Nesting!

Coming home from lunch yesterday, I heard the tell-tale screech of a red-tailed hawk from my yard. Fun fact – when you hear a sound effect on a TV show or movie that’s supposed to be an eagle, it’s actually a red-tailed hawk.

I know the sound pretty well – I’ve long been interested in birds of prey, and we live near the Wakarusa Wetlands, which means there’s actually a considerable amount of wildlife in the area. I once saw a dead muskrat in the street near our house, which is an odd thing to find so far from bodies of water.

The screech repeated and was close enough that I wanted to see the bird (biophile, me) so I walked down a house on the block and found it sitting on top of what looked like a squirrel nest. I caught motion across the street, and spotted another red-tailed hawk snapping branches off a tree. I put two and two together, and realized that what I thought was a squirrel nest was in fact a hawk nest in progress!

These new neighbors delight me to no end; I love that wildlife feels comfortable enough to raise families in my neighborhood. We’ve got a healthy population of bats in our bat box. I see mama possum about regularly, and there’s the Fattest Raccoon In the World that I see coming and going via a sewer grate. We have a pair of owls that sex it up outside our house fairly often too. Breezedale is for animal lovers, apparently.

I’m here for it.

Wildlife

brown and white bird on tree branch during daytime
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