T.G.'s Photography Blog

  This red-tailed hawk stands on the ground and takes break from eating the squirrel it just caught.    Yesterday, I turned a corner in my neighborhood and spotted a red-tailed hawk tearing at and eating a squirrel it had just caught. It was on the ground about eight feet from the road. I quickly stopped a short distance from it and snapped off a few shots before it plucked the squirrel in its claws and flew away to enjoy the catch in private. Photograph taken on March 9, 2023, at Syracuse, New York.

 While looking out of my dining room window this past week, I spotted a hawk flying above the forest behind my house . It soon quickly swooped down and landed on a branch of a dying ash tree at the forest's edge.  Juvenile red-tailed hawk After researching what type of hawk this one was on Cornell University's All About Birds website , I believe this is to be a juvenile red-tailed hawk. Juvenile red-tailed hawks don't have red tails yet, but some do have dark bands across their tails like the one seen here has. I also believe this is a red-tailed hawk due to the dark patagial marks on the front edge of its wings (you can see those better in the last photograph below), as well as its other colorations.  A juvenile red-tailed hawk perched on a tree branch. The Central New York area is at the northern edge of the red-tailed hawks year-round habitat. This time of year the red-tailed hawks that spend the warmer months further north in Canada are starting to migrate a little fu...