Chicken Hawk!
After a great vacation down the Jersey Shore, we woke up yesterday morning to see this guy on our back fence: We were all quiet and careful, creeping closer to end of the brick path to get our pictures. The whole yard was quiet: not a peep from any of the chipmunks and squirrels who snack on our fruit, and nary a bird around. No wonder — that's a big hawk! Turns out that being so careful not to scare it wasn't necessary at all, though. All of a sudden, it took off from the fence post and went right for the chicken coop! Amid all the terrified clucking of our little flock, that hawk was certain to show us that it thinks we are the interlopers here: Whoa. So after some research , we learned that this is most likely a juvenile, female Cooper's Hawk . The very first phrase of the description calls it "the 'chicken hawk' of colonial America." Uh-oh. Eventually it took a big crap in our yard and flew away. But we heard it screaming all day, an...