Hondas and Hawks

First piece of news from a couple of weekends ago... I bought a car!! Hurrah, I've finally entered the 21st century. With the cold weather and the dark evenings, it was getting quite unpleasant to ride my bike, although I do feel a little guilty that I'm driving instead of biking. Anyway, I got a 2010 Honda fit. It is only 2 years old with 12400 miles so lets call it nearly new. It has been great so far, despite the ridiculous drama getting cashiers checks from the bank to pay the down payment!

No shoes!

So, this weekend we went up to Saratoga Springs which is about 30 miles north of Albany. For the first time Matt didn't have to drive!! There a is great main street with lots of local shops (and some not so local - hello Eddie Bauer shop with 25 % off whole store) so some Christmas shopping was done. A nice beer and appetizers at Irish Times was followed by a stroll through the park.

This is where things got interesting. Matt spots a huge bird swooping down across the park and flying to a tree with something in its feet. At this point, all the squirrels were frantically squealing but no one else seemed to be paying attention. Being the amateur ornithologist Matt is, we tip toed over to the tree to get a closer look. It was a red tailed hawk having a delicious evening snack of a chipmunk. It was completely oblivious to us right below it. Okay so it was kind of gross watching it rip up the chipmunk but we watched for a while. It even dropped a little bit which we took home for the cat to play with (yuck)!!


Not the best picture as it was getting dark, but this guy (or girl) was big!

 

Chipmunk tail for the cat :-)