Baby Hawk Visits A Small Tucson Desert Garden

Although I haven't posted in a while I assure you "A Small Tucson Desert Garden" is alive and thriving in Tucson, Arizona.  In a later post I will have some photos of what the garden looks like now.  BUT, today, I just had to share a very special visit by a baby hawk and have added some photos and video.  We believe this particular hawk is a "Cooper's Hawk", although we generally have had Harris Hawks living here.

We have had hawks living in our Eucalyptus trees for years.  As a side note, Eucalyptus trees are big, beautiful and thrive in our desert, BUT I do not recommend you plant them near your garden or home.  They are messy, the leaves and roots are mildly toxic to plants growing near them, and the branches are brittle and can break during a monsoon storm.

Our hawks are majestic predator birds that are thrilling to watch and help keep our garden mice and other rodent population to a minimum. Their nests are large - and now we know why, their young are huge.  "Baby Huey", as we affectionately call him, is almost as big as the mother - and he still can't fly!

I had wanted to get photos of Baby Huey and his mother together, but she appears only to visit him at feeding time. This consists of swooping down, dropping a desert mouse in front of him, and then shooting back to a pine tree across the street - no time for a shot.  Eventually, she flies back to our Eucalyptus tree and perches on her "look-out" branch to watch Huey waddle around our yard.  The mother will squawk at us if we get close to Huey, but, being used to seeing us in the garden, she will allow us to get within photo distance before warning us off.  

The following is a link to a musical video I posted on YouTube  of a song I wrote about likening the relationship between God and man to a mother bird and her chicks. I posted this song a couple of months before Baby Huey's visit.

                                                         http://youtu.be/3u_tuy61gcI