Thanks to all that have shared over the past. My 10 chicks just started laying about 3 weeks ago. When they began laying, they became much more more brave about ranging out in the open and have been roaming our 3 acres like never before. Up to the point of laying, they stayed within 25 yards of the coop and always under the trees. I witnessed the first hawk attack yesterday. One of the hens had wandered off down near the wooded creek area and a broad-shouldered hawk hit her twice as she skedaddled for the coop with me hollern' and shouting the whole time. All the others ran for the shrubs around the house. Fortunately, she just lost a good size clump of feathers. I'd seen another hawk doing reconnaissance a couple of months back and had strung two lines with some streamers from our 2nd story deck to near the coop about 10-20ft off the ground. Think I will add a couple of more today to other points at the edge of the woods to increase the coverage and maybe add an owl decoy. I haven't given up on free-ranging yet, but I guess my next step would be to build a penned chicken run.

I make my suet mixture using suet or lard. I melt the fat in a glass bowl in the microwave until liquid. Then I add crunchy peanut butter, which melts in the hot fat. Then I add the dried ingredients - corn meal, flour, oats (usually ground in blender), ground eggshells, crushed nuts, a little jam or jelly, etc. The mixture is about 1/2 fat, 1/2 dried ingredients - maybe a little more dried. I aim for a mixture that is the texture of Play-doh - it clumps together easily for the suet log, but also crumbles into pieces that I spread in a tray feeder. I made the suet log over 3 years ago out of an old red Pine log and glued lots of perches and branches. It did not have much bark on it - which is fine, except that over time the log has darkened quite a bit, perhaps because of the oils in the suet mixture. Also, most of the perches and branches have broken and fallen off. This birds don't seem to care. If you put perches on the log, this will enable many more birds to eat more easily. However, this isn't necessarily a good thing because with mine, it enables the Starlings and Blue Jays to hog the suet log, and it encourages House Sparrows. My suet log is pole-mounted with a squirrel/raccoon baffle, so nothing gets onto the log but the birds. Here's what the suet mixture looks like - Some Bluebirds on the suet log a couple years ago. They don't eat that much on the suet log any more, because I usually spread crumbles in a tray for them.

I agree with Elly and those of the Bird Forum, a Red-shouldered Hawk, adult. Luc

The landing of the bird near you is a bit of a concern. It shouldn't be doing this, although immatures sometimes have this inattention to external threats. This sort of thing is most often seen in hawks that have been kept illegally in captivity for a while, then released. They learn that humans aren't a real threat to them, so they hang around. In the worst cases, these birds have learned that humans provide food, so they think some food might be forthcoming. Under no circumstances ever place out any meat for this hawk. It needs to learn -- as it will sooner or later -- that it should stay away from humans. It also needs to learn to stay away from your aviary and bird feeder, too. But it's winter, and live, warm food is right there in full view, if not in full vulnerability. For a young hawk trying to make it through its first winter, this will prove to be an insurmountable attraction. The hawk may hang around all winter. But when the days start getting noticeably longer in March, it will respond to ramping migratory urges and head north. It would seem that as more and more of us buy and create rural homesites (as I did), red-tailed hawk populations ought to be threatened or declining from a lack of available habitat. But for this species (and for Cooper's hawks, too), this isn't the case. There are more red-tails alive today than probably at any other time. In presettlement times, red-tails lived only on the open edges of the primal forest (in the East). As the Eastern and Midwestern forests were openned and converted to farmland, the red-tail population expanded. Red-tails can't live in an unbroken forest. They require open land. But until the last ten or twenty years, red-tails were commonly shot or trapped in many rural areas, suppressing their populations. No longer. Very few are shot any more, and very few are trapped. The greatest problem immature red-tails have is finding an open, unoccupied nesting territory. There are now so many adult, breeding red-tails that immatures rising to adulthood frequently can't find any open habitat in which to mate (form a pair bond), build a nest, and raise young. In short, there is a housing shortage out there for red-tails. There are large numbers of experienced adults who have saturated the countryside. Your bird is not guarenteed of ever becoming a parent. For this winter, though, it's having a glorious time watching your caged animals. The hawk is only an adolescent. In a year or so, it will grow up and attempt to attend to adult matters.