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hawks and owls



Friday evening I heard a pair of great horned owls hooting back and
forth at about 7 in the evening -- still daylight -- near my yard in
Orange Co., NC. Working on their pair bond already? 

On Saturday I drove up to Virginia. Just north of Danville I spotted a
kettle of hawks and pulled off the road so I could look at them --
broad-wingeds headed southwest, with an immature red-tailed bringing up
the rear. Or maybe it was up there by coincidence. This was the first
kettle of broad-wingeds I've seen away from the Blue Ridge front.

This morning in the Coker Arboretum at UNC-CH, a small critter scurried
across the grit path up ahead of me and disappeared into a mat of vines
and low shrubs. I didn't give it a thought until a second later when a
large, long-tailed hawk plopped down on the path and sat for a minute --
probably wondering where the little critter went. The hawk flew away and
alighted in a tree where I could see that it appeared to have a lightly
streaked breast. Immature Cooper's, I think. Not an everyday bird on
campus!
Raptors are really out and about now that it's fall.
Ginger Travis
Orange County, North Carolina