Exciting Things Happen...

...when you don't have your camera in hand.

I'm at my folks' house in central NY, en route to western NY for another interview. It's a good half-way point and a safe place to leave the dog for a few hours while I'm out. But, routines must be followed, so after dinner we went for a walk...in the rain.

I didn't want to do my parents' street as it is populated with other dogs who are not yard-bound, so we drove downtown to walk the sidewalks around almost 200-year-old neighborhoods. In the rain.

Because of the damp conditions, I (understandably) left the camera behind.

As we were winding up our walk, heading back to the car, I heard the sound of a bird in distress. I looked up just in time to see a medium-sized brown bird flying away from a roadside tree and across a yard with an only slightly smaller black bird dangling from its feet. A second medium-sized brown bird was flying along side. All three disappeared into some tall conifers beside a house. The birds may have vanished, but the birdcalls continued. Shortly afterwards, I watched the brown bird carry the black bird to the driveway, where it sat upon its now-silent prey.

I REALLY wanted to walk up that driveway and see who was who, but I knew the bird was likely to take off again if I approached. So I stayed put and watched as best I could in the dimming evening light, wishing I had at least brought my binocs (which were in my pack back at the house; remember - it was raining).

Conclusions:
a) I think it was a sharp-shinned hawk in the role of predator (straight tail, from what I could tell).
b) The victim could very well have been a starling. No great loss there, except on a personal level for that particular bird.
c) Even if it is raining, take your camera along. That's why camera bags have raincoats. And bring an umbrella, which you can hold with your fourth hand, while your third hand holds the dog leash and your first and second hands get the camera out of the bag, focused, and take the photo.

Well...at least it wasn't a moose.

Digital Camera - Don't Leave Home Without It

As usual, Toby and I head out for our walk this morning. I'm not a couple hundred feet up the road when I hear something.

At first, it's normal blue jay vocalizations, but then it changes, into this strangled-sounding "JaaaayyyyJaaaayyyyy" that went on non-stop.

"That's interesting," I thought. "Could a cat have caught a jay?" (Unfortunately, our local feral cat population has risen dramatically this year.) Then a whole bunch of jays fly off screaming from the trees on the opposite side of the street from which the sound was coming: the rest of the family was getting out of Dodge. So much for familial unity.

I look over towards where the sound was and see a dark shape on the ground below a cedar. Upon closer inspection, it turns out to be a sharpshin hawk with a freshly caught (and very much alive) blue jay. I can see the jay's wing fluttering beneath the hawk. I keep walking, hoping for a better view (and mentally kicking myself for not bringing the camera, which I actually debated while donning hat, coat, mittens and leash this morning), and when I round the snowbank, apparently it is too much for the hawk. It flies up, apparently trying to haul its catch away with it, but at about five feet above the ground the two birds separate.

The hawk takes off eastward, and the jay struggles up into the branches of a young maple. It shakes itself, looks around, and takes off across the street in search of its traitor family. All that remained of the brief struggle was the imprint in the snow where the hawk pinned the jay to the ground (and if I hadn't seen it happen, I never would be able to guess it from the snowprint).

The moral of this story: always, always, ALWAYS take the camera with you! That's why you bought the bloody thing in the first place!!!