The Hawk Has His Lunch

Talk about Wild Kingdom! I was walking in Forest Lawn Cemetery and I see, some yards away on the bank of the creek, this big bird. He was perched on the ground and he was eating something.

You know me and the Seek app, I had to try to get a picture of this bird to identify it. It took many pictures -- the Seek app is finicky -- however just as I was about to give up, it told me what the bird was.

It was a Red-Shouldered Hawk!

And he was having his lunch.

It is kind of horrifying to see a hawk having his lunch. As Howard said later, you know that whatever he was eating had been having a nice day until he was lifted up by this hawk, carried to high heights, then dropped to the ground so as to be stunned, and then eaten. That is what Howard says hawks do.

What about Howard Hawks, the great movie director?

I felt like him when I was filming this hawk!

Here is some footage I took of the dramatic scene. Warning: Gross!

 

I kept filming the hawk off and on, edging a bit closer. I must have been about 15, 20 feet away from him finally. I didn't want to go away, you know? This is the only time in my life I will have this experience. I will never again be this close to a hawk eating his lunch.

The hawk kept glancing up, as you can see in the video. He was always on the watch for something that might want to take his kill away from him. He would glance at me too from time to time, however I think he understood that I didn't want a bite.

The video at the top of this post is pretty graphic. I think his meal might have been a squirrel.

That was what this other bird was eating once, this big bird up in a tree. I thought I had written about it but now I cannot find it.

I will have to dig out those photos and we can compare and contrast!

Into the Woods

Every day I try to get in 10,000 steps. Today I did not exactly get them in! That is because I was in Cheektowaga in the morning and I wound up afterwards walking in Stiglmeier Park.

I have hardly ever been in this park. I went there once with my friend Meghan to do Zumba. It was about 90 degrees and there we were in this parking lot doing aerobics. I will never forget that!

Today was memorable too however for very different reasons. One thing, I did not exactly get in my 10,000 steps. I was too busy standing still with my mouth open.

I could not believe this place!

I had sort of thought that I would be walking around parking lots and shelters and stuff. I did not realize there are these trails. The trails wind around through the woods and you just follow them.

This cracked me up: At the entrance to the trails they tell you, "Do not walk alone."

LOLOLOL!

If I did not walk alone I would never walk!

Good luck getting someone to walk with you, you know?

Anyway. Oiks and schufts would not be walking this nature trail on this 25 degree day, or whatever it was today. It was just this side of bitterly cold. My hands were cold in my gloves. So I walked the trails unbothered.

What was there was birds.

It was insane! Like being at a zoo exhibit. As soon as I walked into the woods, a chickadee flew right in front of me and stopped on a tree bough, inches from my face. A cardinal sat on a branch a short distance away. Below the boardwalk where I was walking, a whole group of robins were bouncing around.

Then I saw a woodpecker, right in front of me. I had never seen a bird like that so close! That is he at the top of this post.

I also saw another woodpecker however my hands were too cold to take out the camera at that particular time. Let's admit it, your phone being a camera can be kind of a pain. You cannot just enjoy your walk. You are always feeling obliged to shoot photos and video.

I also saw red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, and a deer.

 

There was a woman in the news a long time ago who made headlines because she would not stop feeding the deer in Stiglmeier Park. I will not make that mistake!

I felt like that line from Shakespeare: "I like this place, and I would willingly waste a lot of time here."

I walked the Maple View Trail and then the Timber Trail. By the time I was done I had only about 7,000 steps. I might have made up a few more steps in the Goodwill afterwards.

However that is another story for another day.

How To Identify Birds, and the Bird I Saw Today

On lucky days I spot a new bird! Today was one of those days.

On my walk in Delaware Park I heard a bird call, a kind of low rumbling call, I never remember hearing. It is hard to describe bird calls and I do not know the correct terminology. However I was able to fix the call in my head so I would remember it.

Then I looked up into the tree I was passing hoping I could see the bird. This time of year, you do not have all the leaves in the way, so sometimes you can. And sure enough! I saw him!

He had a red head. The rest of him was gray. He was making that call and another bird was answering him from another tree.

I got home and found this great site, All About Birds.

They have a feature called Bird ID.  Oh, darn. I am trying to link to Bird ID and now it is demanding my email and stuff. A few minutes ago I was able to get around it somehow by Googling "Northeast US Bird With Red Head." And this site came up, and it let me do Bird ID.

They ask you questions such as, where were you when you saw the bird? Buffalo, N.Y., USA.

Where was the bird? On a beach, on the ground, at a feeder, in a tree? In a tree.

What colors were the bird? They let you choose two and I put "red and gray."

I discarded a few possibilities -- robin, scarlet finch -- because I know robins, duh, and for finch, the call was not right.

About the fourth bird down, though, I had a positive ID. The sound was "a churr, a kwirr." I listened to it to make sure.

It turns out what I saw was a Red-Bellied Woodpecker!

Triumphantly, I clicked a box that said, "Yes, that's my bird!"

Success!

I copied the picture from All About Birds and pasted it up above and now I am sitting here regarding it proudly.

A new addition to the mental aviary!