After a long time of not finding any red-tailed hawks at the cathedral early this evening, I re-checked the close as I was about to end the day. There I found two of young hawks raising a ruckus as they swooped around, chasing and pouncing and otherwise causing chaos.
There was squirrel chasing. The squirrels won, 4-nil.
Fence sitting.
Squirrel ogling.
Pulpit sitting.
Pouncing on god-knows-what.
Glaring at the witnesses.
Acting like nothing was happening.
More glaring.
Cowering because... oh, no!
Your sibling wants a piece of whatever it was you found on the ground.
Now we have some examining and some glaring.
And examining and staring.
Then a pounce and a hey-gimme-some-of-that.
And a game of chase around the lawn, followed by a disappearance into the trees.
Almost seemed the fun was over, but the kids put on an encore.
The mutual examination of the lawn was somewhat quieter this time.
A bit of consultation.
Someone must have spotted a parent in the area, because both took off and swooping around again. As pigeons kept bursting into the air as hawks swept by, it seemed one of the young hawks was working his way up the side of the nave. Perched halfway up, it started begging. Then it got to the top of a nave buttress and begged even more.
Then one parent came soaring overhead. Impossible to tell if it was Isolde or Norman, but the adult was definitely in mid-molt, with last year's R1 and L1 tail feathers gone and new ones just beginning to grow in.
But ah-hah, another hawk perched atop a nave buttress, and it's the other parent.
A moment later this parent also took off, disappearing over the top of 501 Cathedral Parkway (hey, I usd to live there), leaving the one young hawk still begging atop a buttress.
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