Raptor Wednesday

I was returning home after several hours of birding. Right across the street from my apartment, a Red-tailed Hawk suddenly landed on top of a parked car. At the edge of the park, a shrub full of House Sparrows and a bush with a Grey Squirrel reverberated with chattered alarms. The big buteo launched into the park, then emerged not with the squirrel or a sparrow, but a pretty grim looking specimen of dead mammal, probably a rat. Raptors will scavenge when they can. (Unfortunately, rat poison remains a threat to eaters up the food chain.)