City Hawk

Yesterday I was walking home from work on a busy street, University Avenue, and a big bird rose up out of a flower bed on my right. I thought it was just a seagull - we have lots of seagulls for a landlocked city, they hang out in parking lots and eat trash - we are thousands of miles from the ocean, but less than a hundred from Lake Michigan, so that must be how they get here - but it was a hawk with a mouse in its mouth. It settled down on a lampost to eat the mouse. Another walker who was coming towards me saw the hawk, too, and said, "that was cool, huh?" as I was replying, "he had a mouse!"

UW-Madison's Lakeshore Nature Preserve - where I got the picture from - says hawks do pass through the city all the time, but it still seemed pretty odd to see one in such an urban setting.