A tower is not neccessary to become a target either. Plenty of Red Hawks in my little city neighborhood. Here is one sitting on a Cushcraft R8 vertical matchbox in my backyard. It was watching and pounced upon a black racer snake down at one guy anchor. Never been hit yet thankfully, but they have made precarious low passes at me and my nervous cat. Amazingly, aggressive fast and manuverable bluejays and mockingbirds will sometimes gang up to harass and try driving them away during nesting season. Being on a large pond and canal that empties into the nearby salt water bay there are also plenty of bigger Ospreys, but as the expert said, they are relatively tolerant of humans. Often I spot one on top of the 35 ft high tubing vertical, sometimes munching on a fish, making a mess, dropping scraps & bones on the base . However, as @WN1MB and @KD4MOJ point out, stinging insects are also a big nemisis mostly on or near the ground here in FL.
when I was working for Corus Entertainment in London, Ont. I was warned every time I had to go and check the dish's and equipment on the roof. There were Peregrine falcons on the roof of the TD bank tower. Also a bunch of avid bird people watching from the ground. There were parts of birds and other unknown small animal pieces all over the roof top. At the AM radio site there were always wasps & hornets in and around the transmitter shacks by the tower antennas. Another hazard was the gopher holes, you're walking along inspecting guys, tower, attacking wasps etc and theres a gopher hole hidden in long grass.
My team had to go through "Killer Bee training" to work a sites in AZ and CA a few years ago For real
heh - that reminds me of the "Killer Bs" mentioned in Howard Stern's interview of Megan Kelly back in 2015.
Easiest way to keep ants and other bugs out of electrical enclosures is to put a dog or cat flea collar in the box. I worked in the electrical industry and a lot of insects are attracted to the static electricity in some enclosures.
Superb idea! Thanks. I've got a weather station that attracts ants every year. They chew on wire insulation and short out the circuits with debris/soil they carry up.
Have worked on many ham towers installing various antennas the red tail hawks will tear hell out of you sometimes. But of course we are considered the invader. Have a good friend who lives near a wooded tract of land and he frequently gets a visitor to come and sit on his boom of his yagi,but he's never been attacked. As a kid I did have a wild crow that we tamed as it tumbled from it's nest and my Dad having grown up on a farm knew how to raise it.Well it grew up and flourished, we even let him fly freely during the day and he always returned to his cage (which Dad built).But during the day he would swoop down on certain people scaring them but never hurting anyone.He was extremely intelligent learning and doing various tricks. He knew our family and treated us as though he was part of it--WHICH HE WAS! Greg Mitchell,W2MYA,West Caldwell,N.J.
