A Little Wild Kingdom In My Back Yard

I came home from a ride the other day and went around back to go into the walk out basement to put my stuff away. All that is normal, but when I went upstairs and looked out the window, I saw this guy hanging out on the section of railing I extended from the deck, to make the drop off the retaining wall a little safer.

He was stalking a couple squirrels that were more than aware of his presence. I watched for a while, while it played out, hoping to see a kill. I didn't want to scare him off either. Eventually he decided to switch up his viewpoint and flew over to a nearby tree branch.

Then I went outdoors to try to get an even better look. I moved slowly and he was fully aware of me, but was super focused on the squirrels, who were surprisingly enough, staying very close by on the tree. I guess they knew enough to realize he couldn't manage a mid air U-turn through branches, so they sat and waited him out. Both squirrels were making a hell of a lot of noise though. I got close enough to get another shot.

Shortly after that he flew up to a higher branch and was harder to see through the leaves. The squirrels were still squakking away, but I called it a wrap and went inside for some lunch.

Pretty cool though. I'm a huge birdwatcher, so this was a treat. The Red Tail was as big as I've ever seen. When he was sitting on the rail he was probably 20" high and looked absolutely huge. Bigger than some dogs.

Thats it for now. Master's road races are incredibly retarded to race in and even worse to write about, so I've been waiting for an exciting one to report on, but it could very well be that we have to wait for Cross to see some real racing again.

Thanks for reading, JB