Danger on the Lane...

Imagine my surprise when I walked from my office into the kitchen to get some tea, glanced out the window...and saw this looking back at me! Whoa! Look who's sitting on the patio chair. Holy crap!!!

Forget about tea, go immediately into super-stealth, kitchen-commando mode, belly-crawling across the floor towards the window, Big Daddy in hand. Slowwwwly raise up and fire off about 40 shots in rapid succession, hoping that my camera settings were somewhere close to right and thanking myself for cleaning that window this morning!

At that point the sharpie (later identified as a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk, in the accipiter family), flew about 10 feet to the cherry tree where he perched and surveyed the feeders. Just in case you didn't know, sharpies like to eat other smaller birds. Interestingly, there was a female cardinal right below him in the shrubby part of the cherry tree, totally motionless. Evidently, he didn't see her, or maybe he just wasn't hungry. Eventually, he must have seen me through the window, and took off into the woods. Within 5 minutes, there were at least 40 little birds back at the feeders.

And a good thing these litttle guys weren't around today!

Big doings on the lane, people.

And for those of you who followed yesterday's breaking news from the Lane, the Carolina wren was sighted dining on suet with one of the woodpeckers this morning, apparently none the worse for the trauma. He declined to be photographed. (Okay, the truth is that the photos were all total crap.)

Four more pics posted on Flickr, starting HERE

We are headed for the Catskills for Thanksgiving. Internet service may be sketchy so I am not sure if I'll post tomorrow of just back-blip when we return.

Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in the US (and Happy Thursday to everyone else)

ciao,
Debbi