This will show you why we have only one adult squirrel visiting our front garden lately.
Look what the African Harrier Hawk (Polyboroides typus) had in its claw. A baby squirrel.
I don't get angry anymore, as I understand how nature works, but the first time when I saw this a long time ago, I wanted to kill that bird.
Some say that nature is cruel when this happens, but the birds of prey also have babies to feed. I will not show it here, but it's not nice to see the bird tearing the baby apart.
I heard the noise and had to jump into our car to drive down the road to see what it was all about, and there he was, high up in a tree in someone's property. The gates were locked, but no problem as I took the photos from the road on my zoom.
This is what Wikipedia had say about the diet of the African Harrier Hawk.
Diet
The African harrier-hawk is omnivorous, eating the fruit of the oil palm as well as hunting small vertebrates. Its ability to climb, using wings as well as feet, and its long double-jointed legs, enable this bird to raid the nests of cavity-nesters such as barbets and woodhoopoes for eggs and nestlings. It has been known to prey on introduced species such as feral pigeons, house sparrows and eastern gray squirrels.
It opened its wings and took off with the squirrel in its claw.
Now for something much nicer.
We saw this fancy chicken up in another tree, and I was happy to also make a video of him.
It is in fact a male Peacock and he had an irregular ear-splitting call, that I just could not get in the video.
I wish that I had more time on hand to capture his call, but we had to go.
I hope that you will enjoy the video that I made.
And that's it for now as I have a new PC, and transferring documents, apps, pictures, and everything else from the old to the new is a sure nightmare. Not only that, but the new PC also has a different operating system that I am not used to yet.
Now I am searching for all of my January 2024 photos, as I can only find the last 4 days, and the rest are hiding somewhere.
But I will get up to speed soon again (I hope), and that's the reason that this post is a bit on the short side, photo-wise. But I think that it's a quality post and that's good enough for me.
I hope you have enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos and video by Zac Smith-All Rights Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
Thank you kindly for supporting this post.