March 24, 2024

Pets

pets keep it coming

Red-shouldered hawks splashing in a Saratoga swimming pool

3 min read

Expensive JOAN: Pondering if you can get rid of gentle on a happening.

Early a person early morning, two purple-shouldered hawks have been frantically flapping in our swimming pool. Ended up they playing, fighting, mating?

One particular started type of dragging the other by the water towards one particular aspect of the pool. Thinking they were drowning, I lifted them out together with the web and left them poolside. I truly felt 1 was useless.

About an hour afterwards, we were woke up yet again by the sound of one flapping in the drinking water and navigating to the other side of the pool, exactly where he hopped out and disappeared in the bushes.

The other one sat on the chair awhile, then fluttered to the bushes on his facet of the pool. The “swimmer” was noticed in the bushes later in the morning, but neither just one has been seen considering the fact that.

What were they up to?

Jan Eby, Saratoga

Dear JAN: They definitely weren’t practising backstroke.

You evidently witnessed the latter portion of an aerial struggle about territory. Red-shouldered hawks, like numerous other animals, fiercely defend their territories, but the hawks do their combating in the air. They fly at just about every other, lock their talons alongside one another and cartwheel by way of the sky, from time to time coming dangerously in close proximity to the floor.

In this circumstance, they may possibly have ended up in the pool and continued to go at every single other. Even though they also have elaborate mating rituals in the sky that include soaring collectively and the male undertaking sky dances, it’s far more ballet than battle.

Dear JOAN: A great deal to my shock and delight, I have a blue heron nest with a toddler in a single of my tall trees. Ahead of I uncovered the child and nest, I located a pair of broken eggs on the grass down below.

The eggshells had been a gentle blue in coloration. I’m assuming a predator acquired the eggs. I’m curious what bird could have gotten the eggs? I have only noticed hummingbirds, crows and an occasional blue jay in my property.

Would you have any thought?

Lori Gregory, Pleasanton

Dear LORI: You are a lucky duck to have a good blue heron nesting in your tree. They are extraordinary birds, but I do have a tendency to say that about all birds.

The eggshells you identified could possibly not be evidence of foul engage in. Herons will toss out the empty shells soon after their chicks have hatched. They are in any other case messy nest-keepers, enabling collections of poo and even useless chicks to keep on being in the nest, but they chuck the shells.

Leave a Reply