Holly's Notes and Condition

Summertime Wildlife

This last week provided a lot of wildlife sightings, beginning, of course, with the bunnies, both at the entrance to our tract and on our back slope, I watched (7) of them.
Then the crows got all noisy and I looked down the back hill, in time to see them trying to keep a coyote moving out of their hunting grounds.
Then we had (7) turkey buzzards circling and then roosting on the roof of the house, one block up from us, to the east - that is unusual for them, usually they hunt either solo or in pairs and they don't usually hunt over our neighborhood very often. They prefer hunting around the Lake to the west of us.
Then we had (2) red tailed hawks hunting over our neighborhood - the first was really big and the crows and ravens tried to take it on, but it just soared effortlessly, higher and higher and they couldn't keep up, then it would swoop down out of the sky, so fast, searching.
The second encounter I had with a red tailed hawk, was yesterday afternoon - it flew right over my head, within (6) feet of me, as it searched the yards for a meal.
Up to yesterday, I had only seen a pair of swallows flying over the back hillside and in the neighborhood, but when that hawk showed up, suddenly, I saw probably (20) swallows flying together, safety in numbers, harassing the hawk and protecting their young, until it flew off to the west and back near the Lake.
I've previously mentioned the mockingbirds, sparrows, chickadees,finches and hummingbirds. Plenty of lizards. The spiders have come out, with the heat.
We also have a pair of pigeons that like to eat the grit and gravel of my neighbor's desert garden to the south.

posted by Holly @ 7:11 AM