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Birds > Steve Wolfe  > The Red-Tail Hawks of Kaiser Hospital, Harbor City, California > June 11 --- What a Day It Was!
I arrive as usual on Saturday around 4pm. There isn't any activity among the hawks that would mark it as anything other than a normal late-afternoon. Two of the hawklets (the oldest and the youngest) are on a ledge of the main hospital building looking inside the windows; I don't see Jen but she seems to prefer being by herself. Could her week-long stay with the Wildlife Rehab folks after crashing into the window have somehow changed the dynamics among the siblings? For whatever reason, I rarely if ever see all 3 hawklets together anymore. While looking at the 2 on the ledge, I notice one has what appears from a distance to be...a snake...

(A brief pause in the action for a quick reminder. The South Bay Wildlife Rehab has been following the Kaiser Red-tails from the beginning and has been indispensable in helping them whenever they seem to need human assistance. They are all volunteers and most of the funding comes from their own pockets, so please help with a contribution. Their website is at http://www.sbwr.org and their phone # is (310) 378-9921. Thanks Ann, Jen and all the other wildlife rehabilitators!)
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I look through my FZ20 viewfinder (my camera now doubling as binoculars) but from this angle I can't quite make out what it is the hawklet has...
Oh ok, looks like he's (I'm assuming it's a "he"; besides Jen, the WIldlife Rehab folks say the other 2 are probably a female and male)  playing with a strip of rubber...interesting.
Charles Preston,  perhaps the foremost expert on Red-tailed Hawks,  writes in his greatly-detailed guide of the same name that fledglings during this period play with inanimate objects such as sticks --- or in this case, a strip --- to hone their beak-and-talon-using skills for when they go out and find prey on their own.  It's neat to see an example of this with the Kaiser hawklets...
It looks as if he checking himself out in the window admiring his  technique...or wondering why that same hawklet is always doing the same thing he's doing...
Meanwhile, Mom is circling above the hospital grounds, then spies something and rockets down out of sight...
About 20 minutes later, I see MIna drop something off on the Lakeside rooftop.  The youngest hawklet immediately pounces on and spreads his wings around it, shielding it from all prying eyes...and camera lenses...The oldest hawklet feigns indifference but as the unfolding sequence shows,  she's probably calculating her next move.
He turns around and while the distance makes ID difficult, it looks like a white pigeon. He's been pecking at it as you can see a feather tuft stuck on his beak.
Just as I was thinking, "Oh well, looks like the action's going to take place far away from me" --- he flies right at me.  I'm on a balcony right next to a pine tree that the Family uses as a perch to eat or rip up prey.  He almost gets to the tree, then the older hawklet hurtles into him, causing the pigeon to drop on the ground right below me.  Now I'm thinking Wow, now I'm almost TOO close...
The older sister dives on the pigeon and claims it as her own.
I look through my FZ20 viewfinder (my camera now doubling as binoculars) but from this angle I can't quite make out what it is the hawklet has...
I look through my FZ20 viewfinder (my camera now doubling as binoculars) but from this angle I can't quite make out what it is the hawklet has...
I look through my FZ20 viewfinder (my camera now doubling as binoculars) but from this angle I can't quite make out what it is the hawklet has...
Panasonic DMC-FZ20 |
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Keywords: june
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