I saw the coolest thing

[FatBass]

Here's the pic I promised of the urban songbird terrorist:

http://www.wildlife.utah.gov/forums/alb ... ic_id=2824

He or she is really thinning out the bird population in my South Ogden neighborhood!

[gctlarr]

Guiding raft trips in the Grand Canyon has given me a couple of unique opportunities to see Peregrine Falcons in action. I jumped a bunch of teal one time right before entering Randy's Rock rapid. They flew down river, and then suddenly "crashed" into the water. I thought that was weird, when suddenly I caught movement high and to my left. The Peregrine was flying upstream, and the ducks knew it was there. As my raft scared the teal again, I turned to see the Peregrine coming full speed down river, at about eye level now, and about fifteen feet off my left, it came by the raft as I was yelling at my guests to see what was about to happen. Of course, I didn't have time to explain the whole set-up, and how it all unraveled, until after the near miss! The falcon flared and landed on an overhang, and screeched as we went by. Awesome!
Another time, I had two falcons that had a flycatcher confined in a fairly narrow section of canyon. A dogfight ensued over our heads as one falcon would keep the prey confined into a section of canyon, while the other would swoop in for the kill. After about three misses, all of which basically happened right above us, and involved some spectacular flying by all three birds, the falcons got their food. We had feathers come down on the raft!

[sage chickenn]

I was sitting under the I 15 over pass on 7200 south waiting for the light to change and saw several crows up on the over pass, they would take turns flying up to the pigeon nests and grab baby pigeons out of them and then fly off with the winged rats in their bill, it was pretty cool too bad they don't do it more often.

[DWR admin]

There is a big yellow tom cat that roams our neighborhood. I've seen it walking across the road with a couple of magpies hopping along behind it. When the cat looked forward, one of the birds would run up behind it and yank its tail, then fly back about ten feet before the cat could react. Both magpies would start squawking, and then repeat the behavior as soon as the cat started walking off. After several rounds of this, the cat finally ran off and hid beneath some bushes.