An intruder in paradise ...

(a Red Tailed Hawk)

We have a back garden that is filled with an outdoor kitchen, stone terraces, and a small forest of evergreens that enclose the space as well as a willow tree and various flowering trees and shrubs,  There is a Tiffany Studios mosaic (1890) of stylized art nouveau flowers presiding over one of the terraces.  The whole thing has a "Wind in the Willows" atmosphere.

In a far corner there is a Redbud tree.  It is about 30 feet tall and in early Spring is a glory of red-purple flowers.  I have pruned the lower branches into projections from which to hang the various elements of my bird feeding station.  There is a double sided seed feeder with the weight adjustment set to accept birds no larger than a Cardinal.  There is a wooden platform feeder for those who don't want to perch on a moving bar to get fed.  There is a caged suet feeder for the Downy Woodpeckers.  They like cakes of suet studded with insect eggs.  There is another hanging feeder full of bread bits, old dry cereal, etc. 

I have a chair in place about thirty feet away where I can smoke Burma cheroots and watch the action among the birds and squirrels.   Catbirds, a tribe of Cardinals, Woodpeckers, Mourning Doves, Bluejays, and little brown things with great voices.  There are also European starlings (a nuisance), and tiny green hummingbirds who like my wife's flowers.  These are the habitués of my private utopia for birds.

Yesterday I was surveying the scene and puffing contentedly when a red tailed hawk arrived in this scene like a brown cannon ball .  It streaked in through a hole in the foliage along the fence and made a grab for a dove that had been pecking at seed on the platform feeder.  There was an explosion of birds and squirrels in every direction with much screeching and squawking.  The hawk missed the dove.  The intended prey fled across the back garden with the brown rocket in pursuit.  It passed me at about ten feet.  As it went by it saw me and turned its head to look even as it flew a wild course among the many head high plants.  It disappeared around a corner of the house still climbing and still chasing.

God help the dove.  pl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tailed_hawk

Comments

[dsrcwt]

I've seen people asking $100/inch for the tusks, and up to $300 for the skulls. The tusks are sought after as a legal source of ivory by carvers. Might pay for your ammo.

[JerseyJeffersonian]

Well, I don't know, optimax. Steve Sailer over at Unz Review related an interesting experience that his wife just had, discovering a urinal mounted in the ladies' room at some shee shee location, presumably for the benefit of trannies still equipped with their guy parts (and since it is apparently optional for trannies to perform excision surgery to attain at least some degree of versimilitude with the female gender, the self-identification as female being the essential thing, why not just continue as you were in your physical form? Gives the politically correct female liberals something to be gleeful about, although I am not sure that they would be equally gleeful with having their unaccompanied female children use the facilities after they think about the possible problems that might arise from them sharing a restroom with biologically-unaltered adult males, even if he/she says that they are now female.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/world-war-t-in-the-womens-room/

So, urinals might no longer be considered symbols of white, male oppression, but rather viewed as being emblematic of liberation from gender oppression instead.

So, how about that, sports fans?

[Oilman2]

dsrcwt -

send some links... I just hate cleaning 200+ pound hogs weekly. But I can sure run a cable thru the skull and keep the coyotes from dragging it off.

[LindaL]

Wow! Quite the experience. By the way, your backyard sounds great.

[turcopolier]

Jersey Jeffersonian

Apropos of nothing there was an English "comedy" film years back in which a group of drunk women hiked up their skirts, edged up to urinals in a pob bathroom and peed successfully. I have never seen one try that, but ... pl

[TimmyB]

My wife and I had two seed bird feeders in an old twisted fig tree in our yard. After a few months, there were always doves feeding in the fig tree. We kept feeding the doves until hawks killed two of them. Realizing we were luring doves to their death, we removed the feeders.

[jld]

But they are cheating, they use some kind of a funnel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_urination_device

Ain't it a "wonderful world"?
Any idiocy you can think of has already been tried.

[Cee]

Col. Lang,

Mine seem to only bother the squirrels and the rat snakes who climb trees to get baby birds and eggs.

I witnessed one ripping the head off of one snake. Amazing.
He left me a tail feather in the struggle that I Incorporated into a trellis that I made from twigs, string and beads.

[Cee]

Col. Lang,

Good stuff. Cabbelas hunting supply store sold it in their deli at one time.

[Cee]

Nancy,

My blue salvia planted in the same area plus four o'clock flowers attract them here dawn to dusk

[ked]

sent to you ismoot addr. cheers,

[Cee]

Richard,

I put a squirrel baffle up to stop the climb and a slinky at the top for the dive bombers so they can't hold on. They still try but now they just have to get what I put out for them or what falls from the feeders.

[Cee]

Larry,

Buy that predator spray to keep them away. It does work.
I didn't spray soon enough to save some lilies but after application none returned to eat anything else

[JerseyJeffersonian]

Colonel,

There have been legitimate attempts from time to time to design and install female-appropriate urinals in order to avoid all of the possible sanitation issues that arise when all of the women have to sit on toilet seats (hovering, as my wife tells me, being the workaround to that), but they have never achieved acceptance. Since women are attired in anything from skirts/dresses to tight jeans, an easy solution is surely hard to arrive at.

My Pennsylvania Deutsch mother, following the lead of her often earthy culture, told me a joke current in her youth. A boy and girl are on a picnic, and when the young lad feels the need, he opens his fly, pulls out his johnson, and relieves himself, much to the amazement of the girl watching the procedure. She remarks, "Gee, that's an awful handy thing to bring along on a picnic!" And there you have it in a nutshell; biological females don't come thus equipped. Unaltered trannies on the other hand...

[dsrcwt]

It seems I've been mis-informed. I just checked tusks and skulls on E-bay and they are considerably cheaper than I said. Tusks from Poland as low as 2.50 each. Skulls about $60. Not worth the bother, as you said.

[Bandolero]

Nancy

That sounds weird to me, too. Our doves here don't eat meaty stuff like dry dog food. They eat cereals like oat flakes here. But the crows love the dry dog food, even more than they like our cherry tomatoes as soon as they get red. Destroying our cherry tomatoes the crows seem to do just for fun, but stealing dry dog food from the balcony the crows seem to do for nutrition. Though we never have dog food in our living room, it may well be that your experience plays a role here, too.

Our Small Münsterländer crossbreed is now 17, too, and not very fit anymore, especially when it's hot. I think it may well be the crow lost respect, thought the dog is old and it could intrude before it saw me laying on the couch.

[different clue]

sid_finster

If you listen carefully to the crows cawing, you can hear every crow has a slightly different and distinct caw. Of course if you get hundreds or thousands all cawing together, you maybe can't tell one caw from another. But I suspect the crows still can.

[different clue]

One wouldn't normally think of a red tailed hawk chasing and catching a dove, but then one wouldn't normally think of a sapsucker sitting on a lateral branch and dashing out to catch insects in flight and then dashing back to its perch on the lateral branch, either. But I once spent 10 or so minutes several decades ago watching a sapsucker doing that very thing.

Once a few years ago where I live I suddenly saw a movement overhead which turned out to be a robin flying faster than I have ever seen a robin fly, with an accipiter hawk about 10 feet behind it. I saw it all for only little more than a second so I couldn't say which accipter it was.

Another time I saw a Cooper's hawk ( they live in the area) fly with a bird to a big lateral branch, hold the bird down with one foot and tear off feathers. It then began tearing off and eating meat. It was icky yet morbidly fascinating to watch.

[different clue]

Here is a few-second video showing a domestic turkey feeling and showing emotion it seems to me. A bird, even if domestic. The contributor titled it: "Dude! It's my cuddle time. Go away."
https://gfycat.com/insignificantadmirableguppy

[different clue]

Bandolero,

Here is something I read about to stop birds from attacking tomatoes when they become red. I have never tried it so I don't know if it really works.
But here it is.

When the very first ones are about to get red, spray or paint them with a solution of sucrose ( table sugar). Supposedly birds are unable to digest table sugar and it ferments in their intestines and releases uncomfortable amounts of gas. It gives the birds passing discomfort without any permanent injury. They remember the pain and associate it with the red tomatoes and don't attack the red tomatoes any more.

[optimax]

I was walking on a path next to the Columbia when I heard the crack of a branch break behind me. I turned and twenty feet away I saw two bald eagles ride a branch to the ground. One flew toward the river, the other directly toward. His great wings slowly whooshing the air, slowly lifting its huge mottled self to pass 5 feet over my head.

Three people on the beach saw the whole thing and my dog danced.