in our backyard

the wildlife is abundant in our new backyard. since we have been here we have had a skunk and a rat in our backyard and as of yesterday, a huge black cat and red-tailed hawk. our poor chickens are being hunted! i have to admit though, that besides the cat and the rat, it's pretty cool. well, the skunk was cool because it didn't spray, but if it did, that would not have been cool. these backyard visitors are giving our suburban life a little taste of living in the country. so, of course when i looked out in the backyard and saw the hawk i ran to get my camera. (this is where the mister says we wouldn't make good farmers because usually the farmer doesn't stop to take a picture of his animals getting eatin!) Thankfully, the chickens were in their coop this morning. we usually have them out during the day, but we were going on an outing and put the girls away because there was a huge black cat (the one i mentioned before) in our backyard yesterday too! i'm not joking our poor chickens are being hunted. take a look...

when i first saw the hawk he was on the grass.

by the time i got the camera he had already jumped on top of the coop. he stayed there for a few minutes and then decided to fly over to our back wall.

i know these next few pictures are blurry, but i was pretty close to this big bird and just kept snapping pictures as i was kind of running away.

he was big. i'm not kidding. and beautiful!

he landed,

and let me get a ton of pictures of him.

like this one of all the beautiful patterns on his feathers

and then he flew away. thankfully without our chickens in those huge tallons.

so, now we are little afraid to let our chickens out in fear that he might just come back for breakfast, lunch or dinner. but, i guess that's the life of a farmer.