"Life & Death Drama in the Backyard" Topic

I sat down in my favorite chair next to a backyard window, and a sharp-shinned hawk struck a robin at that very moment. The hawk held its prey to the ground and glared around at all and sundry, while its meal expired in its talons. Other robins looked on in horror, or at least in shock (or maybe just thinking "Yipe. Hope there's not another one.").
A moment later the hawk flew off with its evening meal.

And that's your nature moment for the day.

I was working in Reno a few years back and, just as I was leaving the building and walking to my car in the parking lot, I noticed a large number of white doves flying over me.

Suddenly I saw this puff of feathers high above me, and then some small bird of prey landed with a limp dive in its talons. The impact must have been phenomenal for there to have been a cloud with so many feathers coming out all at once.

Nature is definitely impressive.

Dan

Yeah. I saw a squirrel get nailed in the middle of a city street by a hawk. Almost a sonic boom!

A few years back I saw a red tailed hawk take apart large bird in our neighbors back yard. We couldn't tell what it was because by that time it almost done. The hawk left a six foot diameter ring of feathers on the ground when it was done.

Years ago walking along by a pond heard a boom overhead and looked nearly straight up to see a hawk slipping to one side of a few drifting feathers and a duck heading the opposite direction.

Lucky duck.

On a smaller scale was walking along the walk in front of the house and saw a streak in the air as a wasp took a fly that was buzzing along. Fly's head landed on the walk.

Years ago I was delivering pizzas to a neighborhood on the local lakeshore with nice wooded lots. As I was walking to the door, pizza bag in hand, I suddenly found a drifting cloud of feathers raining down around me. I looked up to see a red tailed hawk glaring down from a low branch of a big oak with a plump pigeon pinned to the tree and plucked feathers being strewn everywhere. His efficiency was impressive.

A while back out the back of the missus' house I watched a frog trying to eat a worm, he kept trying to shovel it into his mouth, the worm kept trying to crawl back out. An oddly surreal moment.