As you may be aware, there is at least one pair of Red-tailed Hawks in our neighborhod. They’re frequently on or over our property, but it seems nearly every time I’m out walking in the yard and the birds are present, my camera is absent. It’s gotten to the point where I was halfway convinced that they would check to see whether I had my camera before they flew by.
Today was a bit different, though. I was out walking around, but the hawk was busy flying (and looking) the other way, and he actually flew into a tree in the back yard. I was able to run back to the house and grab the camera and get back out before he flew off. Although, as the sequence below shows, it was a near-run thing:
As you can see in the first image, when he was on his perch, he was clearly on guard, and he was just as clearly interested in taking wing again soon. I wondered what he was up to, when all of a sudden it became obvious: he wanted to fly with his friend! (I say he,” but it’s difficult to sex hawks in the field except under very particular circumstances like we had this spring)
