Posted on 07/29/2018 9:18:49 PM PDT by EinNYC
This is NYC, not rural NJ. This is what makes this so weird. While my neighbor's 18 month old and 3 year old daughters were happily splashing around in a little pool in the yard, a red tailed hawk landed on the porch railing not 10' from the little girls. My neighbor shot several pics with her cell phone. She would have called me over, knowing I'm an avid birder, but I had just left in my car on an errand. Scared that the raptor might hurt her kids, she grabbed them and took them inside. I guess Mr. Hawk was interested in the flock of sparrows always hanging around or maybe one of the pesky squirrels who like to dig up my garden plants. Or maybe it was interested in the water in the pool. Who knows?
FWIW, I don’t hang the thing, I have it firmly mounted on a pressure-treated 4x4. Yes, skwerlz can climb it. Doesn’t do ‘em any good. Be sure to set your tension light on the spring, so the sqrlz get dumped.
Ok. Beautiful bird.
The kids are safe. The small prey animals are not. I have a red tailed hawk that sits on my backyard fence, 10 feet from my house. He watches intently for the tree rats.
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