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A not very good photo of a hawk of some sort. Cooper's maybe? Sharp-shinned? Don't think it's a Redtail. It was taken two weeks ago on Thursday. He's been pretty skittish and it was hard to get a good shot of him. Maybe he knew something was up.

Anyway, we'd been observing this hawk since the winter in some nice, partly wooded, partly scrub/meadowland at the end of the street. Here's an even worse shot of him sitting in a huge tree right at the end of the street, taken the same day.

Sadly, that tree is not there any more. We went back the next day (Friday two weeks ago today) and the tree was gone. So were the two or three other big trees near it. So was the hawk. Instead, there was this behemoth, devouring the landscape:

By the time we got there that afternoon, all the cleared areas you see here in the foreground that were mostly trees before had already been leveled in one day:

By Tuesday, the trees in this photo (also taken two weeks ago on Thursday) were gone, too:

We had been talking for a month or so about going to see the developer and the Alcoa City Manager about maybe trying to get this made into a park/wildlife refuge. Besides the hawk and dozens of other types of birds including some wild ducks nesting in some wetland areas there, we've seen lots of rabbits, at least one coyote, and some neighbors have seen some deer.

There are now suddenly 75 building lots. Phase III or something. As of today, all of that scrub/meadow you see in the background of the photo with the Mrs. and Pupster has also been cleared.

Like I told the Mrs., though, there's not much we can say about it without being hypocritical. We got ours already. But a park would have been nice. I guess it's too late now. Instead, I think I'll go see the developer about buying a lot or two.