A juvenile red-tailed hawk was learning to hunt in our back yard yesterday. If you look closely at the picture, you can see he has a squirrel in one talon. A neighbor told me they sometimes don’t realize they can fly with the prey. So, he was hanging out on our trampoline and looking a little confused.
The sad thing is I wouldn’t even have seen it if it hadn’t been for a little Carolina wren that was chirping its head off on our deck. I went out to check on the wren and found the hawk.
He sat there while I walked right up and took this photo. He turned and looked at me. And for a second, I thought he had become tangled in the trampoline net. But then he flew off with the squirrel.