Volk Hawks, 2011

Every year in the spring the same pair of Red-tailed Hawks returns to the same nest in the top of the same 50-foot pine tree (Canary Island Pine, I think, but this isn't a tree blog) on the next block over, and raises a brand new family. A couple of things herald their return. First, you can hear the babies screeching for blocks around. And second, the ground around the pine trees all along that block are littered with white droppings and grey pellets. Good place for birding. Bad place to park.

The pellets are hair and bones from mice and voles the hawks eat. They are regurgitated, not pooped, so they are relatively clean. They make interesting little experiments because when you prod them, they kind of crumble apart revealing partial skeletons of the animals that have been eaten. Apparently this is something kids do in schools with owl pellets. (Five for $7.95 as of this writing on Amazon.) Anyway, it's interesting to me. Where else are you going to see a perfect vole skull? My family just thinks its gross.  

At first glance, I mistook these for pellets as I was walking down the block.

Not pellets, but baby House Finches. A third was laying nearby, also intact but quite dead. What pushed all three out of the nest at the same time but didn't eat them? I don't think it's brood parasitism.

Anyway, all of this was just prelude to the reason I was walking over there: the hawks.  

This is a particularly scruffy-looking baby, looking at me.   

This is a sibling, stretching its wings in the wind. I'm pretty sure there were three babies this year.  They were often found like this, catching the breeze and lifting off, just a little, to then settle softly back in the nest. 

And just for comparison, this is the same tree from the exact same location, but taken with my standard 18-55mm lens.  I left the camera on the tripod and just switched the lenses.  It gives a sense of how close I can get with the big 500mm zoom lens. See the baby hawk in the top?

These are a couple of shots of the babies in the nest raising hell as they play and stretch out in the wind. Look at all the feathers they are kicking up.

And here's a shot of one of the hawks screeching. The act that brings me running one block over every spring.

Juvenile Red-tailed Hawks, taken with the Nikon and Sigma 500mm zoom, April 28 and 29, 2011.