Thats a hawk. Did you get it's AMA number? Here in Kansas we have many sparrow hawks, some eagles and the 'dirty' birds, red headed turkey buzzards- they eat any rotten nasty road kill they can find, then upchuck on anything that gets too close. They will also just stand over their road kill and let you run over them before they will leave their meal. No fear at all. The sparrow hawks were a protected species-not sure if they still are. We had a couple that kept coming into our store when I was working. They'd fly in over customers' heads when the automatic doors opened and hide in the ceiling rafters. The company hired a business to remove them. Because they were protected they couldn't kill or harm them. They gave us all lasers to blind and irritate them. They usually headed for the exit when you hit them with the laser. Eventually they moved on.
Dave
I had to deal with birds in warehouses and building just about everywhere I ever worked. Like you experienced, I was taught to turn all the lights out too make it as dark as possible and open one door, and they would fly to the light, and that works very well. Where I live in North St. Louis County, I am just about dead center between the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers and can see everything from large owls to Bald Eagles and everything in between. Bald Eagles mostly in the winter as they like to fish at the Chain of Rocks section of the Mississippi. We have a rabbit population here that can get out of hand and I rely on the hawks ( not sure what breed but there are usually a pair of them that can be seen now and then) and the local owls to keep them in check. My wife and daughter got to witness a rabbit being taken by a hawk or an owl one evening and expected me to do something about it!! I told them to invite it back for seconds!! I have been lucky enough to have seen the large owls strike without warning and complete silence from time to time. They can be incredibly fast going across the ground and you can not hear them. They will watch from the surrounding trees, and then fly around cars and trucks, using them as cover to nail their dinner. I was pushing a dirt bike across my yard back to my big shed one evening and a large hawk about knocked me down as it was pouncing on a mouse at the base of the porch steps. Lots of the red headed turkey vultures also, and even an occasional wild turkey!! We get deer, foxes, groundhogs, racoons, possums, and there have been many reports of coyotes and I think I have seen them late at night at a distance, so we don't let our small dog out by herself at any time. I have found carcasses of dead possums in my yard that have been killed, and completely gutted, leaving only the skeleton and skin by something, and I suspect it was a coyote. I wouldn't know what else it could be. And I even had to dispatch a snake that my wife found in her garden that was devouring an adult rabbit, whole!! I let it finish, and then dispatched the snake, so I hope it enjoyed it's last meal!! River otters have worked their way up Cold Water Creek from the Missouri River, gotten into the local Park lake and really had their way with the fish population!! All this wild life and I live in the suburbs!! For the most part, I love the avian kind of wild life, but the rest I could do without!
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: I had a vesiter in my back yard. (Read 600 times)