Hawk hyjinks

As my readers well know, TPP has been encouraging top predators to reside in our estate.  This AM our breakfast amusement was watching at close quarters a young red-tailed [?] hawk try to obtain a squirrel for breakfast just outside our kitchen windows. 

The most amusing aspect was the extreme audacity of the squirrels who feeling invincible when in a familiar tree at times actually aggressively confronted the hawk who was quite confused by it all.  What fun!  Although on the whole, too bad the hawk was not winning.

Backyard death match

In answer to one of our top predator wanted ads, a juvenile red-tailed hawk stopped by last evening to entertain us during our cocktail hour (and a half).  This is the biggest bird ever to visit our yard, an impressive beast.  Bird-watching turned into rollicking good fun as we watched this youngster do their level best to obtain a squirrel dinner.   You don't get this type of amusement just every day.  Our hawk moved around the yard from perch to perch, both chasing squirrels up and down trees, and then almost had dinner when a squirrel struck out across the yard and the hawk swooped in from a burr oak.  And while no squirrels actually died in the making of this spectacle (drat!) that one had a very, very close brush with death as both squirrel and hawk dove into a bed of dwarf dahlias (oops!), a very near miss. Mrs. Phactor decided it was not a good evening to take her kitty out for a walk least the two inept predators should meet in utter confusion.  Not a rabbit in sight. 

Don't step on the snake

TPP has several useful rules for tropical field work.  Among the most important are don't sit on ant hills and don't step on snakes.  Large snakes have rules too; eat anything you can catch.  A very large boa was found on one field trip across a 5 foot wide grassy path with both ends hidden by dense vegetation.  It was just a 5 foot long cylinder of snake.  Who knew which direction it was "going" since it was not moving at all.  You leave organisms like that alone. TPP once tripped over an 8 foot boa. It pissed off the snake and shot my adrenaline dangerously high, but neither of us was in any real danger.  That is the old primate alarm system that gears you up for fight or flight when scared or startled.  And that system exists because us primates are prey to a few big predators.  Monkeys are very mobile, very observant, and they don't miss much, so big snakes don't catch monkeys very often, but if the monkey makes a "misnake", it will probably be their last.  TPP has seen a big boa consume a sloth of comparable size, but monkeys are considerably faster.

Hot weather predator-prey relationships

As mentioned in a recent blog, by definition our summer begins, at least in terms of hot weather, when the cicadas begin to sing.  So far the singing is not the deafening roar it sometimes becomes, but cicada season is definitely upon us in total conjunction with the hot, dry weather.  Of course, shortly after the cicadas appear, so do the cicada-killers, the largest of the digger wasps.  In spite of the fact that they can act rather aggressively, the females who prey upon cicadas seldom sting humans and the males are sting less.  Cicada killers love dry, sandy soil because those are the conditions best for digging their nests.  So what is bad for the plants is good for the cicada-killers, and boy, are we harboring a population of these very specialized predators!  Unfortunately a choice area for cicada-killer nests is near our new pergola, so as you approach you get buzzed, aggressively confronted, by a 3-4 cm long wasp, which, in spite of our great size advantage, is pretty intimidating, and no matter how often you think humans seldom get stung, you tend to react with those well refined primate behaviors to avoid yellow and black buzzy things.  Avoidance, in general is a good behavior, so let's not sell it short just because our knowledge of natural history tells us there is no reason to run unless you are a cicada.  However, Mrs. Phactor is no one to mess with if your are a black & yellow buzzy beast, so if they know what's good for them, avoidance would be a good behavior because if her enjoyment of this new pergola is reduced by buzzy behavior of nesting cicada-killers, they would be well to look elsewhere for a nesting site.  But another possibility exists.  Are these some type of super, double-secret miniature drone designed to instigate panic in human behavior?  Were those little antennas?  And right here in middle America; what gall!  Remember, you heard this first here, but quiet, we don't want homeland security to be trampling the gardens.  The image is from Bill Bucanhan of the US Fish and Wildlife Service; the Phactor was not going to get close enough to photograph one.