[masraum]

Originally Posted by berettafan

I watched one face off with a group of maybe 6 turkey buzzards over some dead critter in my neighbors back yard last year. He gave it up as those buzzards are pretty big dudes too.

Honestly the most amazing thing to watch are the smaller hawks going after birds mid air. Couple weeks ago i saw a hawk (red tailed maybe?) chasing a small bird slam into my neighbors garage. Wild stuff!

Funny, mostly what I see are other birds squawking at and harrassing the hawks to run them off. I've never seen, except in videos, the hawks going after other smaller birds. I've only ever seen them going after rodents.

We have 2 kinds of vulture here, turkey vultures (pink heads) and black vultures (black heads). Then we also have crested caracaras which are pretty cool looking. I've heard from folks that live around here that if a cow goes into labor out in a field, that the caracara and vultures can come in and kill the calf. I assume that's a pretty rare occurrence. I've never seen it myself.

We've got about 10-15 acre field just to the west of our property that the owners grow hay on. When the weather is good, after the hay gets mowed, the vultures and caracara come in and eat the critters that get run over by the mower. I assume it's mostly snakes and rats. I've seen them strip a snake a couple of times.