October 9, 2009 - 2
Cool sightings of the week:Happened on Tuesday afternoon when I stopped home from work briefly to grab a few things. Upon exiting my truck, the blue jays were heard screeching madly from the backyard. I knew that the bird feeders were already full and I could tell from the tone of the blue jay's cries that this was something perhaps more serious and deserving of further investigation. Especially since blue jays are known to be good backyard protectors, handily warning other songbirds of any approaching danger. I entered the backyard and decided to go a little further back than I might usually under such circumstances. I turned the corner past the tall grasses at the rear of the meadow, half expecting to find the neighborhood cat or some other similarly nefarious backyard critter, but when I looked down the lawn behind the meadow there was no such critter to be found. I headed back past the fire pit, jumping onto a log for a bit of spirited posturing and frivolity. That's when I saw it, it wasn't a cat, it was the neighborhood red-tailed hawk just taking flight from it's perch in a tree and it was being followed closely by at least three loudly screeching blue jays. I couldn't tell if the hawk had been victorious over any prey during it's visit to the backyard, but catching sight of a handful of blue jays in hot pursuit of a much larger red-tailed hawk this week was very cool!
Heard on WDVR FM every Friday at 3PM during Anything Goes!
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