hawks galore

i heart hawks. on the way up to my grandparent's house there were lots of them, including a rough-legged hawk, a couple of red-tailed, and an amazing huge Cooper's Hawk, along with three or four kestrels over the dormant fields. there was also a dark morph buteo of some sort, but i couldn't ID it.
Once there, i finally understood Grammy's snobbery about the Maryland birds we took her to see last April. Her backyard boasts a remarkable collection of birds, including nuthatches, cardinals, finches, black-capped chickadees, juncos and woodpeckers, as well as raptors i'm sure. She confided to me that she was unimpressed with the variety of species at Black Hills regional park in Germantown, as she gets all those and more in her own yard in Wisconsin! Well, la-di-da, Grandma. No more VIP parkland tours for you, no sirree. We all bow to the superior biodiversity of your pristine prairie.

p.s. Brian Wilson is a genius.