Mid-October, Sunday afternoon.
I walked into the kitchen to find our house cat sitting on the table and gazing intently out the back window. Looking out, I saw a large predator bird, a hawk I think, perched on the deck railing with a freshly caught meal, probably a pigeon. I found a camera and took this picture through the window.
Hoping for a better shot, I went out the front door and walked around the house but as soon as I came around the back corner, about 50 feet away, it saw me and stared right at me. I took a quick pic and backed away as it seemed like it might abandon lunch if I stuck around.
Back inside I was able to get much closer as the window was only about 6 feet away and the big bird didn’t seem to notice us through the window. So I found the cleanest spot on the window and took more pictures from there. It ate everything, leaving nothing but a grease spot and a feather on the railing. It stuck around and posed for a while before flying off. The whole episode was about an hour.
Here’s some more of the pictures.
all photos by the author.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)