Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk with prey, Laudholm Farms, Wells ME

I included a poem in yesterday’s post that highlighted this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk that swooped down from a tree ahead of me and pounced on something in the grass. It then proceeded to kill its prey…which evidently took some doing…as the hawk repeatedly jumped up into the air and pounced again. I thought at the time that the hawk might have taken a snake…which would definitely fight back and be hard to kill, but in hindsight it might have been that the juvenile was just inexperienced and would have had trouble with anything. 🙂 It was a great encounter. I felt privileged to be a witness, and was so excited that it was difficult to hold the camera still enough for shots. My primary impression was the size of the hawk. You rarely see them down on the ground like this and this close, and the bird looked huge!

Sony RX10iii at 600 and 1200mm. Exposure on Program but all about 1/640 @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.