The saga of the red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) continues apace, as The Girlfriend spotted something specific when one landed in the backyard trees, two mornings ago, confirmed with careful examination with the binoculars. Unfortunately, it didn’t persist long enough for me to bring the camera out and didn’t repeat its behavior later that day, or anytime that I was watching on the following day. But this morning, one at least was quite cooperative.
As I mentioned within, I’d spotted two potential nests much earlier, also in the backyard, but this is neither of them. Instead, this is not quite straight out the back of the house, right at the edge of the pond. I expect this view to become almost completely obscured once the cypress trees leaf out in the spring, but maybe we’ll get lucky. I’ve done a little scouting and there are a couple of vantages that may remain open, though so far none that allow the height of the deck to provide a better view. All I can say is, we’ll see. The nice thing is, the hawks are so complacent about our presence that I can probably pick any spot in the yard and they won’t be bothered – wish I could say the same for the wood ducks.
This one came from the day that the nest was originally confirmed, narrowly missing becoming an Estate Find. This dead tree overlooks the bayou-like stretch of the pond, obviously much further off, but it appears to form the boundary of their home territory; I can hear other red-shoulders giving their own territorial calls further off in that direction. But yes, we now have no reason to believe they’re not a couple, especially having seen them both on the nest simultaneously.
I should be using either a video or a gimbal head on the tripod for further attempts, but neither is intended for lenses this long anyway, so I can’t guarantee rock-steady results in the future. I also need to see about eliminating the hiss in the audio, which appears to be the fault of the camera, because I’ve used the same mic with a standalone audio recorder and it was much better; however, I’ve also done separate audio recording while shooting video, and syncing them up is a right bastard. Have to work on refining some part of this technique, anyway.