After it had chicken for the main course .

No doubt! Check out this girl watching over the chickens the other day. A huge female horned owl. And to top it off we have a pair of Ferruginous Hawks that have been pulling chickens off of there roosts at dusk from closed fencing . We caught them in the act. I have never heard of that behavior.






Oh, lets not forget about the two coyotes that were..................... At least we do not have bears!

Ferruginous Hawks are serious about chickens, but they seem to be transient here. I only saw them in the fall or spring briefly, then they went somewhere else. Red-tailed hawks are permanent residents along with the great horned owl. No chickens anymore, so they are all pretty bored with my location.

I have seen red tailed hawks out here but they seem to be just flying though. I have seen a pair of the Ferr. hawks flying here since we moved here. The first encounter was funny. We were working on a small decorative pond when we heard the chickens sounding off. So we ran up the hill and it at first looked like the chickens were attacking a horse!

All we could see from the bottom of the hill was two giant white things flailing in the air with chickens squaking and attacking it. It looked like horses legs upside down. When we got up to the top we saw the biggest hawk I have ever seen in my life with a bird penned down on the ground with wings that were so long we thought they were a horse

Audrey I loved this picture! And that you put it in veggies was perfect haha! This one got my vote for sure

best surprise in the fruits/veg bucket for sure
and I just got really distracted for a while reading about and looking a pics of ferruginous hawks--wow

Yeah, they are really something to see swooping threw the valley when they spy something! So incredibly fast and precise.

One evening around sunset we were sitting out in the garden on the deck and I went inside to refresh our drinks and I hear my husband start hollering so I ran out and he asked if the sprinkler system had busted a leak somewhere or is that a rattle snake?........."no honey we don't have a sprinkler system"!
Our cat had come across it curled up next to a dry stacked rock wall underneath tons of salvia. I did have very thick flower beds all along that rock wall and I have thinned it out a lot since then. I have learned to start out with long pruners even if over sized for the job instead of getting all up in something with my felcos and face. I never know what might be there!

This was a favorite of mine.

We haven't seen foxes real close to the house in a few years. But we did have a Cooper's Hawk interested in our chickens before they were full grown. Thankfully, we always were outside at the right times. No ferruginous hawks here. The Great Horned Owls sometimes come at night waking me up with their calling. I was so tempted to open up the window to tell them to discuss their winter plans elsewhere, but then they finally moved on.

I love owls!

I like them too, normally. Just that one night they woke me up and kept me up for a long time. We've had one in the yard before, but it was the male and female going on and on that night. They like each other. We had an opossum sleep under the porch during the day, but since that night, I've not seen any signs of it. I was kind of disappointed, since in the summer they eat ticks.

I know I'm unusual but I like opossum they are so cute