Another several hours putting up more of the Christmas lights (almost there, I swear) but today I had my camera at the ready. In the past couple of days that I’ve been out in the yard working on the lights there have been pictures that were just begging to be taken — but the camera was in the house and by the time I would have gotten it, the picture would have been long gone. Today I decided to be ready. And a good thing too!
I spotted this gorgeous creature on the light pole across the street. We often see hawks flying around, often soaring in pairs, but we rarely have them roosting on our street. Too much green grass and manicured lawns. Two blocks away where the big open fields and hillsides are, that’s where you’ll see them often. Meals are often on the loose in those fields.
In addition, the hawks we normally see are red-tail hawks and they’re only about 2/3 the size of this one, which is one of the reasons this one stood out so much.
She (or he) was very patient as I took pictures, scanning the area for lunch. I think it was pretty much a case of me not being lunch appropriate, so as long as I wasn’t throwing rocks or something aggressively threatening, I didn’t exist.
Suddenly, she (or he) was off like a shot. I assume that some squirrel or roof rat had made their one fatal error. I love hawks, can take or leave squirrels (Jessie has a much different opinion), and hate rats, so I was rooting for the hawk.
As she (or he) took off I got one decent picture of her (or his) plumage. Based on this picture, I’m thinking that this is a red-shouldered hawk. If anyone out there knows better and/or can identify if it’s a male or female, please let me know.
As the sun set, far out to the west over the coast there was a regular “wagon train” of large jets with their contrails lit up like pink comets.
I’ve checked before on Flight Aware to see what the jets on this course might be – most of them look like they’re headed to northeastern Asia. Japan, South Korea, Shanghai, that sort of thing.
As I was putting away ladders and equipment, this guy was about fifteen feet up on the palm tree, just above the top of the lights I had been having fits with all day. He was chittering and bitching at me and I swear he was taunting me. I had been up and down my biggest ladder probably thirty or forty times today, moving it around in between each climb, in order to get two strings of lights to circle the trunk of the tree. I didn’t have my squirrel translation app loaded, but I think the gist of it was, “Puny, stupid human! This is how you do it! Up! Down! Up! Down! Backwards and upside down! See how easy it is? Neener-neener-nee-ner!!”
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 