HAWK visitor this morning

He is so beautiful!  I am waiting to identify him confirming he is a Red Tailed Hawk from our Raptor Trainer friend.  He does not have a dark belly band so I am not sure.

This is as close as I could get to him with my little camera.  Hubby and I were so excited that we were shaking taking the pictures.  Of course the top picture is best with hubby's more sophisticated camera-ha!  I am always impressed with the power and strength of their legs!  After we snapped these pictures, he did swoop down on our side of the bank and went off with something in his mouth.

While we snapped the photos of him on the bank, our resident Mr. and Mrs. Mallard went very close to him with no fear whatsoever!



All in All, a beautiful way to begin our day ☺

Here is the picture of Richard with the Red Tailed Hawk that he brought to see us this last January 2011.  You can go back to that post to see more.  And below is the Intarsia Wood cutout of a hawk that Bill made for Richard as a gift.



Thank you so much for visiting and come again soon.  If you have time, do visit the other blogs of ours, links are in the sidebar.  You might like the post from yesterday on Kerrie's Home Journal and beautiful song by Bette Midler, From a Distance...

Red Tailed Hawks

Red Tailed Hawk in my Kitchen? Yes you are seeing right!  Our friend who is a Licensed Raptor Trainer, brought the hawk so hubby could see him.  Of course Hubby is taking the pictures as we did not want to take the chance of his being hurt in any way.  When the immune system is compromised, you learn to be very cautious.  But of course Grandma Kerrie was up for holding the hawk-ha!  He was a juvenile and very well behaved which was a great surprise when we were told he had only been in captivity for a couple of weeks.  (Trainers only capture injured birds or young juveniles that have lost their parents and after caring for them, they are released into the wild again.  They take them out on hunting excursions so they learn to find their own food and they were returning from one of these trips when they stopped to see us.)  Knowing how much we love birds and also my husband had a pet Great Horned Owl when we were dating that he hunted with back in the 1950's. 
    This young hawk in the picture weighed only 2 lbs. and was all feathers.  Birds are very deceiving in stature as their feathers make them look large and ferocious but their bodies are really small, though muscular.
   Here are some of Hubbies pictures of an Egret that was in our little lake at the edge of the yard last week.

He is so beautiful!  I love his head feathers trailing back...

And this is a Mockingbird that I saw on my walk yesterday.  He was most cooperative just sitting there while I snapped several pictures.

I hope you enjoyed our pictures, do come again soon to visit and don't forget to visit my other blogs, the links are in the side bar.

♥KERRIE♥
My heart to yours...