Oh my goodness, I have to share what I just witnessed outside my windows.
First I’ll share the nature of my little piece of the world. Our house is situated on about a city lot and a half. We have a large side yard where we have a water garden that consists of an upper pond where our koi are, a 50 ft stream, and then a smaller pond where the fish tend to escape to by shooting the rapids (ha!) and where the pump is that recirculates the water back up to the upper waterfall and pond. Here are some pictures of our water garden.
Upper Pond
Stream
Lower Pond
When we bought this place several years ago it was overgrown in decades of neglect. I spent the first 6 months here playing Lori-Lumber-Jack and doing nothing but clearing undergrowth. On the west side of the property we gained over 20 feet of usable land down the entire length of the property just by clearing all the brush that had been allowed to grow wild over the decades. As I worked to clear the land, I started noticing that at one time in the life of this place SOMEONE had planted some rather exotic plants (some of which I still have not identified) and so I was careful to leave those particular plants as I cleared.
Another thing I noticed was that we had some pretty neat wildlife living here because they had lived in this little patch of jungle that had developed. I saw a mountain boomer for the first time in my life, we have cardinals out the wazoo, and HUNDREDS of horny toads (aka horned toads for most of the world, but horny toads for Okies). When I was little I lived in the country and we played with horny toads all the time – like they were our little dinosaurs. We’d find a red-ant bed and feed them, and talk about how they might spit tobacco in our eye (lol!) The horny toad population in western Texas and Oklahoma was almost wiped out by the use of pesticides such as DDT, etc over the years, and you can’t hardly find them anymore. So finding all these little horny toads was pretty special. Here are some pics of the horny toads on the property (including babies!)
We also have HUGE raccoons that live in the old oaks on our property (no pictures of them, sorry). One night I was in the garage sitting and reading a book and smoking a cig, and it was warm weather so I had the side door open…this HUGE racoon comes loping in the door. He’s like at least 3 foot long! He comes in (everything but his tail), stops, stares at me like the mischievous little bandit he wanted to be and goes loping off into the night. LOL!
We’ve also had coyotes in the yard; deer in the yard; big skunks!; somebody’s humongous tame rabbit that had gotten loose, ended up in our yard, hooked up with a little brown wild rabbit and they hung out in our yard together making eyes at each other for 3 weeks and then disappeared…that was an odd relationship!; and squirrels that drink out of our yard sprinklers (used to have pics, but lost them when my hard drive failed.)
So, when we put in the water garden a falcon took up nesting in a tree just across the side street from our ponds (because there’s food!) And had babies! The upper pond is deep enough the fish can stay safe. But when they get all up in the “I’m gonna act like a salmon” mode and shoot the rapids down to the lower pond, it’s too shallow to protect them and Mr. (or Mrs.) Falcon comes a swooping! That falcon has come back and had babies for the two years we’ve had the water garden. And he/she/they are now back for year number 3. Now this falcon has a wingspan of at least 4 feet. He is magestic!
Of course, we also get our share of crows and ravens. Just like anybody else around these parts.
So, in the past couple of weeks we’ve been hearing an owl in the late evening hours and in the morning hours. But we hadn’t seen it. This past week I was up one morning doing my Hinky business and something catches my eye through the shade of the front window by my desk. I look out and in the top of one of the big oak trees is what looks like a HUGE bobcat! And it’s staring right at me. So I slip my glasses on and it’s the owl! OMG…he’s ginormous! And he’s sitting there like a huge clump of art and with that cat-like looking face staring at me for some time and then – whoosh – takes off. He’s so darned big he does one of those numbers where when he leaves the tree he starts falling until he gets enough airspeed to actually get lift (HAHA!) The owl is even bigger than the falcon!
So just about an hour ago I hear a gawd-awful racket outside and I go to the window and the falcon and a raven have teamed up and they are dive-bombing the owl! So I’ve got about 100+ pounds of bird meat just having an all out aerial assault in my trees! The falcon and the crow are like bombardiers!!! and they fly over to other trees and go to screaming and then here would come that phat-butted owl and just put the kibosh on one of them. LMAO! This went on for several minutes and then I guess they all went off to lick their wounds.
I will try over the next few weeks to get a picture of the falcon and the owl. They are so awesome and beautiful.
Valhall.
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