When I first moved into my house, the second day of hauling stuff into it I was surprised by a bustle in the hedgerow maybe 30 feet away, followed by the emergence of an enormous red tailed hawk carrying quite a large bunny rabbit. That spring, the pecan trees dropped so many that all the neighbors came to gather pecans. After that, the hawk must have moved on, because suddenly I had more squirrels than Carter has little liver pills and I’ve never had a chance at the pecans since.
Today when I was out running a few blocks from my house, I saw a very disturbed cat across the street, staring at something on my side and puffing itself up like a pinecone. I couldn’t tell what in the world it was looking at, and I got closer and closer and when I was ten feet away from it one of the piles of leaves took off. And holy crap was it big. I mean big. I have a hard time estimating sizes, but it seemed like its wingspan had to be as long as I am tall - my little terrified mammal brain probably exaggerated, but even rounding down conservatively it was a damned big bird. Probably a female. Didn’t see what she’d been doing down there, so she probably took some hapless little creature with her.
At the end of my run I saw her circling up in the sky, and either she circled around where I didn’t see her on the next block and came around again or there’s two of them. I like to think it’s a breeding pair and that we’ll have little hawklets eating my squirrels and giving me pecans!
Seriously, though - it takes a second for your human brain to say “God, what a beautiful animal!” because the part of your brain that was a little tiny furry thing is yelling really loudly that you’re about to be eaten. It was really close and I did freeze just like a little mouse.
In the early 1990s, there were two notable hawk nests downtown. One was in the top level of the fire escape in the YMCA building. The other (at a different time) was in the bank building across from the Marriott (don’t recall what it is now, used to be Wachovia).
At the time, though, it was a First Union bank, the logo of which was emblazoned across the Main Street side. The hawks build a nest in the “O” for “First Union.”
I love seeing hawks, owls and other birds of prey in my area. I have a large field across the street, and a large field behind me. Wandering around outside in the summer, we can see all sorts of “big guys” soaring above. I often wonder if my little dogs look like snacks. :eek:
Last time I saw one I asked here and called the DNR and asked those guys - the kind of hawks we have around here don’t like to kill things that are too big for them to take with them to a tree branch to eat. So a teeny tiny little fluff dog, maybe. Cat, maybe. Definitely bunny. But my terrier (16 pound Westie) was said to be safe.
A couple of years ago I was sitting a the park eating lunch. It was after Labor Day and a weekday so not many people but they hadn’t put the picnic benches away for the season yet.
About 10 feet away a group of chipmunks were playing. I was enjoying watching them. Soooo cute! All of a sudden they started running. One, unfortunately, ran up a nearby tree, got to the “v” where it was swooped away by this HUGE bird. Hawk, I guess. It happened so quickly I couldn’t tell. But I could hear it scream. Gulp! If I had been a small creature, I’d have been toast. In in my ignorance and innocence I never saw it coming…
I really don’t mind the eagles snacking on my chickens this winter, it has been a very hard winter around here and I can get new chickens. This will make the 3d year the eagles have been here.
We have hawks near where I work. There’s a river that flows through the area, and a sidewalk along the edge. A weir on the river keeps one area of water open and ice-free nearly year round, so there are ducks congregated there even in the winter.
One day while walking by, we saw a large hawk - possibly a red-tail - sitting on the ice, devouring what used to be a duck. He sat in the middle of a ring of red gore, with a fringe of feathers around the outside. Lots of traffic on both sides of the river, with people stopping and staring. He was oblivious to it all.
Another story - a co-worker told me this one. He was walking near the same stretch, when a large hawk ZOOMED by him at about knee-level. It passed within a few feet of him. He just had time to turn and look as the bird made a low-level attack on a squirrel. Apparently, the bird was using him as a screen to keep from being spotted by the squirrel until it was too late. It almost worked - the squirrel made it to cover with only feet to spare.
We must have hawks here, because my neighbour said she’d rescued a baby bunny from her cats, and carried it up the rock face behind our places where the regional park starts (Mill Hill Park, for those in the Greater Victoria area). She said she placed the bunny down on the rock face gently sloping up into the woods, and bid it well, turned, and…
…swoop. No more baby bunny. She said it was like the hawk said “thanks for lunch!” as it flew away.
I was outside of my workplace a few years ago, and noticed that there were no sparrows (or whatever they are–little brown jobbies) in the trees, which was unusual. There were always little brown birds hanging around, checking out snacks and lunches and other urban opportunities.*
Then I spotted the big brown bird in the tree. Sparrow hawk, someone told me, which made perfect sense… (I don’t know what kind of sparrow hawk it was.)
*I was also outside that same workplace once, on a coffee/smoke break, and glanced up into the trees that were filled with little brown jobbies, and saw… a little blue jobbie. There was a budgie in that flock. Oddest thing ever!
Where I live we have large numbers of Cooper’s Hawks which enjoy picking off mourning doves and robins at the bird feeders. Once I was out walking and found a roadrunner sitting on a fence. I watched it for a few seconds and then turned to go; much to my surprise the roadrunner dashed up next to my leg. I wondered why it was suddenly so friendly and then I saw the Cooper’s Hawk swoop down, do a U-turn, and land on the fence where the roadrunner had been. The hawk glared at me, then flew off to a nearby park to look for pigeons. The roadrunner hurried to a clump of weeds where it flattened out and played dead for the next 20 minutes.
I also see Kestrels and occasionally Merlins. Once I watched a Merlin try to eat a Cotton Rat as a Kestrel repeatedly harassed it, probably in hopes of stealing its breakfast. Eventually the Merlin grabbed its prey and flew off down the river with the Kestrel hot on its tail.
I was driving up Angeles Crest Highway into the mountains above Los Angeles and doing about thirty or so when a red-tailed hawk zoomed over my car from back to front and landed in the center of the road–right on the white line–about fifty feet in front of me. I had time to lift my foot from the gas and start to go for the brakes when the hawk lifted off effortlessly with something small and apparently edible in its talons. It flew away from my still-moving car and then wheeled around, gaining altitude, and flew back over me. Probably laughing at me.