The Hawk's Tale

Red Tailed Hawks

Last April, I was walking along the path south of the West Pond, snapping photos of the new foliage and enjoying the Chicago Spring. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized, almost simultaneously, that the movement was upwards.  Trusting the auto-focus of my camera, I swung around, pointed and began to shoot without aiming at first.

 

 



 

There were two hawks that I had disturbed as I walked nonchalantly down the path!  With a little work, I was able to bring out the red tail on one of them.  You can see the residual motion. 

My guess is that they were a mating pair like the pair of Cooper's hawks I had photographed a week earlier, or the Canada geese I had photographed a few weeks earlier. 

Red Tailed Hawks are the most variegated of hawks.  They are light colored underneath, but their back and flight feathers are wonderfully variable. 

Light color underneath

Try as I might, it was a couple months until I got another close look at a Red-Tail.

 

Early Red-Tail Hawk Sightings

 

This time, it was a mature hawk near the East Berm. Again I was nonchalantly strolling north on the path atop the berm when something told me to turn around and "Look!"  I looked and spotted a hawk in a tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hawk flew off before I could get any closer.  You can see the coloration of its feathers.   It is quite strange that these hawks do not all dress alike.  The red tail is a constant, and the color of the under feathers is pretty uniform, but their flight feathers and top feathers vary all over the map.  Now keep in mind how broad this hawk is across the shoulders, and compare with the hawk I photographed standing on my neighbor's car.

 

 

 





 



 

 

 

 

For the record, there are a lot of squirrels in the trees around my house, and my house is just a couple blocks from the entrance to the Nature Preserve.  Was this guy hunting?  I don't know, but it could be.