They are about ready to fledge. Not far from us a couple of houses are under siege. A pair of red-tailed hawks build a nest in a tree right next to the deck. Not only does the deck get pretty messy, the owners of the house cannot use it, their next door neighbor had a vegetable garden and can't tend it and if they go out the front door, they have to defend themselves with rakes or anything else long, in order to get to the mailbox. They had the problem last year, were allowed to take down the nest after the chicks had left, but they rebuilt this year. They were advised to take down the tree. The owls have left the nest, the loon in Minnesota is still sitting on her eggs and the storks in Germany lost the last baby to hatch, but four was a bit much to raise, even three are hard to feed. A couple of Blue Jays think I am their foster mother and beg every time I go out. Young squirrels were also told to stay here and since 3 days a racoon spends his days sleeping in the big oak. Not to forget the Cardinal who sits twice a day on a dogwood branch next to the backdoor and sings for his peanut. How am I supposed to get any work done?

I'm no bird expert by any means but it looks a lot like a young Red-tailed Hawk. We have a family of them living here and they do wonders at keeping little critters out of the hostas for me so hopefully your new little friend will stay around and help you with your gardens too.

No she was driven out by this pair just about 2 1/2 years ago... The female does not want anything to do with me but the Male he is pretty mello and lets me come right up to him... Last year the pair did not produce, and this year I believe they had two but I have a picture of the female and she has something in her mouth by the neck and it has yellow feet, so I think that one young one did not survive and she took it out of the nest.. I have so many pictures...lol Claire

Just looked it up in my bird book and it could be either a Sharp-Shinned Hawk or a Coopers Hawk. They are really hard to tell apart. The Coopers Hawk tend to have more ticking on the breast, where the S-S is more solid. Nice picture! I feed the LBBs (little brown birds) here to attract the birds of prey. I have a huge spruce tree in my front yard and have seen Cooper's and Kestrels fly in there for a meal. We are overrun with English sparrows, pardon me, politically correct HOUSE sparrows, starlings and Eurasian collared doves and do anything I can to get the numbers down. We also live out in the high desert and worry about hantavirus and need to keep the rodent population down. The guys at the feed store looked at me like I grew a third head when I told him "my hawks thank you" when he loaded up the 40# of sunflower seeds. "I didn't know hawks ate sunflower seeds". "Nope," I told him, " they eat the birds that eat the sunflower seeds." I left him speechless!