Focus on Priorities

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Focus on Priorities
Focus on Priorities

Found some time, after taking down the Holiday Lights and Christmas Decorations, to scoot over to a local wildlife sanctuary; the trip paid off ;-)

Cooper’s Hawk:

Among the bird world’s most skillful fliers, Cooper’s Hawks are common woodland hawks that tear through cluttered tree canopies in high-speed pursuit of other birds.

Dashing through vegetation to catch birds is a dangerous lifestyle. In a study of more than 300 Cooper’s Hawk skeletons, 23 percent showed old, healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula, or wishbone.

A Cooper's Hawk captures a bird with its feet and kills it by repeated squeezing. Falcons tend to kill their prey by biting it, but Cooper’s Hawks hold their catch away from the body until it dies. They’ve even been known to drown their prey, holding a bird underwater until it stopped moving.

Once thought averse to towns and cities, Cooper’s Hawks are now fairly common urban and suburban birds. Some studies show their numbers are actually higher in towns than in their natural habitat, forests. Cities provide plenty of Rock Pigeon and Mourning Dove prey.

(Nikon Z8, 600/6.3, 1/640 @ f/6.3 ISO 90, edited to taste)

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Taken on: January 3, 2025
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with Don’s PhotoStream Don’s PhotoStream Everybody's photos tagged with Hawk Hawk
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