Chris Zimmer: Birds, Birds, Birds + Squirrels

Monday, June 15, 2009

Birds, Birds, Birds + Squirrels

It’s been an interesting few days as far as bird watching here in the yard. A very sociable white-breasted nuthatch stopped by and happily posed for pictures. We also had “bird wars” over the weekend when two red shouldered hawks decided to battle it out in our front yard, flying in an out of our oak tree as we worked in the yard directly below. One of them stopped to rest on the fence in the back yard to look around. It was little lighter in color and somewhat larger than the red shouldered hawk I photographed last week that sat on that same fence, almost the same spot.

This morning, I spotted a huge turkey vulture – also known as a buzzard – in my neighbor’s yard, feasting on some poor, unfortunate squirrel that may have run out of luck when it tried to cross the street. I was able to get off one good photo before a small truck barreled down the street making an awful racket, scaring the bird off. Since we seem to have a bumper crop of squirrels running around lately (I encountered 7 of them running around my driveway all at one time on Saturday – I got 5 of them in one picture), I am sure that the vulture will have plenty more chances for some squirrel for breakfast. By the way, that is one unattractive bird.

The White Breasted Nuthatch