When I was driving to work this morning, right at the DuPage River at 111th street a red-tailed hawk nailed a bunny to the ground. I see them get small rodents all the time and have always been impressed by how hard they hit the ground.

The hawk was ripping away at the rabbit as I drove by. There was too much traffic to just stop and go get a picture. This all happened only 20 feet from the road. When they are busy trying to subdue a meal it's pretty easy to walk up close to them. They have no intention of giving it up.

Just have to remember that they are ripping out the neck of an animal with their beak.

You don't want that anywhere near your hands.

Never see things like that here in the city. Maybe a dog chasing some tard that hopped the wrong fence?!

Dan wrote:Never see things like that here in the city. Maybe a dog chasing some tard that hopped the wrong fence?!

It was usually my fence.

Actually, I just had that happen in my yard here a couple of weeks ago. Long story. Who ever it was didn't like my neighbor. Longer story.

My parents have a mating pair of Red-tails (they're monogomous and basically mate for life)that live in the tree in their backyard. They back up to a golf course so they perch on this gigantic tall tree which is the tallest in the area and scope out the golf course for food, which I read is something they like to do. They prefer to have a tall perch close by to very open fields so they can see anything crossing the fields. The other day one of them was down eating some stuff out of my parents yard. He would go down to the ground, pick some stuff up off the ground, then fly back up and land on the trampoline net (the posts that hold the net up around the trampoline) Then he would proceed to go back down and grab some stuff off the grass and then go perch up on the wood fence around the yard, then down again, and back on the trampoline. They said it was pretty cool to see, but weren't sure what he was eating. My dad said they have seen a bunch of baby frogs in the grass lately and was thinking he was picking these up a few at a time and munching on em kinda like little frog popcorn LOL. These two are back at my parents year after year, though, and it's really cool to just sit there and listen to them screech back and forth then both of them dive down and grab a squirrel or rabbit off the ground and start tearing it apart heh.