On Friday, or maybe the day before, I was sitting in the car waiting for Tommy to come out of the house. I saw a hawk land on his neighbor's chain link fence. A red-tailed hawk, searching for prey. I watched it for a long time, but it left when Tommy came in sight.
At my house, I often saw chicken hawks circling around the skies over the back yard. However, I have not seen a hawk here and have not looked up to see. My chickens usually alerted me by squawking and running under a tree or bush. Or, the bench.
Finally, the hawk flew into Tommy's neighbor's yard and caught something on the ground, attacked, and appeared to be tearing whatever it was apart.
From now on I will look up for them. We see them in trees and on telephone lines and poles elsewhere. The people around here don't even have cats as prey for hawks. I suppose they are not predators, either.
Today, Friday, as we were driving in a residential neighborhood, we saw an interaction between a larger hawk and a squirrel. We stopped and watched for about ten minutes. It appeared that the hawk was going to get the squirrel. But, the hawk did not. He either changed his mind or did not intend to catch the squirrel. We finally lost sight of it when it flew to a low perch in the trees.
I am amazed we have only this week seen hawks hunting. I wonder if they are young hawks staying close to the ground. It was rather incongruous seeing them on low chain link fences. In our mind, the hunters should be on wooden fences in less populated areas.
The first night I read A Painted House, I read 160 pages. Last night, I read over 100 pages. I didn't stay up late last night. I went to bed early so I could read. That is the way I should read, not watch TV all night and then read.
Do you see hawks hunting? Do you live in a country situation or a city? Do you lose chickens or cats like my neighbors and I did? Are the mice plentiful where you are?
We see hawks just about every day. I have been watching a young hawk learn to hunt for the past week or so.
ReplyDeleteAnne,
DeleteThere are probably hawks around here that I don't see. This fence along the property line is all I can see back there. I think both of these were young hawks and what I commented to Tommy about both of their actions. I would think squirrel would make a nice meal. Can you tell what your hawk is learning to hunt?
We have all kinds of hawks around here. Red Tail, sparrow hawks, and other big hawks that I don't know the names of. I see some kind of hawk most every day, and we live in an old suburb with small yards, but lots of trees.
DeleteI saw a big Red Tail hawk eating a squirrel on our neighbor's roof a couple of years ago.
Last year we had some type of a large hawk that would fly over me or my husband when we would walk down our sidewalk in the front yard and do that hawk call that I have heard in cowboy movies. That hawk did that many times. It would also circle high over us if we were out in the front yard doing something or walking someone out to their car. It was studying us, I guess, or maybe it had been someone's pet.
When I was a young teenager, I had a pet hawk for a couple of weeks. My Dad had been driving down a country road and somehow the car in front of him had a hawk pulled down in front of the car and they drove over the hawk. The hawk on the road was still moving but off balance, the tires had not hit it though. My Dad stopped his car and took off his jacket and wrapped the hawk up in his jacket and brought it home.
Dad came in the basement door and called out for my Mom and me to come and see what he had brought home. Mom and I went downstairs and Dad opened his jacket and there was the most beautiful hawk wrapped in it. Several hours after bringing the hawk home, Dad had a large wooden perch built and he looked in the encyclopedias and found out how to make leather jesses for the ankles of falcons to hold them to their perches and to use them for the falconer to hold when outdoors. He even put a large heavy duty jingle bell on the jesses as close as he could get to the bell shown in the encyclopedia. When those were done, Big Boy the hawk was all set up to be on his perch. He flapped his wings and then seemed to feel right at home. We fed him pieces of beef heart and other lean meat. He ate them from us so fast.
The next morning , Dad and I went downstairs early to see how Big Boy was doing, and we noticed the jingle bell wasn't jingling anymore. Big Boy had peeled open the steel jingle bell and the metal ball that was inside of it was laying on the floor. Big Boy took pieces of beef heart from our gloved fingers and was already really acting tame. Dad always had a way with animals. We took Big b
Boy outside every day and he would sit on Dad's gloved hand and flap his wings. With me Big Boy didn't flap his wings while he sat on my gloved hand. We wore gloves because his talons were huge. When I held him on my hand I didn't have the strength to hold him up for long, and as my hand went down, Big Boy side stepped his way up my arm (I was wearing a jacket) until he was sitting on my shoulder like a pirate parrot. He knew better than to flap his big wings when I held him. I think he knew that would have hurt me. He never tried to bite Dad or me, or Mom.
We knew from the beginning that we would only keep him for a short time because hawks must have meat that has bones and feathers or fur with it to help their digestion. So the very lean meat that we were feeding him wasn't the best for him. He was as smart as a dog, I never thought about hawks having personalities until I got to know Big Boy.
About two weeks later, we took him back out to the country right where Dad found him and set him free again. Big Boy Flew up and circled around in the sky and went to a telephone pole right there by the road and he watched as we drove away. I've had a soft spot in my heart for hawks ever since then.
susie,
DeleteI wonder if the hawk was waiting for you and your husband to die...lol. Your father was clever and good for finding what to do with the hawk. Maybe if you had gotten dead mice for him, you could have kept him. That ws a very interesting story. Thanks a lot.
Oh, I would have wanted to make pets of the mice, too.It would have made me cry to feed them to the hawk.
DeleteIt wasn't a vulture circling, but I do move pretty slow, but not slow enough for a vulture to be circling. I'd have had to poke them away with my cane.
I used to work in a very pretty brick office building, but every day as people were walking in and out of the building there was a pair of bald faced vultures sitting on the roof watching each person as they came in or left. The first day I worked there, I wondered if that was an omen of some kind, but that turned out to be one of the nicest part time jobs I ever had. The vultures must have had someone else in mind.
susie,
DeleteI did say "dead mice." LOL...canes do come in handy. I wonder why the vultures sat and watched. Maybe they just wondered when everyone was finally going to leave for good. We like watching birds, so maybe they like watching us.
At our last house we had squirrels galore. I never saw any hawks. We moved 30 miles north in 2003 and I don’t remember ever seeing a squirrel. What our yard has now are rabbits coming out from one neighbor’s tree-filled hill and another neighbor’s bushy backyard. I do see occasional hawks flying high or perched on/near telephone poles, but I have never seen a confrontation. Sometimes I read of coyotes killing a cat or carrying off a small dog, but I haven’t ever seen one. I have heard a few howling in the distance, but not recently. We also have the occasional groundhog on tha edge of that neighbor’s hill. Snakes seem to be fairly common around our subdivision if Facebook is to be believed,but I have never seen one that those around here either. Maybe the trouble is with my eyesight!
ReplyDeleterhymes,
DeleteI would think if you had rabbits, you would have hawks. Maybe it is your eyesight, but maybe the hawks hunt when you are not watching.
We often see the bald eagles hunting more than hawks where I live. We've seen them swoop down and get something from the ground and swoop down and pull fish out of the river. That part amazes me that they can see a fish. And usually they are sitting so high up in a tree watching for it.
ReplyDeleteOne,
DeleteIt is amazing you have bald eagles! Birds are amazing. I wonder how they see fish in the water from so high.
I was having lunch on my friend's terrace a couple of years ago when a snake fell out of the sky a few feet from us. Must have been dropped by a bird of prey but damn, that would have been quite a conversation killer if it had dropped in the fondue!
ReplyDeleteTreaders,
DeleteOh yeah! Cheesy snake. That would scare me if a snake fell near. I wonder how the bird managed to drop it.
we have heaps. Mostly hawks but also owls. I love them so.
ReplyDeleteUrspo,
DeleteLots of birds is a nice thing to have. I think only one owl ever lived near my old house, and only for a bit.