Frozen Squirrel

As I was doing some dishes this morning I thought I spooked a squirrel that was acquiring a peanut from the deck- he jumped up on the deck rail and then froze. Hmm. Let's take a look around. The reason he wasn't moving was sitting in one of the ornamental plums looking for breakfast. Watched the Coopers for a bit and several Chickadees and Titmice flew in to scold the hawk (this called "mobbing"). The first Chickadee that flew in apparently didn't see the hawk, landed on a branch about three feet away from it, and left a lot faster than it arrived when it realized what was sitting on the branch.

The hawk finally left after hanging out in the yard for over an hour.

Newsflash: Hawk came back. Looked out the basement door and it was sitting in a bush just above the stairwell, five feet away, looking back at me.

Disappearing Birds

As I was in the dining area this morning something a little larger than the usual avian and mammalian denizens on and underneath the bird feeder flew in and landed on the deck rail. Everything else at the feeder vanished immediately. This is a juvenile Coopers Hawk looking for a meal- you put bird feeders up, and sometimes what you attract becomes a meal itself. The juvenile Coopers have a low survival rate- while they're learning to feed themselves they miss on about four out of five attempts.