I built a little feeding station outside our front window, what I thought would be a good distance from the house. There was a small dead tree out back, so I dragged it around, laid it on it's side, and wedged a wide board into the branches. I set the block on the board, and then put a bit of brush into the branches to provide some cover for our little birds and doves. This is because almost any time of day you can see at least one hawk, often more, cruising the 100 acres around the house. We have a lot of doves who live in the machine shed and there seem to be a lot of hawks who know it. Not to mention all the little desert kangaroo rats and rabbits. We just discovered the little Desert Cottontails seem to have a very extensive community burrow under the feed and machine sheds, too!

As a final touch I put a shallow black feed bucket underneath and filled it with water. I put a large rock in the center so birds could comfortably perch to drink or bathe.

And waited.

The first morning I almost ran to the window. There was a dove sitting right on the fence outside the house - the first time I saw one perched there. The Say's Phoebe who hunts from the little tree right out front was checking out the feeder - going from branch to branch of the dead tree as if testing every perch.

Suddenly, the Phoebe streaked away. I saw a speck in the sky over the feeder that rapidly increased to the unmistakeable shape of a stooping hawk! The dove flew for her life and just in time - I got a lovely view of the banded and striped underside of a Peregrine Falcon as he reached for the brakes right in front of our window! Missing his prey, he quickly switched attitudes and zipped over the house.

The hubby and I ran to the back window in time to see him land on top of the machine shed - where all the doves live.

We went back to the front window, and then about our business for the day.

Later I walked around out back and found, no far from the house, a large grouping of dove feathers on the ground. The Peregrine obviously got his dove after all.

Well...falcons have to eat, too - and I do enjoy the birds of prey here. But I think I'm going to move my feeder station around back where there is more brush.

Speaking of birds of prey - we've also seen a Goshawk twice. They normally live in the mountains - but will come down in the winter when prey gets more scarce. Both times I've seen this very attractive and distinguished looking grey and black bird he was near the lake, so it may be the water has drawn him.

The Northern Harrier is a regular visitor, usually around dusk. And the Harris Hawks are almost always around somewhere. Now and then we see a Prarie Falcon, and the other day we caught just a glimpse of what we thought was an American Kestrel. We probably wouldn't have recognized him flashing by - but we used to have some resident by our apartment in Tulsa and saw quite a bit of them.

We have a pair of ravens - one of which is every bit as large as the bigger hawks - who come and visit a few times a week. They stay out by the road and railroad tracks mostly.

Of all of these I'm pretty sure the Harrier, the Harris, and the Ravens are residents - and I think the others are only migratory. We haven't seen the Peregrine again. Not surprising, since we are on a plateau with mountains around us. Not really his sort of habitat.

Nothing is more fun to me than moving to a new part of the country and getting to see all sorts of new birds! The weather has turned off very cold this week - so maybe our feeder will have more visitors. The landowner says that the block will attract not just birds, but very likely also deer, pronghorn antelope, and oryx.

An-ti-ci-pation...