Highly Unusual Day at the Lake

Like Santa in the Night Before Christmas I went straight to the nesting pair of red shoulders breaking with my normal cycle of covering the full 9 miles of shoreline. Pulling into the lot across the street for the area where the hawks usually hang out, there was a lady in full bike gear squatted down pouring water onto something. She spoke to a family of four as they walked past, turned around and came back. Obviously, something the size of a small dog was on the ground in distress. After watching her pour more water on this life form, it was time to get out of the car and go see what was happening as it was, for sure, cutting into my bird time schedule.

As it turns out, it is a small opossum on its side in what I judged to be pain. It would lift its head a little and look around and then put its head back on the ground. As the woman said,"you don't know what kind of injury is on the other side". My thought was immediately focused on what I was also seeing that they lady had not observed. One of the big red shoulders flew from tree to tree and was watching every move at the opossum location. I pointed out the hawk to the lady and said that it might have been knocked out of the tree and fell to the ground, or that the hawk had actually tried to lunch and was interrupted by humans or had made some move to free itself from the talons of the hawk.

The lady mentioned that her father had been a falconer and that she knew about hawks and that her husband was bringing a metal cage and that they were going to take the animal to a Rehab Center south of where we were at the lake. I said that I would move on to my next location  since she had help on the way and I left, knowing that the hawks were still in the area and that when I could come back later in the afternoon, they would most likely be in the area still.

At next stops turned up nothing and I made my way around to Sunset Bay when I saw shadows on the ground in the area of a nest that I knew of from last year.  I parked the car and stood at the edge of the parking lot looking and watching for the shadows to move overhead again. Then, I saw the other pair of red shoulders in the tree line. Now, I had my first images of the afternoon and they were pretty good for the distance. But, as I got closer, the images got better. Now, I know what a 600MM glass would do for that image, but, one, I don't have a 600MM, I could get one, but there are other issues that go with a 600 MM piece of glass that I happen to think keeps photographers from being good photographers because the glass does get the image that every one seeks but these guys tend to forget why you are a photographer in the first place---or, second, you let the success of a 600 glass overtake your head and you think you have mastered photography and start to get sloppy. So, I'm happy with a 150-200 glass and I keep trying to get better and better with each image.

Then, I made my way back to the original site when I first arrived at the lake and found the opossum delay keeping me from getting the shots that were there.It had only been about 10-minutes before I spotted the female sitting in her usual spot. Shockingly, I saw shadows on the ground moving in that direction and I looked up just in time to see the male come sweeping into the area where the female was sitting. And then, before I could get my camera off my neck and pointed, the male mated with the female. That pretty much cemented the fact that the pair were ready to start the nest site officially and the female will be laying eggs shortly. After shooting both the male and female before the male flew off to patrol his territory, I watched  the female for some time and she was content to sit where she had been sitting prior. I decided to walk around to the other side of the wooded area to another clearing to see if I could find the male or get a better shot of the female, as she had been facing in that direction anyway. To my surprise, I saw another photographer that I like and we were talking when he ask if I had seen the Bard owl. I said, "no, but I had heard it earlier." After taking a secretive location oath, I promised not to tell where the big owl was hanging out. Every one knows where the other big owl hangs out and they all look there. No one seems to be very informed on this one and I can understand why you don't share the wealth on things like this because the rush of traffic would drive the big owl away. I got the shots. They are pretty good.One is good in a bad kind of way in that the big eyes are so funny and the feather pattern is out of focus as the owl moved from a narrow branch to a more sturdy one. I got home late. Hungry, dinner was had on the go as I headed home.

Full wing span flying into trees

Red shoulders had just mated

Bard owl