And on my roof, here in NYC. Two big dragonflies buzzing around the tops of the trees in the backyard while I was on the roof deck. This is 80 feet above ground, didn't know dragonflies went that high. Cooing on the deck rail, a mourning dove, and working the same air as the dragonflies, barn swallows, which is very cool. We've had barn swallows in a building on the pier for a long time, but they must have finally passed the point where the river park can support the population and now they're moving east. I saw them again last night swooping around Hudson Street, which is three blocks from the highway separating the neighborhood from the river park, so I hope they're moving in.

Then this morning, on my way to the river, saw a bunch of grackles squawking and chasing a not much bigger bird, which at first I thought was a pigeon. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I realized it had a bird in its talons and it was not a pigeon. It was a sharp-shinned hawk, a pigeon-sized predator, and whether it had raided a nest or caught something on the fly, I don't know, but that poor bird was toast. About 15 years ago I saw a sharp-shinned hawk (sharper shins than other hawks? who knows?) in the backyard behind my building, but that was early in the spring and I thought it was just migrating through. This is too late for migration, though, and it can't be the same bird because they don't live that long. So maybe I was wrong then, or maybe they've established themselves here recently. Unlike the peregrines, which we also have, these guys are willing to go after sparrows and grackles. The peregrines prefer flashier birds, and the red-tails like Pale Male (and Bobby and Violet, in my nabe) like rodents. No one and nothing, it seems, eats pigeons.