Birds of Prey... In My Backyard

It started out innocently enough.  I wandered outside the house to take a few photos of my garbage cans.  Pretty boring, right?  Last week we had a storm come through, and a few tornados touched down.  Even though we were miles away from the tornados, we had some extremely high winds.  I realized that I was going to have to pick up a bunch of fallen limbs if I was going to mow the lawn.  Otherwise, I would end up destroying my lawnmower blades.

I was aiming to post on Facebook about picking up four garbage cans full of limbs when I thought, "Why not take a photo of the garbage cans?"  A photo can express the things I can't put into words.  I realized that it's a somewhat uninteresting photo to take, but I had the time and didn't mind.

While I was out there I heard a bird screeching loudly.  I immediately knew what it was.  You see, we've had a pair of hawks that have lived around us for over twenty years.  I'm not sure if this is the same pair, but we've always had a pair hang around the property.  What's funny, is that, they had a nest in a pine tree behind us for almost fifteen years that I know of.  The pine tree was perfectly straight, and right at the top the hawks built their giant nest.

However, the pine tree ended up being hit by lightening and dying.  I hated to see that, because the hawks kept their nest in the same place.  Every year they would add to it.  That's one reason the nest was so big.  And that brings me to today.

I heard the screeching, and looked up.  I saw one of the hawks sit up on the electric pole near my house.  When I took a closer look I saw it's mate was sitting up there with it.  I took a number of photos, but here are the best ones I shot.

In this part of Florida we have both "Red Shouldered" and "Red Tailed" hawks.  I'm not sure which species these are.  Either way, these two are always hanging around the property.

There was one time I was mowing the lawn, and one of the hawks hung out in the oak tree I was mowing around.  It was looking for bugs and mice that I could scare up.  You know what?  One time I did scare a mouse, and the hawk managed to grab it.

Which brings me to their nest.  You know that oak tree that the hawk was watching me from?  Well, it's the same oak tree they have their nest in now.  Here are a few photos I took of the nest.  These two photos are the ones I took before I saw the hawks.

These two photos I took later.  I tried to take the photo from almost underneath the nest, instead of an angle.

I'm going to keep an eye out on the nest.  It won't be long before a few eggs are laid, and chicks hatch.  I won't be able to take photos directly inside the nest.  You can see just how high up it is.  Even if I had a drone to take photos, I'm sure the hawks would take it down hard.  The hawks can be a bit aggressive.

So I'll try to get a few photos once the chicks leave the nest.  Maybe I'll leave a steak out for them?  I'm sure they'd like that.  Okay, I won't do that.  It would be funny if I did, but I won't.  I'll stick with shooting photos.  Stay tuned.