Some new behaviors…

This morning was one more in a long run of spectacular mornings we’ve been having this fall in Estabrook Park, with mostly clear skies, nearly still air, and seasonably cool temps. Plus, highway traffic in the distance was Sunday-morning light, and the parkway was closed again for the last Shorewood Farmer’s Market of the year, so conditions were perfect for communing with the critters.

My first opportunity came already at the north end of the soccer fields as I hiked across the lawn to enjoy a stroll right down the middle of the parkway, and I spotted this young Cooper’s hawk in one of the crabapple trees on the other side of the pavement.

It has been my experience that they only come this close to the ground when hunting, and this one soon proved my hunch right when it went for one of the many squirrels that were foraging for and hiding nuts in the lawn below. It came up empty, however, and paused for a moment on the grass to see where that wily squirrel had gone.

It soon tried again, and this time it had something, but hold on a sec. What on earth has it caught?

Ha! That is either a short stick or a chunk of bark, and the hawk looked for all the world like it was just playing as it repeatedly leapt into the air with it.

It even covered its “prey” with its wings and tail, which I read is called “mantling“, and hides it from potential competitors. So, maybe this was practice, instead of just play. Either way, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I was transfixed.

The hawk eventually gave up on the stick and tried for another squirrel on the west side of the parkway, which gave me an opportunity to take a nicer picture. What a magnificent creature, eh?

Anyway, it abandoned that attempt, too, and hopped up onto a waste basket to look for the next quarry, or contemplate the error of its ways.

Then it went back to the crab apple tree where the whole show had started, and I decided to let it be and continue my journey north.

Just as I came to where the paved path runs right beside the parkway, barely a hundred yards from where I watched the hawk, look who I spotted searching for its own breakfast down the bluff and over the river: our second raptor of the morning, a young osprey, by the looks of the white edging it still has on its feathers. What a fabulous way to start the day!

To be continued …