{"id":193,"date":"2009-01-02T12:24:59","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T16:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogshevik.com\/garneredimages\/?p=193"},"modified":"2009-01-02T12:24:59","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T16:24:59","slug":"the-barfing-buteo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"The Barfing Buteo"},"content":{"rendered":"

“This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.”
\n(David Lynch)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

An unusual year came to an unusual end.\u00a0 Since I’m on vacation and, finally,\u00a0for once actually behaving as if I’m on vacation, I slept in later than is the norm on New Year’s Eve and casually padded into the kitchen to get my first cup of coffee.\u00a0 I took one sip, and then decided to take a peek out back.\u00a0 I don’t know what possessed me to do so other than perhaps instinct, but I was rewarded with the sight of the young red-tailed hawk perched in a rather fine position in the big maple tree of the backyard next door.\u00a0 And it was a splendidly clear morning with warm, early light beaming down brightly.<\/p>\n

There was nothing else to do except grab Matilda and position her next to the window in order to guarantee getting at least one good shot since that early in the day the hawks are usually actively hunting and my stepping outside is cause for them to move on in search of more readily accessible prey.\u00a0 And to be honest, the angle from the window was perhaps better than I’d get outside since the hawk was sitting amidst a lot of sticks.<\/p>\n

I opened the window and fired away.\u00a0 The hawk was undisturbed by this so having at least a good daily photo\u00a0I donned my best Southpark attire and headed outside to try for more (and maybe even better).\u00a0 It was worth the effort.\u00a0 Turns out the hawk wasn’t going anywhere and I was able to get a great vantage point on it and snag some excellent shots using\u00a0low ISO and a perfect f-stop.<\/p>\n

My original intention and what would be my daily photo was catching the red-tail in the middle of a blink:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It seemed so serendipitious since it was, after all, New Year’s Eve and 2008 had\u00a0blown\u00a0past\u00a0in what seemed the blink of an eye.\u00a0 But I was unprepared for what happened next.\u00a0 I thought the hawk was about to launch into flight so steadied the camera.\u00a0 Instead of flying off, however, it looked to be only trying to empty its crop:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And sure enough, emptying its crop was its intention, all right.\u00a0 However, it didn’t warn me it was about to empty the contents of its stomach, too!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only one word came to mind.\u00a0 Ick!!!<\/em>\u00a0 And then, just like any\u00a0properly goofy\u00a0youngster, it shamelessly let out what looked for all intents and purposes\u00a0like one big,\u00a0final belch:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

With\u00a0such a show, I was half surprised I didn’t actually hear something.\u00a0 Of course, the hawk was then quite pleased with itself and I’m sure that getting rid of the undigestible bits of whatever it had eaten did feel much better.\u00a0 I considered going next door to examine the pellet and see if I could determine what it had eaten, but it was cold, I didn’t want to bother my neighbor, and part of me was afraid I’d find it had feasted on one of the furballs so decided to postpone such exploration until later.<\/p>\n

The young hawk continued to pose prettily, looking at me in sweet\u00a0innocence, as if to say, “I didn’t do anything weird, lady!”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

By now, I’d filled the card on the camera so brought Matilda in and went upstairs to pull off the photographs.\u00a0 While there, I took a peek out of one of the 2nd-floor windows and the unusual events of the morning were apparently not yet finished, for there, suddenly, on the other side of the big maple tree from the young red-tail, was perched the adult Cooper’s hawk!\u00a0\u00a0It was most decidedly a very rare occurrence for both these predators to be sitting in the same tree\u00a0so I raced downstairs and grabbed the other camera, mounted the next-largest lens onto it,\u00a0and promptly flew back out the\u00a0door.\u00a0 By the time I got there, though, the young red-tail was taking off.\u00a0\u00a0As I watched, an even rarer scene then began to unfold in front of my\u00a0surprised eyes – the adult Cooper’s hawk chased the young red-tail out of its territory!\u00a0<\/p>\n

I watched as the red-tail tried to maneuver through the trees;\u00a0at first it seemed to be\u00a0thinking simply reperching in another tree would be enough.\u00a0 But red-tails are nowhere near as nimble as\u00a0the Coop, who is by design adapted\u00a0to chase and catch smaller birds as they attempt to tuck themselves inside the safety of branches, so with the Coop staying so close on its tail, after making effectively a large, deep circle through the neighboring backyards, the red-tail had no choice but to finally lift and head out towards more open space in order to get away.<\/p>\n

The adult Cooper returned not long afterwards, giving me only a stick-picking ID kind of shot of it.\u00a0 But to have seen it in fast flight, hard on the tail of the red-tail hawk was enough.\u00a0 It was surely quite the spectacular ending to this rather incredible year of up-close-and-personal encounters with our urban raptors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.” (David Lynch) \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 An unusual year came to an unusual end.\u00a0 Since I’m on vacation and, finally,\u00a0for once actually behaving as if I’m on vacation, I slept in later than is the norm on New Year’s Eve and casually padded into the kitchen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}