Early in January, someone reported a Swainson’s Hawk over near the coast. It’s an unusual bird for our area, so a lot of birders have gone over to find it, and most (as far as I can see from the reports) have done so. I, of course, take a different approach. Rather than find the bird I’m looking for, I find a different bird. So, that’s what I did. Of course, for a while I was convinced I’d found and photographed the Swainson’s, but once I got home and saw the photos and (more accurately) once the eBird reviewer for our area saw the photos, what we saw was a slightly skittish juvenile Red-tailed Hawk:
Juvenile Red-tailed Hawks don’t have red tails. But in structure, size, and shape, they are pretty much the spitting images of the adults, which I should have noticed before convincing myself that ours was anything but a standard red-tailed. However, it was skittish, and I knew the bird I was looking for was as well, and it fled the post almost as soon as I got out of the truck (I went around the back, out of its view, I’m not a complete idiot, but I was not successful at keeping it in close range for good photo ops).
Turns out, though, not all juvenile red-taileds are as wise as adults, and about five minutes after our skittish “Swainson’s” I found another juvenile red-tailed, this time out on Turri Road, and it was a different experience entirely. This bird, despite obvious success in the most important part of being a hawk (finding and eating prey–look at the red on that giant beak!) still has a bit to learn about probably the second most important part: flying away when we dangerous humans get close. It stayed put and gave us great looks, enabling me to tell right away, even in the field, that this was a Red-tailed Hawk.
This bird stayed perched on its roadside post. It didn’t move when we first drove past it. It didn’t move when we drove by in the opposite direction to try to get the light behind us. And it didn’t move when we slow-drove up to it, stopping at several decent distances along the way to take insurance shots (you know, the ones that will turn out to be the best you can manage, since there’s no way the bird’s going to stay there and let us drive right up next to it, is there)? Well, uh, yeah. Way. Not moving, this hawk. It dared us to come close, so close we came. We drove up literally to just across the narrow width of the road. Just two lanes and a thin patch of grass separated our truck from its fence-post perch. This unusual fearlessness, while perhaps not a great survival trait for a hawk, allowed us to get a few decent images. Here are three of them:
If only we lived in a world where all hawks feel no need to flee humans!