Moles!

The last few days I have been fighting with a mole.

Mole tunnel. Kinda hard to see, but it goes from the stake in the
upper left to the lower right (then further on into the yard - grr!)

This has been the battle sequence:

1. Mole digs tunnels in the yard
2. Later on Peter sees the tunnels in the yard, gets very angry, and stomps them down

The next day it begins back at #1. This has been going on for the last several days; I'm sure we're both getting tired of it. In years past, we've had moles and I've witnessed the damage they can do to a yard. So far, it's not too big of a deal because there is hardly any grass back there, but once the new seeds start growing it's going to get personal. I'll be researching battle techniques and formulating my plan of attack.

In other news, it looks like the Cooper's hawks are here to stay (there are two). They have been working  on their nest and it's getting bigger.

Cooper's Hawk

I saw a Cooper's Hawk today, at least that's what I think it was (difficult to distinguish from Sharp-shinned Hawk). I've seen them before and this winter we had one eat a dinner in our backyard leaving the feathers and beak behind - we never actually saw the bird, but the clue was that there were no footprints in the snow around it.

Cooper's Hawk.
This cropped photo is the equivalent of a 700mm lens. Unfortunately, it was
taken with a 100mm lens - I sure wish I had a telephoto for these occasions.

Today it was around plenty during the morning and appears to be building a nest in a nearby tree. I watched it as it gathered sticks off the ground and flew them up into the nest. I didn't see it much in the afternoon, but that may have been because we were outside. I was able to get some video, but it didn't turn out too great.

I'll definitely keep watching to see if it ends up nesting there.

In other news, today will be the last warm day for a few weeks. We hit a high of about 73 today and it was beautiful out for the 3rd day in a row, but it's back down into the 30s tonight.