I wonder what my neighbor was thinking when she drove by my house and saw me sneaking around the hedges with a camera in my hand. That I am a madwoman spying on my neighbors perhaps.
What I was really doing was trying to capture a closeup photo of our neighborhood hawk looking for prey in my neighbor's yard.
This is the first time I saw him/her today:
It was between 2 and 3 p.m. and I caught a glimse of him as I was preparing to mop the kitchen floor. First he was on the neighbor's stairway railing and then he hopped on the ground and appeared to be eating something. Perhaps he found a lizard or some sort of bug. Then he found a favorite perch on top of their playset. I'm sure he was looking for one of the little bunny rabbits that are often seen running through this yard.
Just before we went out to dinner, we saw him again sitting on our fence. Then he quickly moved over to the neighbor's fence and I could only see him from Jacob's bedroom window:
Not a great shot, thus the reason I was sneaking out around the bushes with my camera. Unfortunately he saw me and flew away.
We're really not sure what kind of hawk he is. Nicholas thought he was a Cooper's Hawk because his head was black, but we think he is too big for that. He's probably one of the redshouldered hawks we see around here all of the time. We used to think they were broadwinged hawks because they look like it in the picture we captured last winter on our rooftop. But after purchasing Birding by Ear, we discovered that they sound just like a Redshouldered hawk. Now that we know what they sound like, we hear their calls all the time and are able to locate them in trees throughout the neighborhood.
Don't you love Birding by Ear! That has to be my favorite purchase this year. Birding is such fun.
Posted by: Marjorie | July 03, 2007 at 05:00 PM