Landham Brook Marsh Conservation Area: Red Tailed Hawks

    Landham Brook Conservation Area: Red Tailed Hawks

While driving around with a few of my friends in Sudbury, We explored a nice neiborhood, but made it to a wooded dead end, and turned around. Wright Rd. I knew that little dead end had a trailhead that connected to Landham Brook Marsh Conservation Area, a swamp and forest that takes up about 200 acres. Desperate for new wildlife spots, I decided to see what that forest had to offer. I parked at the dead end, and started walking down the trail. I found a bunch of cool things right away: 

A chicken of the woods (edible mushroom) growing out of a black locust tree. I was tempted to pick it,

 but it was on someone's property, so I left it. Maybe ill come back for it some other time...

Northern spicebush is growing new buds. I've never noticed it other than during spring, when it blooms before. They grow in low, moist forests and wetlands...

A black capped chickadee was exploring a black cherry tree. It kept jumping to the top of the trunk, out of my view, whenever i took a photo. I finally caught it along the side of the tree. No idea what it was hunting for...

As I continued down the path, going west, I heard a powerful, high pitched wheeze. I turned to see a pair of does bounding away from me. I tried catching up with them, and left the trail. I couldn't find them, so I followed a game trail (probably made by the deer), that headed towards Wash Brook Parcel. A tributary of the Sudbury River. I finally got to the riverbank after a few minutes hiking north:

The dark clump in a snag in the photo above is a great blue heron nest. Inactive now because herons nest during spring and summer. Here it is zoomed in...

There was some fungi growing near the riverbank. October is peak mushroom season...

                              Scalycaps?                                                         Grey Coral Mushroom

That's when I heard the familiar scream of a red tailed hawk. I walked down the riverbank, towards the sound. I stopped after walking maybe 30 feet. The hawk was in a snag, perched. It stopped making noise when it noticed me...

I took some photos like the one above from a small peninsula that jutted out from the riverbank, giving me a view unblocked by the thick pine woods that lined the river. I decided to get closer. I moved down the edge of the woods, being as quiet as possible. I jumped back when I saw something take off from only a few feet away. It flew up to a tree stump to escape me, and be closer to it's mate. Why was it on the ground? It had just made a kill. A grey squirrel. The hawk immediately began tearing chunks of meat and fur from it's victim.

I ended up taking over 50 photos of the hawk, and one video. Because the hawk's distance to me wasn't changing, I didn't have to constantly re-adjust the slider that tells my camera what to focus on. I ended up with a less shaky than usual clip of the hawk feasting.

Just to give you an idea of how close together the two hawks were...

I know they are a mated pair. The fact that the upper hawk didn't even attempt to steal the squirrel, and the fact that neither hawk was hostile toward the other in any way, leads me to think that. 

I continued walking down the path, and started getting close to Landham Rd. I turned around as I got to a concord grape thicket that was almost impossible to bushwhack through. I came back about 15 minutes later, and the hawks were both still in the exact same positions, with the upper hawk still perched, and the lower hawk still devouring the squirrel...

Just as I started to walk back, I heard a loud, echoing barred owl hoot, from all the way across Wash Brook Parcel, in the woods that i would have to walk all the way to the nearest bridge to get to. Just then, I heard a mob of crows and blue jays deep in the woods behind me. More about the owls in another post.