Yin and Yang.
A double hawk cypress tree at Paynes Prairie.
Talk about your icing on the cake ... two cooperative hawks after a morning of sandhills and whoopers.
Okay, bird-nerds, I'm calling this a Red-shouldered hawk.
Feel free to verify or vilify my identification, but I did slip over to Cornell just to double check.
These hawks were in a great hunting spot. The cypress stood alongside a canal, at a point with cover and open water. It was alive with blackbirds and other small birds flitting among the emergent water plants.
I'm sure there were also small critters creeping about that the hawk could see and I could not.
The sunny hawk, above, was cooperative to a point.
He allowed me to get fairly close, then the screeching began, and he soared.
He drifted back and forth over me a few times, crying an intruder alarm, before landing in a more distant cypress.
The shade hawk never did leave his perch.
In fact, he didn't seem to be interested in me at all, even when I walked right up to his perch tree while trying to find a clear shot through the cypress twigs.
Preening is serious business and I suppose he had already sized me up as a non-threat.
Which I was.
Hawks are known for their accuracy.
8 comments:
I, too, am calling that a red-shouldered, despite the light coloring. A real beauty. You're having some beautiful nature days down there with super birding. Makes me look forward to January.
I meant to comment on your baby, Katie. She is, indeed, a real beauty and congrats one and all. It's nice that even though they get too big for Gerry carriers, they still let you hold onto them in lots of wonderful ways.
I love watching the hawks just soaring overhead.
Vicki,
I do count myself luck in children and birds.
I went to Cornell'cause I always mix up coopers and red shoulders on this blog and they actually had a lighter Florida version pictured, so I felt confident in naming this bird.
Jean,
Me too. Sometimes they are just a pinprick in the sky, but their call drifts down.
I can't help you out on the identification, but I can ooh and aah on your good luck! Splendid photos!
That picture of the soaring hawk is gorgeous!!!
Paynes Prairie is an interesting spot. I can't figure out if its a wetland that should be a pond or vice versa.
Robin,
Thanks! I know you love the raptors!
Lynn,
Thanks, lucked out on that one.
Robert,
Neither can Payne's Prairie.
It has been both over time.
I've been busy and was behind reading your blog. Last night I published, "A Bird in the Hand" and now I read your "Two in the Bush." I guess we are back on parallel again, FC. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
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