Timing is Everything

If it hadn't been for the granola that I'd been putting off making...
If it hadn't been that we forgot to buy all the ingredients for it on Monday when we were at the store...
If it hadn't been that we'd been dawdling Tuesday morning before we finally headed back to the store to buy almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, maple syrup, sesame, and oats...
We would have been home to see whatever took place on the bird feeder to leave it looking like this.
We think a very large hawk slammed a band-tailed pigeon about as hard as it could be slammed. It left a single feather. We missed the whole thing. To say we are glad that we didn't see this attack would be an understatement.I corresponded most of Tuesday evening with Dawn of the Vulture Cafe. She looked at the photos and tried to help me solve the mystery. Was this really a band-tailed pigeon kill? Did the bird get hit on the feeder, or on the ground and then carried up to the feeder? What size hawk could carry a large pigeon off? Dawn sent us a link to a fantastic site for identifying feathers. She also wrote: Ok no more leaving when a raptor is busy killing your feeder birds.

She's right, of course. It's hard to take our eyes off this yard. There's always something going on, but still this time we were glad we didn't see this particular moment. Timing is everything.

I updated the post to show what the Band-tailed pigeon flock looks like on the feeder. Photo taken Wednesday morning. That's about half the flock, the other half was on the ground.