That poor little free-range hen never knew what hit her! Feathers were scattered all over the ground there at the edge of the woods. Her head was definitely messed up. Half her breast had been eaten.
What to do? Salvage work first: Save the other half of the breast and the legs for the stew pot. Then I put her remains right back where I found them, but inside a wire have-a-heart type live-trap. I was certain that whatever had killed her would come back in the night for a second helping.
The next morning I checked the trap and nothing had come. Later in the day I checked and, to my great surprise, there was a hawk in the trap, fluttering about, panicked, and furious. I put on thick leather welder’s gloves, removed it from the trap, and released it. But not before my son Todd took a few photos.
Cooper’s hawks are sometimes called “squirrel hawks” because of their ability to navigate with great speed even through thick forest. They belong to a group of raptors known as accipiters. These hawks are characterized by long tails and short rounded wings. Their flight pattern is often a few flaps and a glide. The accipiter group also includes the smaller sharp-shinned hawk and the larger goshawk.
That was one lucky hawk. Chicken-killing hawks are rarely treated so well in this neighborhood. The good news is that maybe it learned its lesson because we haven’t had any chicken predation since then.
Hi Friends, Thanks for stopping in.
The 2015 Calendar is up and running!
I’ve got a number of interesting programs coming up, from Minnesota, out to the Ozarks, and all around the Southeast. Hope to see you! www.dougelliott.com/calendar
The days are getting longer and the first amphibians are stirring. The wood frogs have started calling. The salamander rains will be here, and watch out for those horny toads!
And here’s a few items on sale:
LATE WINTER SALE (till March 21) – www.dougelliott.com/products
An Evening with Doug Elliott DVD
Stories, Songs, and Lore Celebrating the Natural World
Elliott performs a lively concert of tales, tunes, traditional lore, wild stories, and fact stranger than fiction–flavored with regional dialects, harmonica riffs, and belly laughs. One moment he is singing about catfish, the next he’s extolling the virtues of dandelions, or bursting forth with crow calls. He also demonstrates basketry, ponders the “nature” in human nature, tells wild snake tales, and jams and jives with his fiddler son, Todd.
Normally $20 — NOW only $10
Looking for America: A 20th Century Hero’s Journey Double CD
We are all heroes and we are all on a mythic journey. Travel with master storyteller, Doug Elliott, on a journey of discovery. These true cross-country hitchhiking and freight hopping tales, delivered in his own outrageous storytelling style, explore not only this amazing nation, culture and era we are a part of, but also the universal Hero’s Journey we all embarked upon at birth. You’ll be transported from congested northern freeways to sunny southern swamps and from the bowels of throbbing factories and big-city railroad yards to vast deserts and the high Rocky Mountains. You’ll meet astounding characters and hear rousing narratives and music ranging from gospel to 60’s rock, country and contemporary songs, including tunes by Leon Russell, Hank Snow, Jimmy Rogers and Country Joe and the Fish. It’s all textured with regional dialects, lively harmonica riffs, guitar, fiddle and soulful yodels. You’ll return from this rollicking journey of discovery with new insights, unusual perspectives and more than a few belly laughs.
Elliott has done some traveling. As a young man, he hopped freight trains and hitchhiked across the continent from Maine to California and from Canada to Guatemala. For most of a decade he was an itinerant herbalist traveling around the country with a van full of herbs, teas and old time remedies, and for a short time he was a migratory beekeeper hauling a trailer full of honeybees between North Carolina and Florida.
Normally $20 – NOW only $10
Doug Elliott, Storyteller 
That’s one P.O.’d-looking accipiter. Nice catch though!
Looks as if he paid off that dinner tab with a bit of modeling work, and has departed with a tale to tell. I hope your chickens will be safe now.
How interesting! I had never thought that if I trapped a predator, then turned it loose, it might not come back. May have to try this although we’ve been so lucky for quite a long time. I have retrieved hens while still alive but messed up. I soak their wounds with green tea and they are up and about in no time.