A Hawk, a Parrot, and Some Pigeons
About half of mile away from our community, there is an elementary school. This is a typical small school on just a few acres of land, on which there are a few two story buildings interconnected via covered walk ways. This is just like any other elementary schools in this area and there is really nothing extraordinary about it. But one cannot avoid noticing an almost 100 feet high steel tower next to the utility building. At the top of the tower, there is a big microwave antenna, and a few steel rods extending out to different directions. On one of the rods, there sits a hawk.
I have been walking almost daily by the school for years and have noticed the hawk ever since I first recognized the dark spot high up there a few years back. To naked eyes, it’s not easy to see that there is a bird there because the bird never seems to move. I came to realize it being a living creature after I looked hard enough at it and saw its head moving around.
I don’t know much about birds although in this area numerous crows can be seen every day. There are several species of pigeons. The noisy and beautiful bright green parrots can also been seen flying around. There are also larger birds. The back of our house is a canal, and not far is a lake. On any day if we look outside of the window, we can see the white ibises and gray herons. Quite often we also can see a white heron wading in the water, looking for fish to eat. The herons’ wing span can be as wide as 3 or 4 feet, which is a majestic sight when it flies.
I have long surmised that the bird at the top of the tower is a hawk. But until recently I was not able to confirm my speculation. I noticed that around the areas under the tower birds can rarely be seen. It’s always very quiet. Even in the spring breeding season, this area is free of the bird’s noise. Thus there is no question that bird up there is a predator.
A few months back I was doing my daily walk, all of a sudden a large flock of birds flew toward me. They were flying quietly but the air waves produced by their flipping wings could still be heard and felt. The birds flew just over the tree tops and they were flying much faster than usual. I was wondering what was going on with the birds. However, before I couldn’t think of a reason, a low flying large bird appeared in the skies above the trees. It could not be mistaken that it was a hawk. I just saw it flew over me in probably just less than a second, but the hawk’s large sharp eyes left a strong impression in my mind. I kept walking in amazement and thought about what I just saw. That must be the hawk that always sat at the top of the antenna tower. There cannot be another predatory bird in the same area. This is the only time that I encountered such a scene. At all other times, I only see the hawk sitting high above there doing nothing.
That day I didn’t see the hawk catching anything. At another time and a different location, which was miles away from where I live, I did see a hawk preying on a parrot. I was on my way to work in the morning. Then I realized that I needed to do some shopping. So I stopped at a Publix. It was early in the morning and the dews were still on the grass. I was walking toward the entrance of the store and saw something dropped to the grass just a few feet from me. It was a wounded parrot. I looked up and saw a hawk flew away. The parrot was beautiful, its bright green feathers shone in the grass under the early morning sun. The pea sized round eyes of the wounded bird blinked and seemed to be pleading to me. I thought about picking it up but abandoned the idea. The bird was lovely and I didn’t want to see it die. But that bird was supposed to be the hawk’s breakfast. By saving one life I could be also destroying another life. Too many times humans try to mess with nature. People think that they are doing something good but the net result is often contrary to what people really wanted originally. I walked into the store. The bird was surely to die, either eaten by the hawk or die by itself in the grass.
In this area, the pigeons are much smaller than the ones we see in China. The size is almost just half of the Chinese pigeons. There are several varieties of them around this area. The most common ones are of gray and brownish hue. Pigeons can be really annoying, not because of their cooing, but because of their droppings.
We have a two story house and sometime ago one of the second floor windows attracted some pigeons. We could hear the cooing in the room but we couldn’t do anything to remove them. They stayed above the lintel. We scared them away whenever we could but they kept coming back. We wouldn’t have any problem if they just stayed there, even if they decided to nest and breed there. The problem was the droppings. Pigeons produce a lot of these dirty slimy things and it doesn’t take long for just two of them to completely cover the ground below. This window is just above the front door. So every day our front entrance was fully covered with the pigeon drops despite my wife’s vigorous protest and sweep.
We couldn’t kill them. In addition to me unwilling to do that, the effectiveness of killing them was questionable. That may be also illegal. After some observations we came up with an idea. I bought some steel wire screens, erected my ladder, climbed up and covered the lintel with the screen. The screen was laid in an angle so the pigeons couldn’t stand on it. That solved the pigeon problem. No pigeons have come again ever since.
