For the past month or so I have been so busy with my new online shop and have not been out in my yard to take any new pictures of garden guests.  Today, on New Year’s Day 2010 an unwanted garden guest made an appearance and I am still affected by it. I was sitting in my studio around 11am working on my new online shop and uploading products.  It was so uncomfortably humid that I decided to put the air conditioning on for a while and Merlo, our 9 months old chocolate point ragdoll kitten  loves the air conditioning.  No matter where he is in the house, he hears the ‘beep’ when I turn it on and he arrives to luxuriate in the cool by my side. I took a few photos of him in true “ragdoll flop mode” at a desk I have next to my computer.

Now I can almost hear you going “aawwwh, he is so cute!” at this stage and I know that he looks “drop dead gorgeous” but he is right in front of my computer where I have to quickly remove my keyboard as he just flops on top of it – usually when I am ignoring him and doing complicated coding of my shop (he just KNOWS when to push my buttons). He HATES to be ignored and today when I was otherwise occupied, he ripped my brand new 2010 Calendar off the wall!  Don’t be fooled by these two shots of him at his cutest – underneath lies a egotistical monster!  This and my unwanted garden guest has made for an unsettling start to 2010  and if you believe in fate, I’m wondering what kind of messages I’m being sent here!

I just happened to look up and my desks look out onto our outside pool area where I saw this bird closely involved with another bird.  I first thought that the  two birds were fighting with each other as one seemed to be pecking at the other.  This got my attention and when I really focused on what I was seeing it was actually a bird of prey who had just snagged his capture who was dangling onto the bird of prey’s talon!  I was horrified and repulsed by what I was witnessing yet it was nature just taking its course but not in our back yard in suburbia – a bird of prey!  The poor, lifeless capture was a crested pigeon and we have lots of them visit our garden.  I called my husband through to witness what I was seeing but as soon as Peter came up to the window, the bird of prey flew off with his victim.

Being a nature lover and sharing our garden with our beloved garden guests, I was shaken all day and evening by witnessing this encounter.  I had no idea that birds of prey actually occupied suburban areas let alone prey on garden guests.  I only saw the predator briefly for a couple of minutes and I am guessing that he is some kind of hawk.  I only saw the back of him and he was brown all over with no distinguishing markings from the back – I looked up hawks and thought he might have been a brown Goshawk – he definitely had a hawkish profile very similar to the photo I found below on Wikipedia taken by Aviceda.

Brown Goshawk on Wikipedia taken by Aviceda

I guess this has made me even more alert to the many species who inhabit our locality and when I see that the birds in our garden are a bit agitated or looking up to the skies, I might now know the reason why!