Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 17:02:01 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Mark Hoffman Subject: Shary and Dove MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Backyard watchers -- Late yesterday there was a lot of noise in my backyard (squirrels, crows, etc.). Nothing was readily apparent, but then Amy called to me that a hawk was sitting on the middle of the lawn with something. It turned out to be a young Sharp-shinned Hawk with a Mourning Dove. The hawk spent the next 30 minutes working on the dove. It was plucking it and starting to eat it, while the dove was still giving a couple last ditch attempts to get away. Amy couldn't bear to watch. So much for the quick kill of nature ... Eventually the sharpy seemed to finished (it wasn't scared off) and landed in a nearby tree. A couple minutes later it caught another bird (I think a titmouse), despite being scolded by parids. But it flew off with that one. This morning I examined the remains of the dove in the backyard and was a little surprised to see that it had only eaten about 1/3 of the meat of the bird. Having eaten a few doves in my day, I was tempted to finish the job, but decided perhaps some other local wildlife should benefit, and tossed the carcass on the mulch pile. The sharpy had eaten about 1/2 of one breast, and all the meat around one of the wings. So much for "waste-not" theory of mother natures as well. Two paradigms broken in one afternoon. Also imm. White-crowned Sparrow in yard yesterday and today. Mark Hoffman Sykesville, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================