At mid-day, Sue Plankis, Laura Coble, and I witnessed a crow harassing a dark-morph rough-legged hawk over a large field along the pet trails at Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve. This field is reached by taking the left path out of the horse-corral area, then passing the low-lying wetland, and climbing the rise into the woods, from which the path emerges onto the field. We lost sight of the hawk as it dipped behind a hill, heading northwest.
Also seen, later in the day, was the nesting great-horned owl and its mate at the intersection of Cedar Ave. and Dodd Road, reported earlier in the week by Steve Weston. As we approached the intersection, a crow was harassing a raptor, which headed through the nearest group of trees and out of sight. However, the brooding owl was clearly visible from the parking lot of the shopping center across the road to the south. Thanks to Jeff Fisher, we were also able to view the mate, which he had found perched in adjacent trees to the east. (Near the same intersection was a red-tail hawk, possibly the original builder/resident of the nest.) Jeff mentioned that he believes he saw a sign indicating that this section of land is slated for some kind of development--a fate that has befallen just about everything right around it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080126/3998e4f4/attachment.html
