A Morning Visitor

My song birds and squirrels are not happy, but, man, it is so cool when the big birds stop by. This has only happened a couple of times before, and all the little ones head for cover immediately.

This morning I saw the hawk (Cooper’s Hawk?? I’m bad at identifying.)cruise in from across the street and swoop over the top of the house. I ran from the kitchen window to the back of the house, grabbing my camera on the way. Oh, Nature, how you distract me.

After taking dozens of pictures from the cover of the back windows, I decided that he? she? wasn’t going anywhere soon since my yard was a buffet of tiny furs and feathers.

I slipped out the garage door and approached from the side of the house.

Yea, I’m not as sneaky as I think.

As a predator in the city, I’ll assume that my visitor is very used to people and was not particularly concerned about me and my camera.

This was the best motion shot I got as he flew to the other side of the fence. I was too zoomed in to catch much more.

Re-positioned at another angle on the fence, he continued to scope the flower bed for movement. I crept to about five feet from the bird when he pounced on a Junco who had made the mistake of moving. I squeaked and took a lot of blurry photos of the fence to capture the impact of large wings thrashing in my butterfly bush. I’m fairly certain the Junco made it out.

 

If you’re better at hawk identification than I am, please let me know about my visitor.