Eagle!

[daidoji_gisei]

This morning a young eagle swooped into the parking lot in front of our store, snatched a pigeon, and then nonchalantly perched on the Wells Fargo ATM hut to dine. I did not see the snatch, but I did see it sitting on the hut afterwards, looking quite at home. I regret that I do not know enough about eagle-kind to say which kind it was.

I was very excited by it, as I have never seen an eagle in the wild before. I pointed out to our new General Manager that if we could find a way to persuade it stay we would have a completely natural pigeon-deterrent for the building. He seemed to find this amusing.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is awesome! I've seen some hawks, but I am incompetent to identify what kind, myself. *g*

Doesn't Buckingham Palace actually have official hawks for clearing out the pigeons, or something? Or was it Big Ben? I can't remember and a cursory Google is not helping me find it...

[d-silverblade.livejournal.com]

The closest I can think of right now is the Tower of London, which is home to ravens. Popular history claims there have been at least six in residence for centuries, though the historians have some doubts.

There are eight of them around right now per wiki.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting! (Caw!) I could have sworn I had once read some internet article about some place in England where they use trained falcons to sweep out the pigeons, but sadly it has been a while and I don't remember it. My memory may be garbling the details pretty badly, though (which would explain why I'm not finding the thing on Google).

[d-silverblade.livejournal.com]

It's entirely possible you're right ; it's not like I live anywhere near england.

I just happened to know about the ravens (because they featured in a mystery novel I read several years ago), and figured they might be it, or failing that, at least be interesting relevant trivia.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

The ravens are very cool in their own right, it is true. :-)

[d-silverblade.livejournal.com]

Mwahahahaha! Die pigeons, die!

More seriously, it sounds like something awesome to see!

(For that matter, just watching raptors soaring overhead is pretty awesome to see)

[matt-dalen.livejournal.com]

Hehe. We get red-tailed and red-breasted hawks here all the time (there's a family of them living in my mother's back yard), and I've seen a bald eagle in the area once. But I don't think I've seen them hunting yet - just perched on trees. (I did manage to sneak up on one eating in my old backyard - I saw it swoop down, and got within about 20 feet of it before it noticed me and flew away. Got some pretty cool photographs of it, too.)

[d-silverblade.livejournal.com]

I live right next to Mont-Saint-Hilaire, which, among many other things, is Québec's raptors' version of Grand Central :-D. It isn't unusual in the late summer afternoon to look skyward to see a dozen or so raptors just gliding over the region.

Somewhat hard to tell what variety they are, though - just in 2000 there were recorded sightings of fourteen species of pure raptors (including golden and bald eagles, peregrine falcons, five variety of hawks, goshawks, ospreys, etc), plus one of vultures