Boid!

[gridlore]

All work ceased this morning at Lord & Sons. Throughout the shop all eyes were fixed skyward.

A Christmas miracle? An unexpected total eclipse heralding the coming of Ming? No.

A hawk had flown into the building. A Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) to be precise.

Now, it's not uncommon to see birds inside the shop. Starlings have set up numerous nests among the rafters (and the more adventurous ones have actually nested inside the stands we use to hold bar products) so we're used to seeing birds flying around the place (especially near the break table, where food can be found) but a hawk was news. We all were pretty impressed that such a large bird could fly so gracefully through the spaces at the top of the warehouse. There was much discussion on how to get it out, and I, being an ass, told a coworker that hawks went after the color red; prompting him to remove his Cardinals cap with great haste.

While I was out "working" the hawk evidently scared the shit out of the folks work at the sorting table by swooping down, grabbing a starling, and, seeing daylight, making his break.

Comments

[nobleplatypus]

I had a red-tailed hawk close encounter, once. It was over Thanksgiving break a few years ago. We noticed all the ducks had disappeared, so I went tromping out through the snow to check it out. I looked through the little duck door and saw them all huddled in the far corner of the building looking freaked out. So I, being an ass, stuck my whole head in the little door and promptly found myself face-to-beak with a hawk eating one of our ducks. It was seriously less than a foot from my face. I backed out of that building like lightning. :P And even after we chased it out, the damn thing wouldn't leave! It kept hanging out in trees by the duck house. We had to string up some netting over their main area and only give them supervised outdoor time for the next few days, until it finally gave up and left.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Hey, would you leave, if you had a house full of easy meals and winter coming on?

[nobleplatypus]

A full-grown duck isn't that easy a meal, though. Not hard to catch, but they're fat so the hawk can't fly off with it. At least that was the only hawk incident we've had to deal with.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

When we had the Huge Pine Tree in the front yard, we would frequently see a hawk near the top eating lunch.
The first time, I noticed that feathers were floating down from the top of the tree. Looked up and saw the hawk working on its meal.
After that, we would just occassionally see a bunch of feathers and know what had happened.
I know they eat birds and small rodents and we have plenty of birds of several types and lots of squirrels, so I wasn't surprised to see the hawk.
Just bummed when the tree had to go and so the hawk went away. *sniff*