Emilie and Eddie sitting in a tree . . . Ok, we don’t know their gender but we named the chicks Emilie and Eddie. Yesterday we spotted them, two red-shouldered hawk juveniles sitting in the nest tree. They look beyond “chick” stage as one was sitting on a limb outside the nest and they both have the rusty bands of feathers across their chest like an adult. They looked ready to contemplate learning the fly. Mom and dad were nowhere sight and we didn’t hear them calling so the chicks are old enough to stay in the nest alone. We had not been out to Dogwood Ranch for a month, since the “rat incident” of which I will spare this blog the details. Because we were gone so long, we missed the downy “chick” stage. The biggest surprise was not how much the chicks had grown, but that for the first time since we’ve been watching the hawks starting in 2003 the mating pair produced two offspring that survived to this stage. In the past we only have seen or heard one offspring per year. We take this change as sign that the mating pair are healthy and that Dogwood Ranch is primo red-shouldered hawk real estate for raising a family. I just wish the adults would eat more rodents!
