Today's walk report: 102322

A late afternoon jaunt with Docken on the phone for company. Thank you, Docken.

Last night I was sure I would be going out close to sunrise. Somewhere around 4:40 AM I decided that was not happening. So here it is, shortly after 7:00 PM, past my dinner time so let's get to some photos from the walk. 

Did you see yesterday's post? Yesterday's post was fun and informative. Well, it was for me. Today there was a focus on common ravens. It's going to be an internalized debate for me for some time but no, these are ravens and I'll throw in a red-tailed hawk for good luck. But first...

The Agave americana in the local botanical garden finally got chopped down. It was looking rather precarious for some time. This ground squirrel didn't seem too bothered. 

Activity in the garden was pretty quiet so I took the long way back to my car so I could drive up and check things out at the top of the hill. Along the way I spotted this birdhouse. This is right across from the school gymnasium. A curious student project, no doubt?

Before I go on and referring back to yesterday's post about cats which are birds, crows and ravens, etc. I pulled this image to further explain because at first glance, especially with birds 100 yards (or whatever) away, the tail feathers don't always make things obvious--crow vs raven. I got this image from the Corvid Research blog. 

Here are all of the ravens I was watching together. I now believe that these might be two pairs of “teenagers.”

and here are some pairings of the ravens in flight. They were all close to each other throughout my visit but they weren't all always in my camera view.

Nearby, there were four mourning doves.

What were the doves doing? Well, they seemed to be watching the ravens and the ravens were putting on quite a grand aerial show.

Especially these two.

Things got a little hectic when a red-tailed hawk showed up.

Let's just say neither species cared to share airspace.

 
After a short while the ravens took off together and the hawk disappeared from camera range. I decided I should add a little distance too and walked some more. Coming back to the parking lot I noticed another red-tailed. I'm pretty sure this is a female and I'm also fairly certain she's carrying an egg or two.

Down below humans were gathering for some sort of Halloween extravaganza.

Frightening!

Once again, I will leave you with a song. Thanks for coming along.