rushes off into the sky. Show is over.

And, then my wife arrives home with bbq wings.

* Damned if I can tell the difference between an immature Sharp-Shinned and an immature Cooper's. We get them both here. I'd love for it to have been a Cooper's.

post by: Thorzdad at: 18:09 | 3 comments

Years ago, I was staring through a window into my parents' backyard, daydreaming, when suddenly there was a blur and a midair thud, and then a puff of feathers floated down from about ten feet above the lawn. I stood up to get a better angle and spent the next several minutes watching a red-tailed hawk tear lunch out of a mourning dove's carcass right there on the grass.

After the hawk flew away I raked up the dove's remains and mowed the lawn.

posted by Hugh Janus 30 July | 18:44

Saw a hawk today on a telephone line. No carnage that I could see, but I would have loved to see it. I once watched two bald eagles (a male-female couple) go at some salmon that a friend of a friend was feeding them, and it was truly magnificent.

posted by occhiblu 30 July | 19:21

Got a little company on a bike hike some years ago. My was head down against the wind, and I see a shadow cross my own.... The hair goes up on the back of my neck, I look up to my right, and about five feet away is a hawk a bit above eye level. The bird paralleled me for about a minute before banking off. :)

posted by Kronos_to_Earth 31 July | 22:18

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