A Hawk Story
Today I masked up and went to the ever-busy Huntley Meadows Park to try out my new lens. Despite the heavy foot traffic and the semi-professional birders with their arm-length lenses, I managed to follow a red shouldered hawk for a while — the story of his morning, or at least part of it, is told in pictures below. The morning was grey and the light was irregular, but some of the pictures still turned out quite good. My quest to photograph a belted kingfisher continues, however.
The first to notice the new visitor at the pond was the resident Great Blue Heron, who puffed himself up and croaked loudly to show his displeasure that a certain undesirable had moved into the neighborhood.
This is a bad picture — difficult to focus through the tangle of branches — but it’s important for the story. From his perch, the visitor to the pond swoops down and snags something at the water’s edge.
While most of the other birders, with their tripods and muscle-building lenses, were unable to keep up with the hawk’s dive, I was able to steal this shot of the bird after his successful hunt. It’s quickly becoming my favorite picture I’ve taken.
His quarry consumed, he returned to a perch by the water’s edge and watched all us birdwatchers with this look of haughty ambivalence.
Just look at those talons! Stretching before he takes flight. Get ready…
And there he goes…
Stretching his wings…
And swoosh.
One last look at him before he flew not five feet over my head and out over the pond to a new perch — too quick and close to refocus, but still incredible to see.
In addition to the hawk, here are some of the other birds seen around the park. Here’s a pileated woodpecker. There were at least three all around this small area.
Also not the best picture — I was milliseconds too late to catch this chickadee take off.
The downy woodpeckers were out in force.
Tufted titmice continue to beguile my efforts to photograph them clearly.