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Birds > Steve Wolfe  > The Red-Tail Hawks of Kaiser Hospital, Harbor City, California > June 11 --- What a Day It Was!
I arrive as usual on Saturday around 4pm. There isn't any activity among the hawks that would mark it as anything other than a normal late-afternoon. Two of the hawklets (the oldest and the youngest) are on a ledge of the main hospital building looking inside the windows; I don't see Jen but she seems to prefer being by herself. Could her week-long stay with the Wildlife Rehab folks after crashing into the window have somehow changed the dynamics among the siblings? For whatever reason, I rarely if ever see all 3 hawklets together anymore. While looking at the 2 on the ledge, I notice one has what appears from a distance to be...a snake...

(A brief pause in the action for a quick reminder. The South Bay Wildlife Rehab has been following the Kaiser Red-tails from the beginning and has been indispensable in helping them whenever they seem to need human assistance. They are all volunteers and most of the funding comes from their own pockets, so please help with a contribution. Their website is at http://www.sbwr.org and their phone # is (310) 378-9921. Thanks Ann, Jen and all the other wildlife rehabilitators!)
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"It's mine by right of conquest", and puts her foot down.
She then continues on her pigeon binge
He tries to look as fierce as her but...something has changed, and in the time since this incident I've noticed she seems to go out of her way to intimidate him even as he stays close to her.  Perhaps L'il Bro has to learn the Law of the Jungle the hard way...
Having had her fill of the pigeon --- not that there's much left --- Big Sister perches on the railing and watches passersby. It's around this time that 2 kids see the 2 hawklets and run towards them; I tell them "stay back, they're 2 hawks" more for the birds' protection because the kids look like they'd interfere with them.  Once again I'm glad it's not a busy weekday....
I go back up to the balcony and a few seconds later Jen flies onto a branch of the pine flies onto a branch of the pine tree clutching a squirrel; you can see its feet dangling in the sunlight.  Mom probably dropped it off as it's stil too soon for them to hunt prey on their own.  But the squirrel may have been alive and Jen could have done the actual killing.
Jen flies to the ledge and runs to her usual eating spot, clutching the squirrel in one taloned foot...The red band is stil visible.
OK boys and girls, this is where it gets a tad gruesome..if you don't think it already has. But as my friend, fellow Fluzi owner and birdwatcher Joan Robins pointed out, even Grimm's fairy tales were, well, "grim", and they were written for children... Such is the struggle for survival of the fittest.
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