Hanging out with Hawks

The other day my dog Blazin and I were in my front yard where we have a couple of large trees. I happened to glance up just as a really big bird took flight from one of them. My dog turned and looked at me, like what the heck was that? I realized it had to be a hawk. The next evening as I was at my kitchen window, doing the dishes, I looked out and saw a hawk sitting in a tree. Wow, 2 sightings in 2 days, that was a bit unusual for our neighborhood.
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The next evening as my family and I were having dinner on our deck, we noticed 2 hawks on some brush in our neighbor's yard. This time we were able to grab the binoculars and check them out. As we were observing them, 2 more hawks went flying by. 4 hawks!!! We thought how crazy is that. Then we saw one hawk alight on a fence railing with a critter in his talons. He then flew off and left it there.

Over the next several days, there were more hawk sightings and we finally figured out that 2 of the hawks were smaller and obviously the offspring of the larger hawks. The parents were teaching the young ones how to hunt. The kill on the fence was set up for the young hawks to practice on.

One evening as my husband sat on the deck he witnessed a bird flying by with a hawk in hot pursuit. The bird escaped and the hawk paused briefly on our deck railing to as if to contemplate where he went wrong.

Nature up close and personal like this is pretty cool, I wish the hawks lots of luck, especially in taking out plenty of the voles that like to terrorize my garden plants.