Tales of the Heliosphere

The tale of the hawk continues. The feeders were silent this morning. The Coopers Hawk was hiding by the bottle brush tree right by the platform feeder. I'm a novice birdwatcher so this is a guess, but the dark streaks and the white body identify this as a juvenile, less than 1 year old. The clumps of morning dove feathers scattered near the feeder suggest the hawk can hunt well enough.

The pigeon coming into view to the left circled in a panic twice and flew off. The hawk left it alone for some reason and flew away in short flights from power line to jacaranda, to fencetop, to power pole, and then gone. The 20 or so small sparrows and finches hiding in the bottle brush tree showed themselves about 5 minutes later. Ain't the suburbs grand?

By the way, the pigeon spikes in the top picture are there to protect the feeders from the cats that used to jump over the fence. They worked well against the cats. They've turned out to be a bit of a Maginot Line, however. The cats can't go through the spikes but the hawk has no problem going over them.

-tdr

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Labels: Animals, Birds, Nature, Photography