Saturday, May 17, 2014

Quality Christo time

What better way to spend a dreary day than with Christo the hawk as he hunts for lunch in Tompkins Square?

These are not great photos, but it was dark most of the day and most of the bird activity took place under the trees.

Christo started things off by catching a squirrel.

Christo kills a squirrel

Christo kills a squirrel

This one turned out to be...erm...my squirrel, as he flew it right over my head and dropped it.  I looked around in shock.  People sitting on nearby benches kept their noses buried in their phones and didn't see a thing.  I picked up the squirrel and added it to the collection of rodent bodies on the central lawn.

Meanwhile, as I was busy cleaning up his mess, Christo went and caught himself a second squirrel, which he ate in a tree.

His lunch was interrupted by this guy.

Weeeee!

Note the claw marks along the squirrel's shoulder, as well as the extra pair of squirrel feet sticking out from behind the tree branch.

A post-lunch siesta was disturbed by a pesky robin.

A robin torments Christo the hawk

And then a blue jay.  This one actually hurt Christo, stabbing at his head and causing him to fly off with an annoyed wimper.

A blue jay torments Christo the hawk

He took the remains of his squirrel up to the nest...

Christo sails by with half a squirrel

...where Dora briefly got up from shielding the chicks from the heavy rain and wind.

Christo and Dora 

'Til next time...

See more hawk photos on my Flickr page:

City hawks 2

City hawks 1

Previous hawk posts.

2 comments:

  1. Laura, why do you disparage these photos, I think they are magnificent. They tell the story like a graphic novel.

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  2. Dark and fuzzy...the lighting conditions were really bad, so I had to overexpose and blow out the highlights just to be able to see things like the robin.

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