Besides Spring Training Baseball in the Valley of the Sun

My dear friend, Shannon Dirksen, who lives in Tempe, Arizona thought I might enjoy these photos she took and graciously agreed to my posting them here on my blog.  She shared the bird (looks like a Cooper’s hawk) that was in a backyard tree enjoying a freshly caught pigeon when she got the below shots.  She further shared that perhaps this is why there are so few birds around the neighborhood lately rather than the prevalent thought that an the owl visiting from time to time was diminishing the bird population.

Confirmation that this is indeed a Cooper’s Hawk came from Shannon’s brother-in-law, Randy Babb, who heads up the Education Department at the Arizona Game and Fish.  He says, “They are big predators of birds.  A pigeon would be just the sort of thing they love.  They are fairly common in urban areas and I often see them along creeks and rivers."