Northern Goshawks prefer organic chicken, too

Young adult male Northern Goshawk.

Last week I was able to get some decent photos of a Northern Goshawk at our farm. Unfortunately it was standing on the dead body of one of our young New Hampshire cockerels, but what can you do.

We're guessing that this is a young adult male Goshawk. Looking closely at my photos, it appears that this bird is almost completely into its adult plumage. And like most raptors, the male Goshawk is smaller than the female, and this one is definitely smaller than the chicken  it killed. In fact, the hawk couldn't get off the ground with the chicken. (The adult Goshawk tops out at 2.1 pounds, and this 14-week-old cockerel was easily twice that weight.) The photo below shows the hawk trying hard to move the chicken, but it only managed to jerk it a few inches across the grass. I wonder if the hawk learned a lesson from this? Hmm.

The Goshawk tries unsuccessfully to fly off with a chicken twice its size.

I've been trying to get photos of a Goshawk for a while now. Our friend Shelly Ament, a wildlife biologist with Washington's Fish and Wildlife Department, told us that Goshawks are not often seen by humans in the wild. (Ha, I thought. Try letting some chickens free-range in YOUR backyard.) I retrieved a primary wing feather, which I saw fall from the hawk while it was flapping its wings, and we saved it to give to Shelly. She had asked us to be on the lookout for Goshawk feathers. Her department is interested in comparing the genetics of Goshawks in our area to those of hawks in British Columbia, so she was quite pleased to have the feather.

The white supercilium (eyebrow) clearly identifies the Northern Goshawk.

Since we choose to free-range our chickens, turkeys and ducks, we do lose birds to predators from time to time. Still, we feel fortunate to live in a place where we sometimes see beautiful animals like the Northern Goshawk. What a gorgeous bird.

Breaking news: Writer surfaces after a month away from her blog

...and the blogosphere breathes a collective sigh of relief. Seriously, though, I feel like it's been more like a year. This was not a planned sabbatical or vacation or even garden-variety procrastination. Actually, I cut my hand badly several weeks ago, and it is more or less immobilized in a bulky, truly uncomfortable splint. I'm supposed to keep it on at all times except to shower, until the end of the month; then I re-visit the orthopedist to find out whether the darn thing will require surgery.

By the  way, this happened 8 days before David was scheduled to be out of town for a week. I had been looking forward to a week to myself on the farm, knocking out query letters and other writing tasks in between bobcat patrol and collecting eggs. Several generous and kind family members spent part of the week up here, helping me out with things best done with two hands.

The good news is that I cut my left hand and I am right-handed; on the other hand (sorry), for the moment I can only type one-handed. The embarrassing thing is that I seem to type almost as fast with one hand as I used to do with two hands. This is frustrating, as I have recently been working hard on improving my typing speed. Oh, well! At least I am already in the habit of writing my drafts longhand. And now that David is back and handling most of the chores, I am throwing myself into my writing with a burst of pent-up energy.

Anyway, let's see, what else is new around here? It has been an unusual July weather-wise. Generally here in the Rain Shadow, July and August can be relied upon to be warm (sometimes hot) and dry. For the past 3 years we've had a week or so of 90-degree-plus temperatures in July; this year, we've had 2 (yes, TWO) days where it panted and groaned its way to around 80. We have had a few other mostly sunny days, but more days like today: cool, foggy, with rain showers at times. While it's allowing me to spend less time watering in the garden, it's not doing much for my beans and tomatoes.

I identified a new (to me) bird a few days ago, a Northern Goshawk. (Unfortunately, I observed it in the act of killing one of our 8-week-old New Hampshire chicks.) This brings to 64 the number of wild bird species we've identified on our property. With all the second-growth woods around us, and our two large ponds that attract lots of migratory waterfowl and other birds, it's like living in our own private nature preserve.

Thanks for hanging in there these past few weeks while I've been offline. I'm back now, and if not better than ever, at least I'm a more careful typist. Hope you all are having a great weekend!