So Thursday morning I was sitting quietly at my desk balancing the checkbook and listening to Beethoven’s 5th while waiting for the sewer contractor to show up (a different story all together, please stay tuned) when I heard a bunch of crows creating a ruckus then a feathery, but hefty, thump-fwumph.

For all the world it sounded like one of the dang crows had gotten a little too energetic, or a little too clumsy, and plowed into my study window. Not completely out of the question for all that it’s a second storey window up underneath the eaves. I do still have a series of somewhat muddy flicker tail feather prints along that window because the ditzy flicker was either drilling for insects in the siding or was sitting on the cable that attaches to the side of the house outside my study window, saw his reflection in the window and was whapping himself against the window in an effort to scare off his rival (bird brain indeed).

So I got up to look and what I saw, sadly the camera wasn’t close enough to grab and get a photo, was about half a dozen crows dive bombing the hawk that had knocked a pigeon off of the rooftree and was standing on him in the driveway getting ready to have lunch. Crows got too close to the hawk, hawk loosed his grip a little bit, pigeon, who wasn’t quite dead yet (“I think I’ll take a walk!”), decided that now was the time to beat a hasty retreat and, somewhat clumsily, flolloped off down the driveway, finally managing to take to the air with the hawk in fast pursuit.

Leaving this as a little reminder.

Now we’ve known for quite some time that we support a two stage birdfeeder.
We purchase the sunflower seed to feed the songbirds (and the pigeons, and the squirrels) and there is one, or a series of, Sharp Shinned Hawks that lives locally and snacks on the smaller birds. We don’t mind, particularly when the Sharp Shin takes out a pigeon or the occasional free living rodent (if you’ve got bird feeders you’ve got rats).

And we’ve even seen the results of the hawk’s (hawks’?) occasional snacks.

But save for the time that I was in the hot tub one morning and saw the hawk chasing a pigeon around the garden and then under the arbor and up onto the porch with me, this was the first time I’d seen one in action. I find it remarkable that such a light, slender predator can take on the beefy critters that are the well fed suburban pigeons around here and expect to win on a regular basis. It’s like seeing a chihuahua take on a labrador.

But a lot cooler.