Sunday, February 27, 2011

I THINK THIS IS WHY I HAVEN'T SEEN A REAL GRAVEYARD RABBIT YET..

A week ago Sunday I was driving through the Mt Vernon Cemetery and
took some pictures of some of the birdhouses people have hung nearby the
graves. I'm not sure but I suspect the reason is because their departed loved
ones might have been birdwatchers:



But as I made my first pass through, I saw a large white bird fly overhead. I knew
immediately it wasn't a seagull. Before I could take a shot of it, a car came down
road from the opposite direction and because of all the snow, it couldn't pass me
easily. So I backed up until I could find a wider spot in the road to pull over and
let the lady pass. By the time she had, I'd lost sight of the bird and whatever
direction it had flown off to,so I drove off to the grocery store to do my food
shopping.

I decided to take a chance on another drive through on  my way home. I was
taking some more pictures from my car when another car came up behind me.
I drove up to a spot overlooking the pond and pulled over to let him pass, and
I looked around,and spotted the bird off in the distance sitting on a tree branch.
Even that far off I could tell he was a big fella. So I took my pictures with the
zoom function of the camera:








I found an online website for raptors of Massachusetts. It turns out it's a red-tailed
hawk. Now I'd never seen this bird at Mt. Vernon Cemetery before. But, as I said
in the title of the post, he might also be the reason I haven't seen any "graveyard
rabbits" bounding about the place, either!

1 comment:

  1. We get red-tailed hawks here, too - right in our back yard. Our cats, watching from inside, find it very exciting!

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