Sunday, April 3, 2016

Juvenile Cooper Hawk


       Taking pictures of a hawk took some time and effort, but it was worth it.





 This hawk was in a redbud tree near us... it had been on the fence first, but I wasn't able to get any photos while it was there. When it flew to the redbud tree, I went outside and started to click the camera. Obviously, he was quite hard to see and the pictures were not very satisfying.










So, I moved closer... and came up a bit behind him. To do this, I had to go across the road and move slowly around him.  I was surprised that he stayed there. I figured it must be a young hawk. 












It seems to be a Cooper's Hawk.  What a privilege to see one so close like this. 


I was able to get pictures of a young hawk another time and you can see those here:
Young Hawk Pictures














I think this hawk may be younger than the one in my other post. The reason I say this is that I found out that a juvenile Cooper's Hawk has yellow eyes and the adult has red eyes. The hawk in this post has very yellow eyes, while the one in the other one has darker yellow eyes, which makes me think the color must be changing. However, this is just a guess as I am no expert on hawks!   :)  



It was amazing to see so much detail of this beautiful bird. We found out that neighbors down the street see a hawk often and though they love the beauty of the bird, they hate the mess they leave behind after a meal. I agree that we would really rather not have that.











As I was clicking away on my camera, I noticed a large hawk circling way up in the sky. It was beautiful, but I couldn't get pictures. I also realized it was possibly the mother hawk and I hurried up with the photo shoot, so she wouldn't get alarmed and dive at us.



Thankfully, the circling hawk didn't attack and the young hawk stayed for the photo shoot, then flew off. Every few days, we see a hawk fly through the area, but we haven't been able to get more pictures. We'll keep trying, though as we do enjoy watching these beautiful birds.  :) 

 Thank you for visiting. I hope you have a wonderful week. 




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