BTW, do you and klehner live next to each other?
No. If I am not mistaken he is in New Jersey and I am in Michigan, opposite sides of the EDT time zone.
**How do your songbirds react to having a hawk family near your yard? **
It was sort of funny. Normally we have birds at our feeders and baths sun up to sun down. It was odd because I was watching the feeders while we were eating dinner, and it struck me that there were no birds there. That is when my wife noticed the 4 hawks in the tree and said that they had just gotten there. I imagine that the songbirds are going to be a little upset for the rest of the summer because fledgling hawks stay close to their nests for 45-60 days.
**The only bird of prey that I’ve seen in my yard was a small owl one night and I wasn’t able to get a pic of it. **
We have several types of birds of prey in our area. There are a few varieties of hawks that we see. We have the buzzards (maybe not technically a bird of prey but still really big birds). I have also heard there is a some eagles in the area, but I have never heard them. Really close by, there is a park that started a program to reintroduce osprey into the area. This started about 8 years ago. Now they have a bunch of nesting pairs and they are starting to spread out. I know we have owls because I can hear them. I have never seen one though, and I doubt I would ever be able to get a picture of one.
Bernie
Yes, I’m in NJ. At my old house, we had a feeder whose “residents” nearly drove us into the poor house. Whenever a hawk (almost always a red-tailed which are common here) was in the neighborhood, there were no birds to be seen or heard. None.
Many years ago, while at a local school to practice softball, we saw that a large owl (Great Horned?) was caught in a soccer net. Damn, that thing had wicked-looking talons and beak! We used a softball bat to hold its head down, and cut the net from around the tangled talon.
We had what I think was a sharp-shinned hawk (though probably the more common Cooper’s) eating a mourning dove under a butterfly bush in our backyard a couple of years ago, before flying off to our fence with some remnant. The kids loved it.
We have some bald eagles nearby, but haven’t seen one in a month or so. They were doing road construction on the bridge over the reservoir where we spotted it, so it may have moved to quieter areas.
At our new house, we had a dead groundhog in the backyard. Don’t know what killed it, but we had a flock of turkey buzzards working on it. I don’t think our Cooper’s could take down a groundhog. A couple of years ago in November, I passed this house and noted that there were half a dozen turkey buzzards on the roof, apparently keeping warm near the chimney. Next day, there were a dozen. The next day, there must have been 30 of them on the roof, lawn, and neighboring house! Like something out of a movie.