{"id":171258,"date":"2026-05-18T07:02:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=171258"},"modified":"2026-05-18T09:40:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:40:04","slug":"hannibal-and-annabelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/18\/hannibal-and-annabelle\/","title":{"rendered":"Hannibal and Annabelle"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always tried to resist the temptation to assign pet names to wild birds because to me it seems disrespectful of their wildness. But I sometimes make exceptions for distinctive birds that visit my yard regularly if I can identify them as individuals. I do it largely because it makes it easier, quicker and less cumbersome to identify a specific bird, especially in conversations with others who are familiar with the same distinctive bird – like my friends and neighbors Shane and Kimmy Smith who know many of the same birds I do.<\/p>\n

Currently the regularly returning yard birds I’ve named include a unique leucistic Red-winged Blackbird that I call Luke and the only adult male Yellow-headed Blackbird that visits my yard. I call him Dandy, short for dandelion.<\/p>\n

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This is the neighborhood not quite mature Cooper’s Hawk that has visited my yard regularly for going on two years now (I’ve posted this photo before). Based on his size and behavior I believe he’s a male. This spring he’s been visiting my yard at least once every day to hunt songbirds at my feeders.<\/p>\n

His ambush skills are superb so I’ve named him Hannibal after Hannibal the Great, who famously crossed the Alps with war elephants to ambush the Romans. (I didn’t<\/span> name him after Hannibal Lecter. I’m sure “my” Hannibal eats bird livers but I’m just as sure that he doesn’t accompany them with “fava beans and a nice chianti”.)<\/p>\n

As far as I knew, Hannibal was the only Cooper’s Hawk in the neighborhood but about two weeks ago I was in for a surprise. I was sitting on my patio, sans camera, when Hannibal swooped in and landed on my back fence – followed immediately by a mature Cooper’s Hawk hot on his tail. For about five seconds they appeared to be playing with each other and then they left together. That was the first time I’d seen the adult hawk in my yard.<\/p>\n

The second hawk is significantly larger than Hannibal so I believe it’s a female. And Hannibal may now be old enough to breed so I have to wonder if they’ve paired up.<\/p>\n

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May 9:<\/p>\n

Then nine days ago, my birthday, she showed up again and landed on my feeder pole. When she came in, all the songbirds took refuge in my grapevine which is right behind the pole. Here she seems to be daring them to come back to one of the two feeders that are only inches below her. Needless to say, none of them did.<\/p>\n

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May 11:<\/p>\n

Then for a few days Hannibal was the only Cooper’s Hawk that I saw in my yard and even though he’s become used to me, he wasn’t very cooperative.<\/p>\n

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May 12:<\/p>\n

The next day I nearly caught him bathing in my bird bath but “nearly” doesn’t get the job done.<\/p>\n

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May 13:<\/p>\n

The day after that, while I was sitting on my patio, Hannibal landed in my nearly leafless (thanks to a brutal frost in April) catalpa tree but from my vantage point he was largely hidden by twigs and last year’s seed pods. But he allowed me to “sneak” across my lawn while dragging my tripod, camera gear and a chair, to a spot where…<\/p>\n

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I had a clearer look at him. We were under a severe thunderstorm watch at the time so it was cloudy and windy. Those leaves in the tree behind him were blowing around so much it made me a little dizzy through the viewfinder. But Hannibal didn’t seem to mind. I took hundreds of photos of him for 18 minutes before he flew off.<\/p>\n

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May 14:<\/p>\n

And guess who showed up the next day – the adult female. She landed on my grapevine before hopping onto…<\/p>\n

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the same feeder pole that she’d been on a few days earlier. I’ve seen her in my yard several times before and since then without getting photos.<\/p>\n

At this point it looked like she’d be around for a while, so I felt it was appropriate to give her a name. I’ve named her Annabelle.<\/p>\n

Hannibal and Annabelle – for my sensibilities that combination has a ring to it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – We’re under a three day (night) frost watch, again. After all the frost damage last month I decided to not take any chances so…<\/p>\n

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this is what the right half of my garden looks like right now (photo taken last evening). I’ve covered everything but the frost hardy plants.<\/p>\n

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This is what the left half of my garden looks like. I covered the foreground geraniums after this photo was taken. It’s going to be a lot of work to keep this up for three days while removing all the covers during the daytime but not as much work as replanting most of the garden.<\/p>\n

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Even my kitchen table is part of the project. Damn frost.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naming wild birds. Is it disrespectful? (11 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,380],"tags":[7931,7934,7933,7930,7932,311],"class_list":["post-171258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-coopers-hawk-diurnal-raptors","tag-covering-garden-plants-for-frost","tag-hannibal-lecter","tag-hannibal-the-great","tag-male-and-female-coopers-hawks","tag-naming-wild-birds","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/coopers-hawk-5532-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Iye","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171258"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171297,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171258\/revisions\/171297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}