The hawks on Pillsbury Avenue

David and I went over to the 3400 block of Pillsbury today, armed with a variety of photographic equipment. Because it was a weekend, there was a lot more vehicular traffic and a lot more people coming and going than I've seen. We could hear the hawks as we got close to the biggest elms. Two of them were clearly having an argument.

Two nice women came up to us separately, one to tell us that the hawks were kestrels or sparrowhawks, like the ones that had always nested at her mother's house three miles east of here, the other to say definitely that they were Cooper's Hawks. She said that she had called the Raptor Center, and they had told her that there were 36 nests of Cooper's Hawks in the Twin Cities area this season. She showed us the tree where "the nest" had been, and said that originally there had been "three boys," but that one had fallen from the nest to its death. This latter piece of information was repeated by a couple getting ready to drive away; they said they had "found the dead baby."

The woman who showed us the nest tree introduced herself and said we could hang out on her stoop anytime we were waiting for the birds to show up, which was very warming to the spirits.

The hawks were not at all cooperative, but David did get two photographs:

http://www.dd-b.net/ddb/SnapshotAlbum/data/2005/08280-pleasant-hawks/

P.