You sure it wasn't a Roadside Hawk (Buteo magnirostris)-- > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Hawk
It was in a cross walk across from a small grassy plaza where somebody puts out bread to attract other birds (mostly pigeons). That's basically been the hawk's buffet, judging from the remnant wings and feet that one sees in the vicinity. My guess is he came in as low as he always did (I saw him once on an unsuccessful, but not fatal, pass), but just at the wrong angle at the wrong time. I seem to remember reading that most hawks actually die a slow and painful death from starvation. Their eyesight goes, so they can't hunt successfully. Who knows, maybe this guy was tired of pigeons and decided to end it all on his own.
i saved a blackbird from getting roadkilled today. he flew in front of my bike and tried to land on the street just in front of a car. he dodged that and stubbornly came right back. what was obsessing him was a black thermal glove which, wet with rain, did indeed look rather like a dead blackbird. so i picked it up just to get it out of his mind. 50 meters farther i found the other one. once i wash them i have a free pair of gloves.
Saw a Brown-Headed Cowbird in my yard today. It was hanging out with a bunch of Grackles. Cowbirds are the only parasitic bird in NJ.
Spring is arriving. Proof? I saw some Eastern Towhees (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) this weekend. They usually don't come this North this early.
a) what's that in yards, Mr. European Guy. and isn't it metres? b) you've just violated a crime scene, no doubt. thanks so much.
it's metres in british english but meters in american. we used to learn the metric system in school in the states!
this blackbird followed me around the garden all morning seeing what i might dig up; and this tit is getting sunflower seeds from our kitchen window to take to his mate sitting their eggs.
Dammit, guignol, I see we have the same Ikea lawn table (I have the chairs, as well). I assumed I was the only one. Just finished applying numerous coats of teak oil yesterday.
ah-ha! that was my final coat! i put two coats on earlier in the month!! which, by the way, is something of a pain in the ass. actually, my extreme laziness came in when i didn't treat them last fall, hence the need for so many this spring.
Well our goslings came in. I won't bother posting a picture of Canada geese, because everyone knows what they look like. Turns out they live a long time, and they mate for life. We have a "dry pond" behind our house, basically a basin that holds water for a while so it won't all run straight to the bay - we call it the swamp. There's usually about 50 geese back there, but in the spring this one pair will chase all the others off and build a nest under a willow tree in the marshy area. So this one pair has nested behind our house for 4 years now. We know it's the same pair because they know to come up to our deck for stale bread, and they build their nest in the same spot. Before the nest is built, the male will let the female get all the bread while he stands guard. Once the nest is built, the female won't leave it for more than a minute or two. The male sits all alone about 50 yards (meters/metres) away, acting as a decoy. He goes over and visits for a couple minutes 2 or 3 times a day. It's really very sweet. Anyhow, Thursday 4 fluffy little goslings appeared and we watched them get in the water for the first time. Then, as they do every year, they disappeared overnight. So we don't get to see the babies grow up, but they should be back next year.
On my morning run, I saw a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) And a Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina)
I love seeing all kinds of herons and cranes. I've noticed the population seems to be many times what it was when I was a kid. It used to be that we only rarely saw them, but now it's daily if I'm anywhere near water.
And they're expensive. I buy a $5 bag of goldfish they call feeders every spring, about 20 of the little suckers, then turn them loose. They'll grow to about 6" and I have a lot of little ones now who were born in the pond. But the Heron's are sneaky and the Kingfishers just laugh at you. But somehow a lot survive.
These guys have been hanging about in my pond again this year. Wood Ducks. Prolly the most colourful north American duck. They are really shy, I had to slide on my belly on the deck to get these.
i lost some fish to some kind of heron or crane a year and a half ago. i i'd had about a dozen but one morning i looked in the pond and saw NO fish. even though they have places to shelter there had always been at least half of them in view at any moment. after a few days without any trace of a fish i figured they were gone... but how? impossible for a person to get into our yard without leaving a trace... also how to fish them out at night in the dark, and why? they're just goldfish. a cat would have just played with them and left lots of clues around the pond... and i'm not convinced they could get even one out of the pond, much less the whole dozen. magpie neither... that's when the idea of a heron occurred to me and when i bought some replacements the following spring the guy at garden supply told me that was almost certainly the solution to the mystery. the story doesn't end there: the five new fish went right for cover when they arrived so i still had no fish to look at! but after a couple of days they started to come out... and i noticed one with a white back that i knew was one of the old fish. and little by little they all came out and i counted 10... including one brown one that i had never seen before at all (obviously born in the pond). the old ones had been cowering under the rocks for 3 months when before they hadn't been skittish at all (for goldfish i mean). something had really scared them.
Yeh, I know what you mean. I can always tell when the Heron has been around, the fish are shell shocked and hide for a while. It's funny when you add new ones. If the old ones are out then they'll mingle and meet and greet. If the Heron has visited, you can almost hear the calls of "Hide or the big feathery bugger will get you!!"