This afternoon a young Red-tailed Hawk almost hit my living room window
going after a dead bird. The bird was a dead siskin that my wife had noticed
earlier and forgot to have me take care of. When the hawk first came in I
thought he had gotten a junco but as we watched it was apparent the bird had
no bleeding or fleshy meat. We watched at first from the window three feet
away, then realizing the hawk showed no inclination to leave I went and
unlocked the camera safe and grabbed one all setup and eased out into the
yard to see if I had a chance for a picture or so.
I needn't have worried! I took over a hundred and had time for at least that
many more. I may as well of been a stump for all the attention he paid to
me. After a while he flew up onto the roof and stayed there for over five
minutes before finally flying up into a nearby tree. This is an hour later
and now he is sitting on the fence in the front yard. There he goes off now.
The little birds out by the brush pile really didn't seem very worried by
him. They were moving around quite a bit even while he was in the yard.
I put a few full-frame photos on the web at:
http://www.pbase.com/jvhigbee/redtailed_hawk_juvenile

Joseph Higbee
Spanaway, WA
Mailto: jvhigbee at hotmail.com