Well, here's a first for us. This afternoon, Norm was taking down the garland and bows and lights outdoors, and he said (as he came into the house all festooned in fake greenery) that he thought something had crashed in the garage. Maybe the side door blew open and hit the car.He went back outside after depositing the greenery and was back immediately: "Judi, do you want to see something?" Now that's a question that's hard to avoid. "There's a hawk in our garage," he added.
I thought the dear man was losing it, but I grabbed the Olympus (gotta get something better than a 3x digital zoom!) and followed him to the driveway. Sure enough. A full grown red-tailed hawk was just sitting there next to Zip the Mazda. Norm said when he first saw it, it appeared a little stunned, and it just watched him as he walked up the driveway to within about 20 feet of it. As I tried to get close enough to photograph it, it got a little leery and shortly after the second picture, it spread its wings and took off, low, toward a tree two houses south.Norm looked around inside and found a few marks in the dust on the window of the side door. Our best guess is that it was cruising for food (perhaps eyeing a squirrel enjoying the heated birdbath--blue cord goes to it--or even some of the small birds around the feeder) and miscalculated its glide, crashing into the garage. Of course, we'll never know, unless it happens again. Hawks are much more plentiful over the parks and other open land (cemeteries and golf course and airport) in our vicinity since the crow population was reduced by West Nile a few years ago. Supposedly they subsist on small rodents, but I think they also prey on small songbirds as well. I'd rather not see them hanging around my feeder, scaring all the cardinals, juncos, chickadees, wrens and other neat birds away. They can have all the English sparrows and starlings they want--it won't hurt their numbers! Not even the blue jay piped up to scold this surprise visitor.
But it has to be a special day when, in the midst of a metropolitan area of 2.2 million people, you can walk out to your garage and find a hawk sitting there, staring at you!
5 comments:
Hawks do well in metropolitan areas. They nest in any space they can find in tall buildings --window ledges, niches in designs. Yes, they may take a songbird, but usually only the ones that aren't able to get out of their way. Meanwhile, they do get mice and (shudder) rats and snakes. One landed in my yard one day. I think he was after a snake. I felt privileged. You have the best luck with your pictures! By the time, I get my camera out, whatever bird I want to photograph has long gone.
What's the expression? "A hawk in the garage is worth two in the nest"?
great photo and story... but you piqued my curiosity by getting your car's bumper in the photo. i can't quite make out what the bumper stickers say and I'm dying to know.
Josh, the stickers on Norm's car say:
Save Normandie Golf Course
The Guy with One House
Yes We Can
In the interest of being non-political, I attempted to crop them out to just show the hawk, but the resulting image was too grainy to make out the hawk. As it was, I cropped more than 50 percent of the original image out. Which is why I need a better camera!
OK, the first sign is Stop the Normandie Invasion. (Save Normandie Golf Course was the yard sign.) This from the campaign to stop a developer from putting 504 "units" on the Normandie Golf Course on the Rock Road, which is part of Bel Nor. The other two are left over from the presidential election. We decided to leave them at least until the inauguration this month, maybe longer since bumper stickers are really hard to remove. FTR, I have the same set on my Caravan.
Lovely. What a wonderful visit!
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