Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

So many bastards, so little time.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

It’s a doggy dog world.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You are here: Home / Guest Posts / Guest Post by Albatrossity: Haunted by Dark Hawks

Guest Post by Albatrossity: Haunted by Dark Hawks

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We have another treat tonight in the form of a Guest Post by Albatrossity.

There may have been tears in my eyes as I read this haunting essay; it’s quite beautiful.

Guest Post by Albatrossity: Haunted by Dark Hawks

All winter long I’ve been haunted by dark hawks. Not in the spectral sense, but in the familiar. I’ve spent time looking for them, photographing them, thinking about them, wondering about them, and even hanging out with hawk researchers to trap them and learn more about them. I’ve dreamed about them, which is unusual, since I usually never remember my dreams! Maybe I’m haunting them rather than the other way around.

I live in a part of the North American continent that has an abundance of Red-tailed Hawks in the winter. Harlan’s Hawks, the darkest subclass (dubbed the “Black Warrior” by no less an authority than John James Audubon), come from the far northwest reaches of the range for this species, northern Alaska and the Yukon. That’s a one-way flight of nearly 3000 miles if you take the shortest flight path, and even longer if you dawdle along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains like these birds probably do.

We really don’t know much about how they get from Alaska to Kansas and back every year; that’s some of the research yet to be done by some of the folks I worked with this winter. But we do know that after they make that journey in the fall, many of them end up in exactly the same place where they spent last winter. For example, I have watched a small dark Harlan’s Hawk (probably a male) claim a winter territory about a mile from my house every winter for the past 7 winters. This year he showed up on October 7; as I write in late March he is still there, although his departure could be any day now. He is so familiar that my kids gave him a name, Harley, and he is a fine representative of the Black Warrior class (see photo).

All Red-tailed Hawks show variability in pigmentation patterns in every part of the body, but Harlan’s Hawks are even more variable. One of the hawk researchers who visited here this winter is studying the genetics of pigment patterns in Harlan’s Hawks. That’s a daunting assignment. The tail of each Harlan’s Hawk is unique. The distribution of colors in Harley’s tail – mostly white, mottled with black and just a hint of the eponymous red – changes little from year to year, and I would likely know him anywhere. But he returns here.

There are a dozen or so others that I have haunted this winter and last winter and the winter before, each finding the same territory every fall and relinquishing it to the local hawks only after the snows start to retreat across the northern plains. Interestingly our summer-resident Turkey Vultures, also a dark shadowy presence soaring above the plains, return here just about the time that the Harlan’s Hawks move out. These birds likely winter no farther away than Oklahoma, though no one knows for sure. (Somehow, working with vultures is even less popular than studying hawks.)

We always have dark birds in the sky here, even if they are different characters every season.

This winter the departure of our dark northern hawks coincides with another, even darker, arrival. Coronavirus. The stealthy migration of this wingless pathogen, hitching rides in passengers on airplanes and cruise ships, has changed the world in a very short time, with more changes yet to come. The non-human world will probably not detect this arrival in the short-term, other than perhaps noting a decrease in human traffic as they go about their daily business. But humans, and their insatiable needs, influence much of the natural world today; there will be consequences, foreseen and unforeseen, that other creatures will deal with in the coming months and years. There are always consequences, and change is the only constant.

Our consequences, at least for the short term but probably longer, include hunkering down and avoiding other people who could potentially transmit the virus to us, or us to them. Social distancing is the newest oxymoron (coincidentally, the recommended 6-ft distance is approximately the wingspan of a Turkey Vulture). Everything is on hold, and time seems to have warped so that it seems to move both very quickly and very slowly these days. News comes at us in waves with no troughs.

And even if we want to shut our eyes and plug our ears to the unpleasant new reality, it remains reality.

Our social media world, often discordant even at the best of times, seems both newly fractured and cohesive. I have virtual friends who live in Alberta, and we are linked by these hawks as much as by social media. They await the spring hawk migration eagerly, and I will get news from them when “my” hawks become “their” hawks as they pass through to the Yukon and become their own hawks, which really is what they have been all along.

Connectivity comes at multiple levels, and even though hawks might seem to be excellent at distancing themselves from humans, these birds have helped us make connections despite the distancing edicts we now live under. On a globe that has not only shrunk with air travel but also expanded with nationalism and hubris, the international journeys of “our” hawks bring us together, adding to our appreciation of distance and, paradoxically, connections. We prepare for a time of unknown duration where we must stay at home while these birds are starting on a 3000-mile migration back to their natal ground. They have been there before, and know the way. I envy them, since I seem to be both at home and adrift at the same time.

The arrival of this mutated virus, which may have made the leap from an illegally poached pangolin to a human being, is a stark reminder both of evolution and the destruction of the natural world at the hands of our species. We are ever so conscious of the movements of the virus in our world, but the underlying reality of our own invasion into the world of pangolins and their viruses is the background music we strain to hear. That music will only get louder. At the same time, this new coronavirus has no consciousness and no awareness of us. It only needs our movements to keep going, and our bodies as new hosts and new evolutionary laboratories. We are very obliging about those needs, even as we gain consciousness of their dangers.

Consciousness is a blessing, but also a plague. The lack of attention to human concerns by those in the non-human world is almost enviable right now; we yearn to return to that blissful nonconcern that the rest of nature has for us.  In a 1969 song entitled “Eskimo Blue Day,” Grace Slick and Paul Kantner summed it up brilliantly:

Consider how small you are
Compared to your scream
The human dream
Doesn’t mean shit to a tree 

But consciousness also means that we can pay attention not only to this unique and devastating springtime, but also to the unconcerned natural world of birds, their travels and their lives. My delight in birds and glancing involvement in their daily rhythm has not changed in this plague year. Haunting hawks gives me hope, as well as another social network where the distancing tomorrow will be followed, inevitably, by reunion and reconnection next fall.

Godspeed, Harley. Stay safe in your summer haunts, and we’ll see you on the other side.

~Dave Rintoul

 

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  4. 4.

    CaseyL

    Just lovely! – the birds, your writing, and the images your writing summons.

    How wonderful to be able to observe, not just one great migration, but two!

    I love how you expand the sphere of subject matter, from the birds, to you observing them, to the other humans at the other end of their migration who observe them; the transition from “my” hawks to “their” hawks was almost unbearable poignant for me.

    Thank you! Write more!

  5. 5.

    Just Chuck

    Fun fact: that screech you hear when they show a bald eagle in movies and tv is actually the sound of a red-tailed hawk.  Bald eagles actually sound more like seagulls.

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @Albatrossity: When you wrote this:

    Godspeed, Harley. Stay safe in your summer haunts, and we’ll see you on the other side.

    I wondered if you would have written that in any other year, of if “see you on the other side” holds a lot more meaning because of what we are facing with the pandemic.

  10. 10.

    CCL

    I am in awe of all your photos that have been posted at BJ.  Now I am in awe of your prose.  Thank you so much for sharing.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @Albatrossity:

    I have watched a small dark Harlan’s Hawk (probably a male) claim a winter territory about a mile from my house every winter for the past 7 winters. This year he showed up on October 7; as I write in late March he is still there, although his departure could be any day now. He is so familiar that my kids gave him a name, Harley.

    That is so wonderful.  Is it common for birds to return to exactly the same location year after year?

  13. 13.

    Albatrossity

    @WaterGirl: It definitely is more important to me to get to the other side this year, but every year I wait, and look, and let out a small whoop of joy when I find one of last year’s birds on territory in the fall. Every year one or two of them drops out, but Harley is a constant so far, and I fell very relieved, somehow, on that first sighting in the fall.

  14. 14.

    japa21

    My wife and I love to watch birds, though neither of us are super proficient at it .

    Having seen your photographs and now reading your prose, we will work harder at it. It seems we have a lot of time on our hands right now.

    Thank you so much for your photos, your prose and your inspiration.

  15. 15.

    Albatrossity

    @WaterGirl: For some birds it is the norm for both sexes. In other birds one sex returns to the natal ground in the second summer, but the other wanders. Returning to the same wintering territory is less well studied, but luckily these hawks are each unique, so we can say with certainty that they come back to the same winter spot every year. Indeed, in my initial fall observations of Harley in the last few years, he is on the same utility pole. Now that is site fidelity!

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Thanx Dave. I too am haunted by dark birds. Or is it by birds of the dark? Doesn’t matter, I love them all.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @Albatrossity: This may be a really dumb question, but do you think Harley recognizes you guys, just as you recognize him?

    Or is he more in tune with the habitat than the humans?  So when he arrives, he thinks “oh utility pole, how I have missed you!

    (serious question, even if asked in a not so serious way)

  18. 18.

    Jay

    Your writing reminds me of David Quammen, Barry Lopez and other great Nature authors.

    thank you for this piece.

  21. 21.

    Albatrossity

    @WaterGirl: He recognizes my car. Other cars can drive by underneath him with nary a sidelong glance, but he takes off when he sees my car from a distance most of the time. He’s tired of posing for pictures!

  23. 23.

    Salty Sam

    I mentioned my wife’s passing two decades ago in a thread downstairs.  The changes in my psyche that that experience, and the dance with grief that followed, wrought in me changed me utterly.  The onset of this virus, the ominous threat of the coming misery, feels familiar to me.  It is not a thing to look forward to, and yet, I would not trade what I learned about myself twenty years ago for anything.  I hope that many of us can say the same thing in another twenty years, even if the path from here to there will be so painful.

    David, your essay has the taste of that experience to it.  Thank you. It is beautiful.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    Bluejays really like me, for some reason. Steller’s Jays if I’m in the mountains, scrub jays when I’m closer to home. Not sure why.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    Put in mind of a line Thomas Wolfe wrote. Gimme a minute to see if can find it exactly…

    (imagine Muzak channel)

    “Quick are the mouths of earth, and quick the teeth that fed upon this loveliness.”

  31. 31.

    HinTN

    Godspeed, Harley. Stay safe in your summer haunts, and we’ll see you on the other side.

    Amen

    Also, that Starship quote remains spot on.

    We’re in the aftermath of tornado passage here. Checking in with neighbors and family.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jay:

    Nope. What first attracted them was when I was unsewing a piece of knitting and then crocheting the pieces together instead. Those little bastards sat in the tree above me and gossiped about me like I was in a Mark Twain story. ?

  37. 37.

    Albatrossity

    @HinTN: Glad you are safe! I have a FB friend who lost his house in the last bout of TN tornadoes, so please stay safe!

    Eskimo Blue Day is from the Jefferson Airplane (not Starship) album Volunteers. One of their finest albums, IMHO. Also has Wooden Ships, another relevant apocalyptic tune…

  38. 38.

    stinger

    when “my” hawks become “their” hawks as they pass through to the Yukon and become their own hawks, which really is what they have been all along.

    Upon reading this sentence, I experienced an almost physical sense of deja vu. Have you written those words somewhere before, or is it just that they express a deep truth?

    David, your writing is as focused as your photos, and as strong and graceful as the birds you shoot. Thank you for both!

  39. 39.

    karensky

    @Just Chuck: Swainson’s hawks too.  I was hiking in a wildlife refuge in the fall near Denver and I heard that tailing screech near and I almost dropped to the ground.  Scary.  I had binoculars so I realized it was a hawk but not a red tail.  Looked it up when I got home and it  was a Swainson.

    in the early spring in my rental in Denver I was looking out the window and saw a Swainson’s Hawk in a big red pine.  I learned that in the spring they often come into more populated areas and take advantage of edibles there.  I think this one was eating the nuts out of a pine cone.  A bit later on I saw it nail a pigeon.  Cool.

  40. 40.

    Albatrossity

    @stinger: Thanks. No, these words have been tumbling around in my brain as I drive around looking for hawks, and finally I felt as if they needed to be written down. I’m glad that they resonate with you as well!

  43. 43.

    mvr

    Whereabouts in Kansas are you? I live north of you in Lincoln NE and we like to walk at a place in Denton (not too far north of the border) owned by Audubon called Spring Creek Prairie, which has lots of raptors at various times of year.  It has a core of never plowed fields surrounded by restored fields and we often see Northern Harriers, Red Tails, Harlan’s Hawks, shrikes and nighthawks there, even the occasional eagle. Not that I can always identify them. It’s a neat place and perhaps worth a visit if you are close by.

    There is also a pretty cool raptor convalescence place in Iowa North of Iowa City. Those birds are not capable of surviving in the wild anymore but have been rehabbed and live in pens.  It is near a big lake iirc and should be easy to find from just the description if you are driving through that area.

    Nice pic, by the way!

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    Dave, how would you feel about me reposting this during the day sometime over the weekend for the folks who will have missed it tonight?  It’s so lovely, I hate for people to miss it.

    Especially since so many of us are feeling overwhelmed by all the virus coverage.  There’s definitely something comforting and thought-provoking about your post.

  47. 47.

    Albatrossity

    @mvr: I live in Manhattan, so not that far south of the border (about 60 mi). Yes, Spring Creek Prairie is a wonderful place; I know it well.

  50. 50.

    stinger

    Okay, I already have your Iconic Birds calendar through Lulu, but I’ve just ordered Hawks and Owls of Kansas! Harley made me do it!

  51. 51.

    Albatrossity

    @WaterGirl: I got no problem with that, as they say these days. If you think it will reach more folks, and be helpful, I’d be happy to see it reposted any time and place that you think will be good. I appreciate your quick work in getting it out there tonight!

  52. 52.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    Not quite a cover:

    Wikipedia: “Wooden Ships” is a song written and composed by David Crosby, Paul Kantner, and Stephen Stills…

    ETA: You beat me to it… great piece, great photo. Harley, what a great looking hawk.

  54. 54.

    trollhattan

    The next infection level may have arrived in our metroplex.

    Staff members of the UC Davis Medical Center, including one emergency room nurse, have tested positive for COVID-19, the “first of what will be many” infections among workers at the hospital as the disease spreads throughout the community, according to an internal email obtained by The Sacramento Bee.

    On Monday, David Lubarsky, CEO of UC Davis Health, alerted hospital employees that some of their colleagues had been infected. In his memo to staff, he also defended the hospital’s infection-control practices and addressed critics who said the hospital had been performing too many “non-essential” surgeries during the pandemic.
    …Lubarsky did not say how many UC Davis Medical Center staff members had contracted the novel coronavirus, but he said they were cases detected as “backlogged test results” began to come in. He noted that “an increasing number of people in the community” have become infected.

    “We are going to see a dramatic rise in the number of people testing positive,” he said. “In the coming days and weeks, there will be literally dozens of our team members who will have to call in sick and stay at home to rest and get well.”

    In an email to The Bee, UC Davis spokesman Charles Casey declined to say how many employees were infected and in what departments they worked, saying it was “protected health information.”
    sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article241469771.html#storylink=cpy

    Buckle up

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @Albatrossity:

    I knew we’d put it up this week, but as soon as I read it this morning I thought “this needs to go up today.”  Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

    Your talents are indeed an embarrassment of riches!

  58. 58.

    raven

    @Albatrossity: I remember those days when we’d buy one album on Friday and wear it out! When I ditched my vinyl there were still seed and stems in many of the double albums!

  61. 61.

    J R in WV

    Jefferson Airplane was one of my favorite groups back in the day… Starship not quite so much, but I guess that change was some legal bullshit, like Prince becoming the Artist Formerly Known as Prince because of a contract with shitty recording industry legal batwings.

    Jorma now plays a lot in rural Ohio, friends have a connection up there.

    Dave, love your photos. Was Harley shot with the Oly and Panasonic/Leica 400 mm?

  62. 62.

    Feathers

    My father is a devoted birder, I enjoyed this very much. He doesn’t keep records, just always has binoculars handy and wonders what birds show up at the buffet of feeders he kept in the backyard. He’ll ask me and I just have to point out that I buy him all the bird books for Christmas, I don’t read them. I’ll have to show him this, he particularly likes hawks and eagles – there is even a bald eagle that shows up at their cabin in Virginia.

  63. 63.

    Miki

    Thanks so much for this, Dave. I have mostly Cooper’s hawks in my little backyard (and, yes, I feed them because I have feeders in the yard, Circle of Life, etc.).

    At my BIL’s burial outside of Plainville, KS, in February 2019, a murmuration of blackbirds provided a welcome distraction from the Baptist service (Episcopalians don’t bury them like that up heah in Frostbite Falls). Made me wish I’d brought the binocs.

    Flora, fauna, and avians are going to pull us through this, this I know.

  64. 64.

    trollhattan

    These critters are damn hard to photograph and I admire those who have the time and skill and time and more time to do so. I’m an opportunistic birder at best.

    This dude(?) showed up in a neighborhood tree last fall and just yelled for a good long while, so I had time to fetch a camera. It’s a very heavy crop because it’s a very tall tree. This gives a better idea how tall. I’ve been working on what the passing string of birds must have shared on seeing the…falcon? Catch them nearby in flight? Whole different ballgame.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @8 man shell: According to my ancient (80 +) falconer friend from the UK, Helen MacDonald managed to kill her bird with rookie mistakes before the book was even published. This according to one of her ‘mentors’ who let the inconvenient fact slip on a UK talk show.

    Funny that she didn’t mention it, not anywhere in the book, not even in an afterword, altho’ she savages T H White for all the mistakes *he* allegedly made with his hawks.

    So, if that’s true, and I have no reason to doubt him, I gotta say, I hate that book.

    Altho, to be fair, I hated it even before I knew that. It just struck me as so self-pitying and self-aggrandizing at the same time.

     

    @Albatrossity: But I like *your* essay, a lot. Almost as much as your photos. : )

     

    ETA: Plus, kudos for the Airplane reference. I find myself using the phrase “doesn’t mean shit to a tree” fairly often and am used to getting blank stares in return. Ah, well!

  67. 67.

    stinger

    @Albatrossity: I taught for 2 years in a tiny hamlet near Smith Center, KS, if you know where that is. The school closed, and now I’m back where I grew up, about 15 min. away from the Macbride Raptor Center that mvr mentions. I see turkey vultures and red-tails and, increasingly, bald eagles year round. Come visit!

  69. 69.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Such a fantastic essay!

    My oldest son is a raptor biologist who has spent many a fall camped on a chilly mountain peak with a team from Hawkwatch International, doing visual counts of raptors flying south through New Mexico for the winter. We were so very lucky to have been able to go spend time at the site where he worked and get learn about all these incredible birds.

    This made me so happy–raptor lovers are truly a special bunch of humans.

  70. 70.

    raven

    @J R in WV: Fur Piece! He played here a year ago and I didn’t want to go but did. We sat right in front of him and he played 2+ hours solo and it was stunning.

     

    Blows Against the Empire is pretty good. “Have You Seen the Stars Tonite” especially

     

    I can see the stars tonight
    Would you like to go up on a deck and look at them with me
    I can see the stars tonight
    Would you like to go out for a stroll and keep me company

     

    with Garcia and Crosby of course

  72. 72.

    chris

    Thank you, Albatrossity, for the great picture and and the evocative prose, it touched me where I live.

  74. 74.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: Whoa, I didn’t think you were in that cohort! Mabel’s oh yeah. It was right up from TRS, right? In my day TRS was above Mc Brides on the corner.

  75. 75.

    Albatrossity

    @J R in WV: Thanks. Yes, that shot was with the micro 4/3 rig, Olympus body and Leica/Panasonic zoom. It is a most excellent rig for capturing birds in flight!

    And yeah, Jorma Kaukonen runs a guitar ranch pretty close to you. I’d love to hear him live. I did hear the Airplane (and the Starship) back in the day at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, but some of those memories are, ummm, hazy.

  78. 78.

    NotMax

    @J R in WV

    Strange bedfellows: Hot of the heels of (and nearly simultaneously with) Jefferson Airplane as a lauded “psychedelic band” coming out of San Francisco was Sopwith Camel, whose biggest hit, oddly enough, was about the most unpsychedelic song one can imagine.

  81. 81.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @raven: We never really even cared about birds before he started studying them. I’ve learned so much about them since that I feel sad I missed just how incredible they are.

    it’s amazing how your kids will do things that open up whole new worlds for you.

  82. 82.

    J R in WV

    @raven:

    Cool, my friends are up there to Fur Piece a couple of times each summer. They camp out a lot, I’m too creaky for that sleeping on the ground thing. They’re nearly as old as I am, but still backpack and camp out a lot. We can’t do it any more… There’s a music hall hear there, can’t recall the name, neighbors get tix for shows there often. Still a lot of good music around in small halls!

  86. 86.

    raven

    @J R in WV: Yea, I’m having mobility problems, we walked three miles today and I’m hurt. My MRI was negative as far as spine but I’m worried its claudication.

  89. 89.

    mvr

    @Albatrossity:

    Yes, Spring Creek Prairie is a wonderful place; I know it well.

    I thought you might. Was out there Sunday night. Mostly meadowlarks (lots of them) , redwing blackbirds (lots of them too) and robins with a couple of downy and/or hairy woodpeckers thrown in.

  91. 91.

    mvr

    @stinger: 15 min. away from the Macbride Raptor Center that mvr mentions

    Thanks for the name of the place I described without naming. I was too lazy to look around for it. Glad you knew it.

     

    @stinger:

  93. 93.

    frosty

    @raven: Volunteers is my favorite Airplane album. When my twin brother and I split the albums up when we left for college, he got it. I got Baxters.

  101. 101.

    Wolvesvalley

    Thank you so much, David, for the lovely photo of Harley and the lovelier words that accompany it. I hope we all get to greet him when he returns next fall (and you let us know with a new picture of him).

  103. 103.

    Kelly

    @Albatrossity:

    micro 4/3 rig, Olympus body and Leica/Panasonic zoom

    Beautiful picture and beautiful evocative words

    My admiration for fine pics of birds in flight has only increased since I started trying to shoot them last year with a Panasonic gx85 and a 75-150 zoom. Keeping the birds in frame is going to take another several thousand pics of empty sky ;-)

  105. 105.

    BigJimSlade

    Thanks @Albatrossity – that was excellent!

    Here’s my best (red-shouldered, red-tailed??? I’m not sure) hawk picture:
    http://surfwoodroad.com/images/P2230017.jpg

    This was taken in O’Melveny Park in the greater Los Angeles area.  The crows were pestering it and it swooped down from the tree where you can see a crow, right toward a group of us hikers, and I had my camera out and clicked frantically and got pretty lucky!

  106. 106.

    trollhattan

    @Albatrossity:

    Thanks! Yeah, had he not presented himself–proudly–I’d not have the vaguest chance. Zoom!

    Luck occasionally outflanks being prepared. :-)

  107. 107.

    Albatrossity

    @BigJimSlade: That’ a great shot. It’s a first-year Red-tailed Hawk, based on the eye color and the banding on the tail. Crows love to pester hawks, and the young ones are often quite flummoxed by all that attention!

  108. 108.

    BigJimSlade

    @Albatrossity: Thanks for the ID and the background info with the crows there.

    The picture I took was super lucky – I didn’t have the camera on continuous focus – it wasn’t snapping 6 shots a second or anything (I think it took 2 shots during the hawk’s swoop) – and I didn’t have a zoom telephoto lens on it, just a standard focal length (25mm on a micro 4/3s camera, which is your nifty-fifty on full frame digital or 35mm film camera). I just held the camera out in front of my chest (I usually use the evf, you know, look through the eyepiece) and pressed the shutter as much as I could and hoped it got something.

  109. 109.

    mvr

    @BigJimSlade: 

    Here’s my best (red-shouldered, red-tailed??? I’m not sure) hawk picture:
    http://surfwoodroad.com/images/P2230017.jpg

    This was taken in O’Melveny Park in the greater Los Angeles area. The crows were pestering it and it swooped down from the tree where you can see a crow, right toward a group of us hikers, and I had my camera out and clicked frantically and got pretty lucky!

    That’s a great photo too!

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