Red Shouldered Hawk

These were taken while I was in the middle of work today. She just swooped down and sat on the fence right outside the window. 'Course all the other wildlife disappeared for a while while she was here, but what a treat to see her so close up.

Poking around for that mouse (or could have been a gopher) that she thought she saw.

Backside view.

Nice shot!!!
I have a love hate relationship with hawks... I love them and think they are awesome creatures, but I really hate to see them take other animals in prey...

MsC

The bigger ones are scary, granted MsC. These aren't large enough to get a cat or dog (well, maybe a chihuahua or kitten). And they are more interested in the gophers than the songbirds, so I'm ok with them.

Yep, the bigger ones are really scary and I worry about my Chihuahua's getting nabbed sometimes, but I did have one come down and scare the heck outta one of my parrots who was sunning on the patio in a cage...lol
Poor parrot never has been the same...

Still your shots are great!

MsC

Wonderful images! I've only seen one Red Shouldered in the wild. They are coming north with even some being seen up in Washington in recent years. I think they are gorgeous!

This message was edited Jul 25, 2007 3:06 PM

Stella-

What nice pictures, thanks for sharing. We have lots of these hawks around here, and I love their call/song.

Jenny

great photos!!

Nice pics!

Very nice shots stella!! What a treat!

Really beautiful pictures Stella! I rarely get a chance to see them up close around here. We used to have a resident hawk family that lived in the neighborhood but I haven't seen them this year. I thought I was hearing them but I noticed about a week before Pell posted this thread that it was a blue jay!

Excellent photos Stellapathic! How cool!

MsCritterKeeper

Great photos!

Thanks all. Funny incident happened this morning. I was way out back by the shed having my first cup of coffee, with Lionel sitting there peacefully beside me. There was a rustle in the bank of sages and, thinking it was the neighborhood tom cat he needed to chase of his property, Lionel moved like a speeding bullet over the....only to come up short and sit his butt down and stare, wide-eyed. The hawk rocketed out of those bushes, flapping and looking a little panicky that she kept running into stalks of flowers before she took off right over Li's head.

ROTFL! That's funny! Glad neither got hurt, just startled, hehe.

~Kris

When the little birds eat at my platform feeders; I have noticed they try to keep one eye on the sky. We have a red tail that comes through one time a week. He has a fairly large territory. He picked a mourning dove off the ground right in front(two feet away) of one of the windows I photograph from. It was way to fast to grab the camera.

Just as well. I would not like to see that one. :(

Ooo, nice pics! I love hawks, and birds of prey.

I was lucky enough to be able to hold 2 owls at the Birds of Prey Center near here. They rescue and rehabilitate injured birds of prey and release them back into the wild. It was really a lot of fun!

Wow, Lady_Eagle, that must have been really cool! Do you know what kind of owls they were? They have HUGE feet, too, don't they?

~Kris... btw, do you know where I could get my hands on one of those leather falconer gloves? I think I need one (or a chain-mail glove) to take my parrot to the vet, LOL! ;P

It was a blast! Here, I'll share a couple pics...ignore my silly efforts to stamp out my face. You can't see it, but I had a HUGE grin in each pic. What a thrill to hold and pet an owl!

This is Gordon, a Great Horned Owl. Yep, he had big feet! And his feathers were as soft as bunny fur.

I like the birds of prey as much as any bird. In the past I raised two Redtailed Hawks, six Sparrow Hawks (that dates me) and one Barn Owl. The hawks were easy to raise but the owl was a holy terror. I used one glove to handle the hawks but both gloves to handle the owl.

And this is Hope, a Burrowing Owl. These little owls just beg for attention and love to snuggle!

Oh my goodness! I just realized what I've done. My sincere apologies to the original poster for hijacking her thread with my owl pictures. I wish I could delete them and start a thread for the owls, but alas...I'm really sorry. :(

What a great experience. Gordon is gorgeous. Hey, I was just wondering where I'd heard of Redcliff before and Bob Chelmick said it on the radio! I listen to CKUA, right this second actually and his Road Home is one of my favorites, with his poetry and eclectic music created in his cabin in the woods. You're near Medicine Hat, right? Cool. I kinda live up there a few hours a day, your local news, your weather. Maybe I'll visit the area one of these days. http://www.ckua.org/

Edited because we were posting at the same time Lady_Eagle. Please don't apologize. Good segue from the hawk to the owl. But I'd love to see you start a post with more pics of your owl experience. After all, if folks are more interested in owls than hawks, they'd miss your experience by the thread title and you have a very interesting tale to tell.

This message was edited Jul 25, 2007 8:52 PM

Stellapathic, CKUA is a great station! I'm so amazed that you listen to it! Then you know we've been having a heat wave here, complete with some pretty freaky storms. We nearly had a tornado last Friday, they've been appearing just north of us. *shudder*

Yep, Redcliff is only 15 minutes or so from "The Hat" as we call it.

Thank you for your understanding for stealing your thread. I will definately start a new thread to share more Birds of Prey Center pics :)

To me meeting someone who knows CKUA would be like meeting a DG member randomly out there in a nursery or something. What a special experience! Two of the constants in the my life, DG and CKUA. Listen to The Road Home (I think 9:30pm your time) some evening. It's about to end here so you'll probably not get to it tonight, but I highly recommend it for bringing your evening to a serene ending.

We used to listen to the show that started at midnight. It was all mystical, relaxing music like Enya, Enigma, etc. All my favorites! We'd listen to it from midnight to 1 in the morning, or until we were starting to fall asleep, every night. It is now called nightcap, and we haven't listened to it since it switched. I can't rememeber what that program used to be called! It's on the tip of my tongue....oh, how frustrating!

And yep, we've listened to The Road Home! You know it's a good radio station when hubby and I look at eachother and say, "Let's not watch TV, let's listen to CKUA while we work on our hobbies!" LOL

Hmmmm, maybe the name of that show will come back to me. I think there's another program somewhere during the week that has similar music though, but it probably during a time when I'm either working or sleeping. I like Andy Donnelly's Celtic show too. The one you're talking about, who was the DJ? If I could remember that I'd probably remember the name. You can actually find a lot of their old shows in the vault on line. Yup, great station.

Lady_Eagle, that's really cool. Gordon does have big claws. But why'd you block out your face? If it's for privacy, I understand, but I'd like to see the big grin on your face, lol!

adelbertcat - whoa, you raised hawks and an owl? How cool! I bet it was A LOT of hard work, though. I don't even want to think about what kind of damage they could do with their talons or beaks... shudder.

~Kris

The Sparrow Hawks (American Kestrel) were too small to do any damage. The Red Tails were big enough to do damage but were mild mannered. The Barn Owl never tamed down and had to be handled with great care.

Stellapathic, I remember it now! It was called simply Night Music, and the DJ was Tony Dillon-Davis. Woohoo! Now I feel better. That was bugging me that I couldn't remember.

Iris, yep it's for privacy that I blocked out my face. I learned the hard way last year after the guy who molested me started stalking me online. I wish you could have seen the smile on my face while I was holding Hope, though! I had her cuddled right up to my cheek. Cute little owls.

Yup, that's it. Night Music. Whatever happened to Tony Dillon Davis. Is he still on the station? If so I guess it's at a time I don't listen. I like Baba too, though. He's really good at choosing unusual and interesting music.

Wow - I'm a little late finding this thread, but what an awesome bird and great photography!

Adel, wow, good thing the red-tails behaved themselves. I know owls are not to be messed with. You're right, though, the kestrels are a little too small to be really concerned about. They all still have sharp claws and beaks, though!

Lady_Eagle, I'm sorry you had to go through those things. You're right, it's a good idea to be careful about how much info (and pix) about yourself that you put out there. I've been stalked before, too, but I logged the threatening IMs and the police nabbed him, lol. I'm glad you got the have that wonderful experience with the owls, though! ;D

~Kris

This message was edited Jul 29, 2007 5:31 AM