Saturday: Hawks and Doves

Today was 'Caturday' on Tumblr, which means that I started off the day with a few shots of Elektra, who is not always as excited about internet memes as I am.
Dante and Zephyr were -- typically -- more willing to pose for photographs, particularly after they learned that synchronized sitting is an Olympic event. 
This done, Stephen and I went to the house to check on the garden, where we were relieved to find most of the trees looking relatively unfazed by the heavy snow with which they had been burdened for much of the previous two days.
As I stood listening to the heavy drip of the melting snow, I heard a sudden flapping of wings and a large bird swooped down into the garden before flying out and landing on the fire escape of the building behind me.
It was a red-tailed hawk! (Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the camera to focus through the bamboo leaves, but there's enough there for you to get the idea.) This was the first time we've ever seen a hawk in the backyard, and I was very excited: 'it could eat the cats,' Stephen said, which just goes to show how rare are the things in life that are uniformly positive; still, I felt that the chances of this bird making off with a cat were infinitesimal, so I viewed its arrival as 99.9 percent a good thing, and perhaps even portentous of better things to come, if my friend J___ is to be believed.
The Frank Lloyd Wright sister was wearing a hat of snow.
As were the pots at the edge of the house.
The yellow bamboo reverberated in the gray light.
As did the growing buds of the evergreens.
The Japanese Holly continued to dig out of the avalanche.
The beech tree also seems ready to unwrap its leaves, although experience tells us that this one will wait until mid-May to do so.
In the basement, there was some flooding; fortunately the sump pump worked, but less fortunately it wasn't turning off.
After spending several minutes in the attempt to diagnose the problem, I finally figured out that the entire mechanism had fallen off a stand, which meant that the floating device was not perpendicular to the ground, and hence wasn't shutting off; given how rarely I'm able to repair anything, I felt a great sense of accomplishment after fixing and testing the unit.
Outside the snow continued to melt, but -- for some -- there remained a great amount of work to be done.

Comments

[cat]

red tailed hawk!!
lovely.
i especially enjoy the FLW "sister".
<3

[Matthew Gallaway]

thanks as always, cat!!!!

[Gavan Watson]

Cool hawk. Hope you don't mind my 2 cents on its identification—it's less likely a Red Tailed Hawk and more likely an Accipiter—either Sharpshin or Coopers Hawk.

These two species of hawks often come into backyards looking for birds to eat. Red Tails tend to go for larger mammals (squirrels, rabbits, your cats) and are less often seen perched in backyards.

Most Red Tails would have a belly-band of darker feathers (see http://testcontent.ornith.cornell.edu/pages/demo/PHOTO/LARGE/red_tailed_hawk_2.jpg) which this hawk is missing. Accipiters also have tails with banding, which I think I can see.

Regardless, a neat experience and I'm glad you blogged about it.

[Gavan Watson]

Yikes. That URL is broke-ed. Apologies. This should work: http://testcontent.ornith.cornell.edu/pages/demo/demo_spp.htm?ss=3&keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=488&width=875

[Matthew Gallaway]

Thanks for the clarification, Gavan -- very helpful and interesting.