Today's walk report: 022320

You see this Cooper's hawk in the tree? Yeah, I know but it wasn't my idea that he fly right there. Click the image, you can see his eye, looking at me.

Well, this Cooper's hawk interrupted my taking a picture of this Selaphorus sasin (Allen's hummingbird). Fortunately for the hummingbird he was a lot more alert than the guy taking pictures. He was in this exact (okay, within an inch or two) spot when the above Cooper's hawk swooped down on him. I'm gonna say the hawk was about 1/2 a second away when the hummingbird did an exit, stage right. These images were taken 8 minutes after the incident. I was following the hawk for those 8 minutes.

Not much of a meal, ya think? In my estimation hummingbirds are too fast and too smart to be taken by a hawk but I could be wrong.

Last week just the male mallard was in the pond, this week he had his girl. She listened to me talk to her pretty intently and she also followed me a little. But that's just because she's used to getting food from humans. Right?

Here's her handsome beau. He walks just fine.

It was a good walk, I'm glad I got out. I had been sulking all day because yesterday a furious hail storm came in and pounded the wildflowers outside of the house. It did a ton of damage to 1,000s of mostly Dimorphotheca sinuata flowers. I dubbed the storm Hailstorm 45. Here's what
Dimorphotheca sinuata flowers look like normally. I don't have the heart to post an image of the damaged flowers.