Unexpected Visitor, Revisited

My 8/8/18 blog entry was about a Unexpected Visitor – a broad-winged hawk that I found sitting in our birdbath. Broad-winged hawks are typically found in deciduous forest and avoid human contact, so it is unusual to find them in a residential area.

Across August and September, I saw the hawk a handful of times through our family room windows. It periodically sat high in the birch tree in the back of our property overlooking the bird feeder and birdbath, where there is an unobstructed flight path to swoop in on an unsuspecting chipmunks. The chipmunks feed on black oil sunflower seeds that birds drop while on the feeder and so make an attractive and rather easy meal for the hawk.

While it is easy to get photos of the chipmunks, the split second the hawk saw me, it is off. So the top photo is from the Internet. It is unlikely I will see the hawk again this year – with the arrival of cold weather it has likely headed south for the winter. Hopefully, it will be back in the Spring, when I will attempt to get photos.