Thursday, September 24, 2009

Survival Of The Meekest

A call-of-the-wild moment presented itself the other day as we were driving home; A fine example of a red-tail hawk was busy doing what they do best, and smack in the middle of a road-side field, just begging for someone to blog it...



Pulling over with a near-screeching halt, and leaving the radio left on for an exacerbated, glaring Kelly; I sprung out of the vehicle and slowly orbited the raptor...trying not to perturb him mid-meal.



Forming a wide stop and go circle and carefully tightening around the busy hawk, who was clearly aware of what was going on, the raptor would occasionally stop eating to give me a direct crook-eye. Eaasyy...Eaaaasyyy...



...there was a brief, tense moment when an angry clawing was surely about to come swooping my way....



But apparently thinking better of it, the hawk decided that the intrusive primate, (who was now nonchalantly facing away and absorbed with his sneakers), didn't warrant giving up fresh hot squirrel innards.



It was a relief... this bird was a big specimen and could probably have chased me down, tearing into head and flailing arms before I made it anywhere near the vehicle...and worse, finish me off right before Kelly's smug, I-told-you-so gaze...

But by now he had completely written off the spectator and was getting into the good, squirelly stuff, leaving me to snap away...



Mmm-mmmm-mmm-mmm-mm.



Good to be a hawk...



...bad day to be a squirrel...

5 comments:

Fishing413 said...

Haha great post. Now that is a blood sausage! Amazing predators. He was defenitaley giving you the stink eye for a second there.

Radar Check said...

Nice love the last pic of entrail spaghetti. Closer you get to these in the wild the closer you feel like your in a paintball game, never know where its going to come from.

Mary E.Carey said...

OMG, the last photo is over the top! What a great post, though. My favorite part is when the blotter gets absorbed with his sneakers. Were you trying to fool that horrible hawk?

jaz said...

Did you see Kelsey Flynn's post about the hawk eating the squirrel on King Street in Northampton? It was a picture in the Gazette. I heard, but can't confirm, that people called animal control and demanded that someone make the hawk stop doing that to the squirrel!

Tony said...

Hmm. I was wondering if those last couple of pics was crossing the line, but you seemed to enjoy it!

Mary, I was definitely trying to outsmart the hawk, and just barely.

Jaz, I saw Kelsey Flynn's post, and there were some others recently, like masslive's Laura Merwin and Josh Thayer. I'm glad I could contribute to the carnage...