Where Have All the Pigeons Gone?

Long time passing!

Actually, I'm not sure how long it's been, since today was the first day that I was fully aware of the fact that there were no pigeons clustering around as I fed the squirrels.  I think it may have been a while since I'd seen them, but I just hadn't been paying attention. I did notice today though, as I sat on the bench in the park by the east flagpole, that they were not there on the periphery as they usually are, hoping for a handout -- anything but a peanut, as they are unable to break the shell. There was not a single pigeon to be seen anywhere on that side of the park!

Then I went back to the Orange Tree and noticed there were no pigeons there either. How strange. Seems like they've flown the coop, but where would they go? Pigeons don't fly south! Whoever heard of such a thing? Someone, please tell me, where are the PCV pigeons?

What brought the pigeons to mind was this really huge bird that was sitting on the raft by Cloud Nine in the marina yesterday. This bird was no pigeon. At first I thought it must be one of the ducks, but soon realized that it was a bird, and much larger than any duck. Then I thought it might be a hawk, but I'm really not sure if it was. It did not really look like the red-tailed hawks that we often see (ugh) at PCV.

Unfortunately my camera battery was dead, and anyway it was twilight, too dark for a picture.  I managed to scare the bird away with my stares, and then  noticed a similar but somewhat smaller bird "swinging" back and forth on a rope that tethered the Cloud Nine to the dock. It looked like it was having fun there, if birds can have fun. This must have been the other bird's companion. I'll keep looking on Google to see if I can find a similar bird. It was large, gray and had white specks where its wings folded into its body. The coloring and markings were similar to the mother duck, but this was no duck!