Crazy Recent Bird Sightings

I don't know if there are more birds of prey in New Orleans now, or I'm just paying more attention, but I've been seeing them like crazy of late. A sampling of a few recent sightings:

• I was driving home, passing through a busy intersection. A pigeon swooped erratically in front of me, then smashed into the side of a cab going the other way. As my brain started to formulate the question, "What the h...?" I saw a hawk¹ swoop in to scoop it up off the pavement, and I realized its wild flight had been a desperate (and failed) attempt to escape. Oh. Dang!
• There's been some sort of hawk hanging out around my office. I see it regularly fly past and hang out in nearby trees. We're on the third floor, and it sometimes flies below our windows. Cool to see its vivid top-side markings.
• I saw a bald eagle twice in one day (again at work), drifting along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain.
• The other day, I was biking through my neighborhood and was startled to see a big ol' hawk sitting on nearby fence, literally about ten feet away, the closest I've ever been to such a creature. It had some large cricket-like munchy in its beak. I skidded to a halt and tried to snap a photo, but it flew off and landed some distance away, to nosh its bug-treat in peace.

And there's been plenty more sightings, though they escape my brain at the moment.

¹ I say "hawk".  I can't really definitively distinguish between the various flavors of hawk/falcon/etc. down here. Definitely a big bird of prey. Let's just say "hawk" is close enough.