Over the weekend, Neil looked out our kitchen window and spotted this beautiful hawk. It has visited our backyard before and it is always very special to see such a glorious bird here in the city. It generally sits in this tree, which grows above our chicken coop. Fortunately this time the hawk was too engrossed with the pigeon it was eating to notice the chickens. Conversely, the chickens were still in their covered run, so they didn’t see the predator sitting right over them. You can see what’s left of the pigeon on the branch the hawk is sitting on.
We have friends who live right around the corner from us who have seen and named this hawk (Hank). They have a view of our yard from their apartment, so I called them and helped them to spot the hawk. We live along a street that became a restaurant row about 10 years ago. It’s been interesting to see how the abundance of food has affected the natural world in our neighborhood. We first started noticing rodents. Sigh. Then we got raccoons. And now we have hawks feasting on the vermin that’s been attracted to the area. I was very happy to see the hawk eating a pigeon. Hopefully our friend decides to hang around.
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Here’s a Bird Nerd tidbit. Your beautiful hawk is a juvenile. When it matures, its currently-yellow eye will turn red.
These guys are famous for hunting bird feeders. We have one (or maybe it’s a Sharp Shinned Hawk) that flies over our place, freaking out all the songbirds.