T-Bone

We were out in our front yard recently and saw a crow in the street dragging a steak bone that it had evidently just scavenged from somebody's trash bin.  That wasn't too surprising; these intelligent, raucous birds have taken up residence in the Eucalyptus trees in the neighborhood and never seem to stop squabbling among themselves and terrorizing other birds.  They're sort of Hell's Angels with feathers.

As we watched, the crow finally got control of the bone and flew with it up onto the roof of our neighbors' garage, where it did its little crow happy dance and kept a lookout for other crows who might steal it away as it continued to peck at the bone for a while.

We had forgotten all about that until yesterday, when we were sitting out on the front porch and spotted a strange object on their garage roof looking like, yes, a t-bone.

I suppose some day we should tell the neighbors that they have a steak bone on their garage roof.

And Big Birds, Too

Really Big Bird

The baby Hummingbirds we saw last week aren't the only birds in the area, of course.

We had a hawk land in our bird bath a couple of days ago; it drank some water and sat there for a while fluffing its feathers.  The other birds that normally patronize our feeders and water had all cleared out of the area, so the hawk had the whole yard to itself.

Unfortunately, this was the best picture I could get of it, but it's clear it was a pretty large bird.  It looks to me like it might be a juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawk.

We've had Red-Shouldered Hawks working the canyon regularly in the past, so it would not be unusual to have a nest in the area.  We often hear their high pitched "kee-rah, kee-rah" cry as they hunt varmints in the canyon.

Naturally, the crows that hang out in the canyon aren't pleased at all to have this bird in what they consider their bailiwick.  I saw the hawk sail into the upper end of the canyon, then quickly fly back out, hotly pursued by several crows diving at it.

We're happy to have it, though, and it's welcome to all the gophers and ground squirrels it can eat.