My Hawk Pictures

jcribbs

TCS Member
Thread starter
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
2,064
Purraise
25
Location
In them thar hills...
This is my exciting wildlife adventure. For those of you who don't' know me, my husband and I live in the wilderness of Missouri.... down a dirt road by a crick where humans are the minority....hehe But what I am outlining below is probably one the most special experiences of my life in dealing with a wild animal/bird...

Husband and I found a hawk eating his prey on the 30th of december. Which was an opossum... He allowed us to approach him to within 3 feet. I took approx 50 pictures of him. He stood his ground and ate his food. He was very hungry or he would not have let us get that close. He dragged the possum a ways from us first because it was too heavy to fly with but he would not abandon his kill.

It was amazing to watch the ways of nature unfolding directly in front of us.

Here's 4 of the pictures I took and I took approx 50 pictures. This is one reason I am so thankful I have an enclosure for my kitties.

This is Mr. Hawk standing his ground..... The feathers on top of his head are raised up...... Juan was worried we were going to get attacked. I talked real quiet to Mr Hawk and he let us stay there. He had approx a 4' wing span... In this picture, you can see the tail of the opossum underneath him. He had already killed it.


He appeared to relax slightly or else he was real hungry. He chowed down.


And I blew up a couple picture of his face. He was so beautiful and it was so amazing to be this close to a wild animal in his natural environment. It might never happen again.




It still gives me chills.........

Very moving experience....

It was slightly misty and in the closeups you can see the mist on his feathers if you look close...

My husband said the hawk was majestic..... and he is right. I can't even stress how amazing this was.
 

godiva

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
May 10, 2006
Messages
2,219
Purraise
14
Location
Indianapolis, IN
That is amazing!! I could stare at those pictures all day. I love nature! You must have been just speechless.

While not as awe-inspiring, I thought this would be a good place to post some "wildlife" of my own... there is a pond in our backyard, and there are usually a few herrons, but one day a strange bird that I didn't recognize visited. I got some blurry pics with my 12x zoom... does anyone know what it is?





Oh, and here's the herron doing his daily sun-worship.
He's just warming up, but it's cool anyway.
 

theimp98

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
May 24, 2006
Messages
11,427
Purraise
2
Location
elyria, ohio
when you see things like that in person.
It really makes you understand how long people that do wild life shots have to wait to get those.

Great pics.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #4

jcribbs

TCS Member
Thread starter
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
2,064
Purraise
25
Location
In them thar hills...
oH MY GOSH.........I have never seen a heron. It is beautiful!!! wow..... How lucky you are to get to see that every single day. Awesome..

And that other bird has huge feet. Never seen anything like that..... I'll do a bird search and see what I can find. Unusual looking. Thanks for the photos.

They are great! I do love nature pics..... Glad to meet a fellow nature lover..

Jenn
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #5

jcribbs

TCS Member
Thread starter
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
2,064
Purraise
25
Location
In them thar hills...
http://www.camacdonald.com/birding/birdindex.html

The link to Alphabetic Bird Photo Index of the world.......lots of birds here.

I think it is a green heron....... Here is a pic of three green herons.

They live in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Maratime provinces, Washington, Oregon, California, central and eastern US states, Mexico, Central America, Caribbean. Winters to northern South America.

It looks like your bird.....
 

xocats

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
20,608
Purraise
16
Originally Posted by jcribbs
I have never seen a wild life picture quite like this one...
it's shocking yet brilliant Jenn.

Your herrons are beautiful Godiva.


Great bird photos
 

mooficat

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
May 3, 2006
Messages
7,610
Purraise
2
Location
Brits Abroad - In Spain
wild birds & animals are just so amazing and such a previledge to observe.............you were very lucky and your photos are brill - do post some more
 

strange_wings

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
13,498
Purraise
39
Very neat pics. Looks like a Red-tailed hawk, we have lots of them here but I've certainly never been that close to one

Just the other day in the car I swore I saw a bald eagle sitting on a guard rail, it certainly had a white head and was huge! Unfortunately I never have a camera at hand when I need one.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #13

jcribbs

TCS Member
Thread starter
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
2,064
Purraise
25
Location
In them thar hills...
Eagles are out here for sure. We live about 250 yards from Table rock lake in Missouri and we have already seen a few this year. But like you, no darn camera in hand... They come every winter..

And mooficat, I'll post some more, but it will be tomorrow. I have been up all days reading and posting and catching up ...


I'll upload in the morning. I hope the other pics don't offend anyone. They are quite grapic as the bird is eating......

I'll have to shrink them down to size first. I took them up close at 7 mega pixels so they are huge huge huge.... 3072 x 2304 x 24BPP Big ems...
 

nekochan

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Aug 5, 2006
Messages
2,760
Purraise
22
Location
Chicago, IL
That's really neat!
I live in Chicago (within the city) and I saw a hawk in the alley behind my house eating something once when I walked past the mouth of the alley... I tried to sneak out my back gate and take photos of it without scaring it but when I tried to open the gate it flew off with its' prey.

Then last week I was coming home from the bus and I heard something going "Kiiii........Kiiii........Kiii" I looked all around and finally saw a large hawk in the tree in front of my house! I got out the binoculars but I couldn't see much because there were some branches hiding it. All I could tell was it was definitely a hawk, probably a red-tailed.

I also saw a fox a few months ago. I was standing on the porch in the dark waiting for a ride when I thought I saw a dog walking down the sidewalk...then I realized that was no dog! It just walked nonchalantly right down the sidewalk in front of me, stopped at the gangway to my house (it either smelled me or heard my dog barking from inside the house) looked at me for a second and then kept walking. I was surprised by how big it was, I never realized they got so big...
 

xocats

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
20,608
Purraise
16
I love seeing wild life in action...
it helps to keep us grounded in reality.
 
Top