L.S.H.O.A.

 

Remember this picture from last year?  Well, they’re back.

I heard a commotion yesterday about dawn, and looked up to see a pair of hawks building a nest in one of our pine trees.  It’s not the same tree as last year, so I’m really not sure if it is the same pair or not.

All the hubbub  wasn’t coming from the hawks.  They were calmly and quietly going about their construction project.  The noise was coming from the L.S.H.O.A. – the Local Squirrels’ Home Owners Association – they did not approve of the idea of a hawk nest in their neighborhood at all! 

There must have been close to a dozen squirrels circling the nest site on surrounding trees, at eye level with the hawks, about 60 to 70 feet up.  They were all fluffed out, trying to look as big and dangerous as possible while they chattered and screeched at the offending birds. 

One really courageous little fellow was actually on the hawks’ pine tree just above the nest looking down on them from about six feet away.

I did not take this picture – the weather was not cooperating that morning – but I found that if you run a Google image search with the keywords “Hawk” and “Squirrel” you will get almost as many pictures of squirrels confronting hawks as of Hawks eating squirrels.

Did this show of squirrel solidarity work?  For a while, I thought it might have.  The hawks seemed to just ignore the squirrels, but after a while, they left.  When they returned about 9:00 a.m. they landed on an another pine tree about 50 feet away.  They sat there for a few minutes, then started working on the nest again.