April Shower of Photos : : Day 20

April Shower of Photos

Day 20

Birdie, Birdie in a tree
Won't you sing your song for me?

Look up. Look way up to see the little birdie in the tree

Warm weather and sunny skies offer us amazing landscape changes, nature changes here have been incredible over merely a one week time period. Thoughts of summer are filling my head again.

An Osprey was perched in this tree eating a fish

If you look closely at the upper center area to the left a bit, you'll recognize a rather large osprey sitting there. We watched him arrive very suddenly, flapping around to obtain his balance mostly due to having a huge fish in his talons, weight adjustments were necessary occasionally while perched there. He remained for some time feasting mightily on his prey.

These hawks must be experiencing severe hunger at present, because we also witnessed a hawk charging into a small fir tree in our front yard, scaring a dove into flight. The poor morning dove slammed into our library window really hard, leaving a large oily mark, and then it fell to the ground. We ran to the window and thought just one bird was on the ground, white feathers flying everywhere, when in fact it was the two together, a hawk swiftly began attacking the stunned dove and then whisked her away.

Two doves were visiting us daily on the back deck, eventually gathering items for nest building. With this attack, the dove's poor little nest with two eggs was involuntarily abandoned.

Our daily visits with Mr. & Mrs. Dove were sweet.

Later in the evening, we noticed another the male dove resting on the two eggs, but shortly afterwards he too disappeared, never to return. Hawks are fairly territorial creatures, so we're thinking the birds are fair game here as they return to the now known nests to capture their next meal. It was sad for us to see, though the way nature was intended.