Fine Feathered Friends – March 06th

What a pleasant surprise today! I was taking a quick break and grabbing a soda in the kitchen when I saw something large-ish going through the pine trees on the slope beyond the back yard. It wasn’t any mourning dove, much larger, some sort of raptor. I grabbed a camera and headed out into the rain.

I figured that it had just been passing through and I might see it circling over the canyon someplace. It was rainy and starting to close in so I didn’t see anything in the sky. Suddenly my pattern recognition kicked in and I realized that this guy was sitting right there, staring at me.

After I got a couple of pictures from the back yard, I decided to see if the hawk would sit still while I went down the stairs to the “lower level.” To my surprise and delight, it did! Although it was giving me some serious stink eye.

I was still maybe 20-25 feet away and about even with it, although if I had tried to go over to the tree it was in I would have been 30 feet below it. That hill is steep. I guess it decided that I was mostly harmless. (I am! Mostly…)

By this point the rain was coming down steadily and while the hawk was looking all over, it didn’t seem too happy about the meteorological conditions.

What kind of hawk is it? It’s a mystery, sort of. I ran four different pictures through the Merlin Bird ID app (from Cornell Lap, get it!) and all four said it might be a Cooper’s Hawk or a Red-shouldered Hawk. In either case it’s probably a juvenile, but that’s more likely if it’s a Red-shouldered Hawk. That’s my bet, simply because the Cooper’s Hawks that I’ve seen up close have solid brown or tan chests, where these patterns are more like the Red-shouldered Hawks. I could have positively ID it if it had sounded off, their calls are much different. But not a peep was heard.

I expected it to fly off any second, but it just sat there. After about fifteen minutes I was more wet than I really liked, and I had the option of going inside. I came back out an hour later and it was still sitting there, which I found really surprising. But it was gone a half-hour after that.

I shot a couple minutes of video while waiting and hoping it would either sound off, fly away, or both. No joy on all counts, but it’s a gorgeous creature!