Here in my home office, I have a window that looks out on my side yard. There are several trees that are real close, and I get to watch the squirrels running up and down all day.
Well, this morning I witnessed a scene I’ve never seen before. A small hawk landed on one of the lower branches of a tree that’s directly outside my window. He sat there for a time, looking around. Soon I noticed a squirrel running up and down the trunk of that same tree very close to the hawk.
I thought this behavior was a bit odd! Didn’t the squirrel see the hawk? I think it did. But the hawk must have realized that because of the branches it couldn’t get to the squirrel while it remained in the tree. So the hawk flew over to the next tree, and waited. Sure enough, in just a few minutes, the squirrel left its tree to start searching for acorns on the ground. And immediately, the hawk was after it!
But I think this must have been a pretty young hawk, because it wasn’t very proficient. It’s attack misfired, and the squirrel ran back up the tree. But here’s what I found amazing – after just a short time, the squirrel went back down to the ground to resume its scrounging. The hawk was still there! But in just those few seconds, the squirrel seemed to have forgotten all about it.
Well, the poor, hapless hawk struck again, and missed again. This time the squirrel ran away on the ground, out of my field of view, and the hawk followed it. So, I lost sight of both of them, and didn’t see the end of the chase. But I don’t think the hawk ever caught that squirrel.
At that point I noticed something else that was new to me. I heard the screeching of all the birds in the area. Of course they were screaming, in bird, “hawk! hawk!”. Such a racket! But all is again quiet now, so I guess the hawk has moved on.
I hope he didn’t take my foolish little neighborhood squirrel with him.