Goshawk

Things are pretty quiet here at the Kennel.  It just barely broke into double digits above zero today.  The outside dogs pretty much stay in their heated kennels and the inside dogs make only brief forays out in the yard.  About the only thing to do is shoot the seemingly endless number of red squirrels that raid the bird feeder.  Earlier this week I had a Goshawk try to catch one of the live squirrels and miss.  Then it noticed that there was a dead one lying on the ground under the feeder.  It flew down, hopped around a few times, and then grabbed the dead squirrel and flew off.  The Gos now comes back every day for a squirrel.  In fact he's sitting in the tree about 10 feet above the feeder as I'm typing this.  Earlier today I snapped a picture through the window of it in a tree and then went out and got one of it in the air.  Pretty darn cool.  Wish I had a full blown DSLR but these are not bad for a point & shoot.  I figure every squirrel I get for the Gos is one less grouse its going to try for.

Update on Annie:  Wild Apple Annie is settling into life here at the Kennel.  She seems (like most of our dogs) to be really people oriented and I'm now comfortable letting her run loose around the yard a couple times a day.  She's still not in heat so we'll go ahead with the plan to have an Ovuplant insert done the 26th.