In my prior bird tail, I solicited help from my readers on identifying a particular creature that I have gandered over the years and swiftly captured recently with my phone. I am not a know-it-owl, so I was appreciative when several of my colleagues chirped-in on LinkedIn. Thanks to their feed-back, I am very confident the avian was a red-tailed hawk.
What flew me over was the image accompanying this article, an extract of a video from allaboutbirds.com. This particular image is a dead-winger for what I photographed in March, to the point it is hard to feather my bird not being a red-tailed hawk.
Unfortunately this aviation comes with some eggngst, since I brooded over the possibility this hawk attempts to prey on smaller dogs. My original geese, the Cooper’s Hawk, goes after smaller birds. However, referring to allaboutbirds.com again, under “Backyard Tips,” beaks the door open for our four-footed friends to be red-tailed hawk meals (emphasis mine):
You’re unlikely to see this bird in your backyard (unless yours is a big one). Red-tailed Hawks eat mostly mammals, so they’re less likely to visit a popular feeder than a Cooper’s or Sharp-shinned hawk is. It’s very rare for a Red-tailed Hawk to go after dogs or cats.
“Very rare” means that is could hap-pen and has hap-penned. In hensight, I don’t egret all the times I kept watch when my old Brussels Griffon was out in the yard. I still remember, years ago, seeing this very type of hawk perched at the top of a neighbor’s tree.
So what’s nest? Hopefully no more crazy bird talk, at least for a quail.
