Immature Red-tailed Hawk, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms

I was bent over taking a flower macro on the Pilger Trail at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) when I head the sound of big wings behind me and caught movement in the corner of my eye. I turned and looked down the trail in the direction of the movement. There was immature Red-Tailed Hawk sitting in a tall tree about 50 feed from me. It had evidently been on the ground or on a trail sign tucked just around a little crook in the trail where I could not see it when I walked up and stopped for the flower, and had flown just a couple dozen yards and up into the tree. It did not seem particularly alarmed at my presence. I got off a series of shots with the Sony HX90V in my hand…which reaches out to 720mm equivalent. I did not think there was much hope the hawk would sit there while I dug the Nikon P900 with its long zoom out of my camera bag, but it did. I shot lots of images of the hawk, even moving slightly closer and out into the trail to get a better angle. The hawk looked right at me, several times, but still did not seem to be particularly concerned with what I was doing. Eventually it moved further on and higher up, and then flew off under the canopy to somewhere my eye could not follow. It was one of those encounters that seems lifted out of time…so special that the world stops and balances on that point while it lasts. I felt incredibly blessed…privileged…and grateful.

I could not decide on just one image to post, so this a collage of three, taken at different focal lengths to show the full beauty of the hawk. All shots are with the Nikon P900, from 1000mm to 2000mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.