Red-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed hawk perched on electrical line

While on a photo shoot for Osprey I came across a big old Red-tailed Hawk, perched on a high power electrical line. The park is awash with large birds; herons, egrets, hawks, eagles and osprey.  Oh my!

This hawk was seemingly undisturbed by my presence.  I got to within 25 feet, which was as close as I wanted to get.  Those hunter eyes combined with the powerful talons and curved beak looked pretty menacing. This hawk was perched just across the street from the pond, nearby to Bassett Creek.  It might have been scoping out some of the many neighborhood squirrels, who are busily gathering black walnuts.

I was surprised that a gold finch was perched nearby to the hawk and was chirping away.  It was far braver than I.

Hawk eye

Gold finch perched (upper left)
nearby Red-tailed hawk

Pleasant surprises and lessons learned

Rear view of Red-tailed hawk in flight

Look around back yard

Red-tailed hawk flying past firewood

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The weather forecasters were predicting rain yesterday. My cousin Rob and I had planned for a 30  mile bike ride in the early morning. We decided to go ahead with our plan. Well, it rained 8/10ths of an inch around 3 in the morning, but by 7 am we were off on what turned out to be a totally rain free ride.  Lesson learned, don't  put your life on  hold because of a weather forecast. (editor's confession; we both had rain gear packed just in case).

Later in the afternoon I took out my camera to snap pictures of some tall grass we have growing in the front yard when, no sooner than I had my camera out, a Red-tailed hawk flew right by me and into our back yard.  I switched lenses and was able to capture a couple of action shots.  Lesson learned, be prepared to change plans. Often things can go even better than expected, but we need to be willing to adapt to the change.

Grass enjoying a "rainy day"