Red-Tailed Hawk. San Joaquin Valley, California. December 3, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A red-tailed hawk perches on the top of a fence post.
Birds like this one are everyone in the west once you start looking for them, though they are not often easy to approach. In a place like this, where there are many thousands of other birds, these raptors are always there but in much smaller numbers. I frequently see them perched high in large trees or flying past, sometimes provoking reactions from the other birds.
This one teased me a bit. The first time I saw it, much earlier in the day, it was standing on this same fence post and watching a nearby field. Every so often it would take off and, I presume, hunt for something to eat before returning a few minutes later. I never was able to get close to it, so I stayed at a distance and watched. I returned much later in the day, when warm early sunset light was shining on the bird and starting to turn the sky pink. As I drove past on the gravel road it didn’t budge, so I stopped and rolled down a window and photographed it perching on “its” fence post.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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