One of the things that I'm bummed about my current schedule is that I do not have the time to get to Carpenter Nature Center like I used to. But, Jen Vieth who is the Development Director, keeps me on the email list to let me know what's going on and yesterday, she sent a very cool email. Al Maloney, the Interpretive Naturalist for Carpenter set up a deer carcass with a game camera (kind of like the Wingscapes Cam). The general goal with the deer carcass in the winter is to get some cool animal prints in the snow to show kids for their Tracks and Trails class. Jen said that so far mostly fox tracks and oooodles of crow photos at the carcass. But the game cam caught this cool visitor:
It's a rough-legged hawk!
It's funny, I've never seen many hawks on deer carcasses. Loads of eagles, crows, ravens, jays, chickadees and downy woodpeckers, but not many hawks. The only other time I have ever found a hawk on a deer carcass was years ago (before the blog even) up at Sax Zim Bog--and it was a rough-legged hawk.