(unfortunately the 'b' on my keyboard sticks and if I hadn't checked I would have referred to it as the 'lickifier' which would have had you all wondering where my mind was today.)
Anyhoo, Hawks, yeah we got them too. They like to eat birds still kicking and screaming on my roof. I kinda liked them eating the mockingbirds until I foolishly became attached to one of the new baby mockingbirds this spring. (it was et by the hawk)
Then my cat attacked the next baby the pair hatched and I spent a month nursing it back to health with ground veal babyfood, draining blood blisters from the injury with a syringe and surgically removing some weird growths around it's eye and on it's toes. That was one effed up little baby mockingird. We named him Quasimoto.
Believe it or not the little bugger made it to adulthood. I kept putting him back in his tree when was learning to fly and one day he just got this "I'm gonna fly or die tryin'" look on his beak and off he went in to the not so wild grey yonder. If he comes back as a young adult I think it will be easy to recognize him since I had to chop off one of mangled his toes so he could land properly and grasp branches.
Before this spring I hated mockingbirds and thanked the hawk for each one he ate on my roof. Now I'm rather attached. They are very determined little birds and the most attentive of parents. My black cat Inky still bears a scar on his head from Quasimoto's mom pecking him to keep him away from her grounded little frankenstein baby. I'm still not sure if Quasimoto thinks me his savior or his personal torquemada for all I did to him. At least he grew up unlike his younger sibling. He also had a cousin to hang with we called Buddy. Buddy flew two weeks earlier but stuck around for Quasimoto. Both families flew off together the day Quasimoto mastered flight.
Happy little story right except for me practicing avian medcine on the baby without his informed consent. Well, it was either that or let the cats rip his wings off. All and all I feel he get the better baargain.