Red-shouldered Hawk

I live in a small house on the northern edge of the suburbia associated with Richmond, Virginia. My house is situated on a small lot right next to an interstate highway. When you walk out of my backyard, you are in a thin strip of trees next to the interstate. The sounds of cars and trucks whizzing and thumping past is constant (you get used to it :-).

My nearness to such a significant bit of humanity's infrastructure has set my expectations fairly low when it comes to the number of, and variety of, bird species that I might see from my backyard. A visit from a hawk is always a pleasant surprise.

A few weeks back (the first Sunday in March) I was in my house when I noticed the call of a Red-shouldered Hawk. I realized that it was fairly close, so I grabbed my camera and crept out onto the deck behind my house to see if I could catch a photo or two. I immediately located the hawk, perched in a tree in my neighbor's yard. He saw me too, and took flight before I could even raise my camera.

Instead of soaring away and leaving me a frustrated photographer, however, he circled a few times, and then came back to roost in the same tree. How lucky for me! I snapped a bunch of photos before he took flight once more. The results are below. Here are three photos of a Red-shouldered Hawk: one facing away, one facing towards and one in flight.

Red-shouldered Hawk

Some more photos from yesterday's visit to Lake Fausse Point State Park. The night before it rained quite a bit, so everything was wet the morning of our visit. Including the birds. The first photo shows a Red-Shouldered Hawk drying its wings. The second shows the same hawk sitting on its nest, with one hatchling visible (the white fuzzy thing to the right of the adult).

Warm March Saturday = DGCA

Today was an above average warm day in March. Even better, it was a Saturday and it was very sunny. If there was any downside to be discovered, it was the wind. It was quite windy today. So windy that it was sometimes annoying. For example, it can be hard to hold a camera on subject and keep it focused when the subject is flying around, and the wind is gusting hard enough to push you a bit, and you are using a 400mm lens.

Anyway, because it was so nice out, Tammy and I decided to visit Dutch Gap Conservation Area (DGCA). Actually, to be precise, I announced that I was going to DGCA last night and asked Tammy if she wanted to come along. She politely obliged. She tolerates me very nicely. And if you have not noticed yet, my "I am going bird watching at the last minute" location of choice in the Richmond area is DGCA.

Here are a couple pictures from the trip. The first is of a Red-shouldered Hawk. He was hanging out in a tree near the visitor center parking lot. If I remember correctly, there have been nesting Red-shouldered Hawks very near this parking lot the past two springs. As I walked below this particular hawk to take pictures, he watched me...well...like a hawk.



The second picture is of a festival of turtles. Or something like that. That log was quite the popular turtle sunning station. There were probably another four turtles, further to the right on this log, that had found spots to soak up the sun.

Backyard Hawk

Today was kind of a dreary slow day. It was gray, cloudy and eventually rained a little bit. It actually got cold enough for a little snow. When I write "a little", I mean it. I do not think I would have noticed had I not been outside at the time.

Why was I outside? Well, officially I was (and still am as I write this) procrastinating. I have some work that I must do this evening. I will not have time tomorrow morning and it is due tomorrow. My procrastination included me refilling the bird feeders and moving some trash from inside the house to the outside trashcans. It was when I was coming back in from these chores that I noticed a hawk sitting high up in a tree above my house.

After a couple trips in and out of the house (to fetch first binoculars, and then the camera with tripod), and relocating the bird after it flew into a tree in a neighbor's yard, I did manage to snap a few pictures. This was when the snow mentioned above actually occurred. When I took enough pictures for me to decide that it was not going to get any less fuzzy, and my fingers were getting cold quickly, I came in to complete my procrastination with this blog post. Oh, I almost forgot. This is a Red-shouldered Hawk.