We were driving home from an early-morning trip to the lake when I noticed an interesting dark hawk on a tree. I made a quick u-turn and went back to investigate, and here’s what I saw.
The reason I was so intrigued by this hawk is that we have quite a few “regular” light-colored red-taileds in the neighborhood. But a few months ago, there was a random report on eBird of a possible zone-tailed hawk in the area. (The report was from someone driving by on the freeway, so one must be skeptical, but one also can’t help feeling interested at the possibility of a rare sighting, so…)
I turned around and drove off, congratulating myself on having wrapped up the quick photoshoot with the bird not even changing posture (disturbing the bird to get a shot is at best unethical and at worst dangerous to the bird). As I drove away, I glanced beside me at the hawk, camera put away and pedal to the metal. At precisely that moment, not one minute after me having left the scene, a kingbird started to swoop at it to drive it off its perch. If only I’d waited one tiny minute longer to wrap up the shoot!