With thousands of people and cars swarming about the Emory campus, it is easy to lose sight of the daily dramas of wildlife going on all around us. An observant visitor captured this photo of a hawk that swooped in near the Asbury Circle bridge on Wednesday, hunting squirrels. Andrew Harwood, assistant pastor of United Methodist Church, used a Nikon D40 to get the shot.And who better to comment on the photo than Gary Hauk – vice president of the University. “This reminds me of a startling moment some years ago when my office was on the Quad side of the fourth floor in Administration,” Hauk said. “My computer was set up next to the window, and one afternoon I was typing away and happened to look up and out the window, just as a red-tailed hawk swooped up in front of the window toward the roof, beating its wings frantically while carrying the heavy load of a squirrel in its talons. Awesome!”
Unless you're a squirrel.
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Scenes from our wild campus
Great post. The actual event had, what appeared to be, drama involved. A baby squirrel and an adult squirrel positioned on adjacent trees. The baby squirrel moved ever so slightly, most likely to see what the hawk would do. The hawk jerk his head from the adult squirrel to the baby squirrel moving. From there, as it was hard to tell, the baby squirrel lost its grip on the tree and fell about 25 feet. You could see everyone's head follow the squirrel down. Before the baby reached the ground, the adult squirrel ran to its rescue, but to no avail. The hawk wasted no time in diving in and swooping up the baby. The hawk was gone as fast as he came and the adult squirrel fled the scene for fear of his own life.
ReplyDeleteKinda sad, but survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom. Glad its not like that for us...