On the way in from the parking lot yesterday, I caught up with a colleague from Mechanical Engineering, who was on a bike, but had stopped to look at one of the local raptors. There are at least two red-tailed hawks living on campus, and one of them was on the ground only ten or fifteen feet from the sidewalk. It had some sort of small object in its talons, and pecked at it as I was walking up.
The object in question turned out to be a pine cone, and while I was watching, it sort of hopped up into the air, and pounced on... another pine cone. This was at least the fourth pine cone to get this treatment, as my colleague had already seen it done a couple of times.
"Wow," I thought, "Our campus is home to the world's stupidest raptor."
Yesterday afternoon, after work, I played pick-up soccer with a bunch of students, faculty, and staff, on the football field, right next to the path I was on in the morning. While I was running a warm-up lap, I saw the hawk again, perched on the fence, cheerfully disembowelling a squirrel.
I guess it was just practicing in the morning, to get the technique down.
(The picture above is originally from this site.)
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I came not 10 feet from that hawk yesterday morning as it flew out of the inlet by the door between ITS and Butterfield... and then it sat on the roof of the connector for like 10 minutes calling. I think it might have been injured...
Juvenile?
I also saw some sort of raptor, probably a hawk, on Wednesday - perched on a temporary fence in the driveway of a preschool next door to my building, pecking at the remains of a squirrel.
Stayed there for about half an hour, not particularly perturbed by the mockingbird that was continually harrassing it, often swooping down and touching (clawing?) the hawk's rear end.
I spent some time watching it through my 4" reflector telecope, and tried taking some pictures of it through the eyepiece.