Flaco caught a Brown Rat early in the evening, but took his time finding a place to eat it. He got interrupted by people, fireworks and raccoons. It wasn’t until he had visited a number of locations that he settled down to dinner after midnight.
I had been coming to see Flaco right around his fly out time, so I came a bit early today. He got visited by some Fish Crows and American Robins and did a bit of stretching before fly out. It was then to a grassy compost hill, just like the night before where he stayed for a long time before flying to a Black Locust tree. He then flew to one of his favorite trees before we lost track of him.
I arrived after Flaco had flown out for the evening. He was in a tree above the East Drive. He flew off and we couldn’t find him. After a thirty minute search, I found him. Flaco was hiding in plain sight this evening between two hills of dirt before going higher.
There had been reports that he had irritated one of his eyes a few days ago. Both eyes looked fine on Monday night.
Watching Flaco on Wednesday night was somewhat disappointing. He roosted in a familiar tree, flew to some nearby trees, but didn’t hunt. He made a trip over the Andrew Haswell Green Bench area and then returned but made a second trip over the area and disappeared. Searches of the construction site came up empty. He could have be flying to the Loch or the Wildflower Meadow. But now that he isn’t hooting, and the trees have leafed out, he’s hard to follow.
I arrived after the Eurasian Eagle-Owl had flown out to find him on a pile of compost. He then flew to a tree and quickly caught a rat behind one of the dumpsters. He mantled it for a few seconds before flying off to a hill, where he had to kill it. Tonight we heard two squeals, once when he caught the rate and once when he killed it.
After about ten minutes, he flew to a nearby tree where you could see him with a loose feather. (He began molting last week.) He continued to one of the Black Locusts before flying to another Black Locust with a good horizontal branch for eating. He then spent 40 minutes eating most of the rat.
He then went to a compost pile in the nursery changing positions a few times, but seemed uninterested in finish the rat. At that point it was late, and I left for the evening.
The video contains about 30 minutes of Flaco eating.
Flaco has begun using the construction site after fly out again.
The compost heap had lots of work done to clean up the site. It’s unclear if all the commotion of the clean up, a dropping rodent population, a desire to spend the beginning of the evening without humans or some other factors are the cause for his change in habits.
