I just came in from taking hawk pics. The wind is blowing, the leaves on the adjoining trees, or those along the sight path were constantly getting in the way. The little guys were regularly shifting around and with the wind/interfering leaves thing I was lucky to catch a shot at all that had birds in it and not just leaves. Because of my less than adequate rig I have to take the shots with a 10 sec delay so vibration can settle down. Then the battery died. It is charging… and as it turns out my focus was off for the entire session. Which is a bitch.
Anyway, for a while I thought there was only one little hawk. Then I saw that there were two. Only after going through the pics I just uploaded into the computer did I notice this:
No wonder they were moving around so much. There is hardly any room for them all! I haven’t been out to look at them in several days, I was astonished to see how big they are… Is it a bad thing to consider cutting down a couple of trees so I can get better shots? I am not sure how close I can get without getting into some serious hawk trouble. More to come, as I get them.
Evidence Based Reality 
My interaction with hawks was always me chasing them away from our hens. I haven’t seen a young one of a hawk
LikeLike
Heh 🙂 I have had chickens and ducks over the years. The ducks were free range, we have a small pond out back, they had it pretty good. Took about 3 years for the critters, hawks included, to pick them off.
The chickens have a pen that saved them from being wiped out. They mostly have died off from old age issues. Although one was caught by a raccoon. I wrote up a story about the raccoon adventure, but never posted it. I don’t want everyone to know how closely I resemble my redneck neighbors at times…let’s just say the raccoon didn’t make it.
LikeLike
Hahah.,
So we can say whatever happened to the raccoon is history.
LikeLike
Yes, yes we can… this coon incident happened just a few months back, I went outside in the afternoon and heard a kerfuffle in the direction of the chickens, a coon had killed a chicken and was trying like crazy to drag it through the fence. It saw me and high tailed it. I knew he would be back, I was ready for him.
Quite a long time back I had a raccoon get in the henhouse. Apparently when I closed up the chickens for the night, the coon was already inside. It was still quite light outside when I put them up…
The next morning all the chickens were dead save one tough little rooster. He was a bloody mess, both eyes gone, feathers missing the rest all askew. Every time he heard me move he bristled up ready for a fight. I was proud of that little guy. I put him down humanely,quickly, there was no way he would be able to feed himself or find water to drink. He literally faced down the devil and survived, it pained me deeply to do what I had to do. I even said a piece for the little guy, something about if there is a place in Valhalla for such a valiant effort, this rooster deserved it.
The rest of the chickens had all been decapitated, killed for sport it looked like. Dead headless (12-15) chickens all over the place. It was a scene from a horror movie. Then I heard something move. The coon was still in there. That raccoon did not make it either. It was then and there, on that day I learned never to take a raccoon at face value, they are cute, they look cuddly, and they have interesting habits like washing their food. Whatever else they may be, you never want to allow one free reign in the chicken coop. To this day I have very little empathy for coons.
LikeLike