Just a follow-up to yesterday’s post, from early this morning. Because I opened the blinds in the bedroom and found the female red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) standing in the lawn right outside the window, but she noticed the movement and decided it wasn’t kosher, that close and with her down that low. I realized, many years ago while doing wildlife rehabilitation, that height is security (and dominance) to birds, so being down on the ground makes them much more antsy. She quickly resumed her perch on the light pole.
The rain was all past and the sky resoundingly clear, though I was still facing south and so the light was less than ideal. Especially, her supraorbital ridge, the ‘eyebrow,’ was keeping her eyes shaded as she examined the ground for prey. But I kept the camera raised and waited her out, and soon enough, she turned her head a bit and gave me that light in the eyes.
I’ve already noticed a pattern, in that many of the subjects that so handily appear in the yard here do so to the south, right smack into the sun – we’ll see even more of that in an upcoming post, but it shows that there are some challenges to overcome.
I was shooting from a distance, half-hidden, to avoid spooking my subject here, and decided to slip out the back of the house and try that angle instead, which might improve the light a little – if I managed not to scare her. So I went around that way and slowly eased out until I could see her atop the pole.
You can see the roof edge in there, and the light is slightly better, but not significantly – I changed angle by no more than 30 degrees, and was closer and running the potential of being spotted. Which did eventually occur.
Nonetheless, she remained at her perch and soon dismissed me as inconsequential, and I let her be after a few frames.
And then The Girlfriend told me that she’d gone down to the mailbox, passing almost directly under the hawk, who didn’t move. So then I went back out and crept a bit closer. Our behavior was a little different, because I was definitely pausing while facing the hawk and aiming a large glass lens in her direction, which likely spelled our more warning signs than The Girlfriend ambling down to the mailbox. But it didn’t matter.
She ended up holding that perch for the next 90 minutes or so, and I never saw her fly off, but later on in the day I believe I spooked her – one of them, anyway – from a tree in the backyard right alongside the pond. Build a nest, build a nest, build a nest…
And since I’m doing the follow-up, I thought I’d show the same anole in daylight this time, still too early to be reaping much of the benefits of the sunlight (and done with the 150-600 lens, since I had it mounted):
The day was sunny but the front had pushed through overnight and the temperature had dropped noticeably, so the lizards had to spend some time warming up to activity levels. But the patterns visible on this one’s skin are interesting, anyway. None of them seem to be turning green very much anymore, due to both the lack of bright green foliage and the lower temperatures necessitating that more solar warmth needed to be absorbed, but there are plenty of them still active all over the place, so we’ll see how long it goes before they pack it in for the winter. There’s a frost warning for tonight and this might be it.