Saturday, April 18, 2009

Park Clean-Up: Our Way and the Hawk's Way

Thursday we went to Nature Class. It was a beautiful day. We went to look at the old wine cellars in the park and then we walked over to the south beach to do a little pre-Earth Day clean up.

Clean Up 1

Here you can see Chase helping pile some of the trash they picked up along the Hudson shore.

Clean Up 2

It was nice to have my husband on vacation. He doesn't usually get to join us on these homeschooling outings. And he made the find of the day--a small glass flask from the 1800's with the stopper still on it! We gave it to the park ranger so the resident archeologists could look at it.

Clean Up 3

The children found some really nice river glass. I started feeling jealous because all I found was, well, trash. I was also taking a lot of photos.

Clean Up 4

Here is Sierra. Take a close look at her jacket pockets. They are drooping down from the weight of all the rocks and river glass she collected.

Clean Up 5

When we returned to the Nature Center after clean up on the beach, we were treated to a close up view of this red tailed hawk.

Hawk1

Isn't it* beautiful? Yes, that's a bird feeder it's sitting on. But songbirds weren't on the menu for this guy. When we took our pictures off the camera, we realized it had caught a rat! If you want to see the two shots of the hawk chowing down on the rat, look here and here. They are a bit graphic, so I didn't want to post them on the blog. Consider yourself warned. We were amazed at how close it let us get after it caught its prey and moved to a tree. We stayed until it flew down the hill to do some more hunting. Some of our homeschooling friends let us know that it had caught two more rodents. I guess it was hungry!

What a great way to end our day at the park!

Hawk4
*I'm using "it" because I really couldn't tell if it was male or female. If anyone can tell from these shots, let me know!

4 comments:

Lori said...

what a great day. :^)

i can't help with the hawk identification (although there's a book right over there...), but the red-tailed hawk is the one we most commonly see in this area. i love getting to see one close up!

Anonymous said...

I like Sierra's "mullet" haircut - she looks good with short hair!
Love, Aunt Linda

flmom said...

What a beautiful place to spend the day! And you helped the Earth to boot!!! The hawk photo is gorgeous. I'll have to come back to look at the pics with the rat though - I just ate lunch. LOL

Inner Elder said...

Wonderful pix! And I agree with Linda - Sierra's haircut is "growing" on me. Love, Mom

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