She's Back!

We have a resident hawk that chose to build her nest right above our garage door/future driveway area. It seemed funny that she chose that spot because she started her nest among all the chaos of the house-building last year. Last spring, we watched her and her chosen mate on our fence post, then we watched her build the nest in the big oak tree. We watched her raise 2 young birds to maturity. We were surprised they both made it since we have been told that often times, a hawk will choose one bird to raise, and ignore the other. This momma hawk kept very busy finding enough to feed them both, and it seemed that they were always hungry! She brought lots of mice, snakes and even rats to her nest for them to devour. We figure she even terrorized the local mockingbird families. We saw several scuffles between the mockingbird community and the mamma hawk. It was even humorous to see the mockingbirds gang up and dive-bomb her nest. It got so bad at one point that she would bring the food for the babies, but stay away as much as she possiby could.

It seems she did favor one of the birds over the other, unless it was simply nature's selection-of-the-fittest in action. One of the babies left the nest about a week and a half before the other one did. We had great fun watching the little guys grow up, and watched in amazement as the teenage birds played their part well. They kept coming back to the nest for a while to get a few more handouts of supper.

Anyway, we have been delighted to find she's refurbishing her old nest to use again this spring. And we will be even happier when her eggs hatch and she'll have to scour the territory for food for the babies. We have pulled 3 dead (drowned) field mice out of our pool in the last week. At least there are no mice in the house!

The first picture above is of a young baby bird. This second picture is of her nest later in the year with the 2 older "teen" birds in it still. Click on the picture and it should expand, if you want to see them better. The pics aren't the best because I had to take them from the ground, and was not as close to the action as I would have liked to have been.