one monkey typing

Our one-legged Cooper's Hawk has staked out the place.

Notice he has only one leg. He was resident in our area a few years ago as a fledgling and had a broken leg at the time. We kept an eye on him and talked to the local raptor rescue group a few times. They said as long as he seems to be feeding himself, just let him be. We were happy to give him an area with plentiful sparrows, mice and snakes. I just watched him attempt (and fail, but feathers were lost) to take down a sparrow.

Clearly, he's made his way in the world. We're happy for him.

A couple of weeks ago I thought it would be a good exercise for me to try to take at least one photo worth sharing per day. At this point, I think maybe one per week would be a more achievable goal.

I scored an incredible find earlier this week; I found a like-new Sigma 170-500mm lens on a Canon mount at a rummage sale, and got it for $250. Today I went out and managed to keep the dog inside long enough for the birds to come back to the feeders and took a few shots. I thought it was back focusing a bit but I think it's just that at 500mm it's very difficult to get the camera to focus on the bird and not a leaf 6 inches behind it (and at 500mm, 6 inches is outside of DOF).

Anyway, I'm not certain of the identification, this may be a juvenile of some kind, but for now I think this is a female cowbird. Taken from about 60 feet away, cropped down a bit. This is a 100% crop (not resized). Shot RAW with a bit of sharpening and some brightness tweaking.

on the way in to work, and it surprised me back.
Along a lonely back gravel road, something that sounded like a hawk or screech owl made a pretty loud, surprised sounding "Ska-reeek!" in a tree over my head. I think I woke it up. Well, it certainly woke me up too.
I'd just cleaned and lubed my drivetrain yesterday, and the studded tires don't make much noise on the gravel, so it was nice and quiet, so the bird got maximum scare out of its noise.