Birds and Nature

I spotted this Gray Hawk on a utility line next to Military Highway south of Pharr,TX. It spent it's time watching mostly on the ground below it for something presumably to eat. Gray Hawk is a tropical species found only in a few southwestern states bordering Mexico and mostly right along the border. They are one of the specialities in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. As it is noted that this species mainly eats small birds and lizards I suspect it was watching for lizards in this location next to the very busy Military Highway. It seemed odd to me to see this tropical hawk amongst all this urban utility wire clutter.  SeEtta

When I found this hawk I had no idea it was a Grey Hawk as this 1st year plumage is so different from adult plumage.As can be seen in the pic above this immature hawk was relaxed when I started photographing as it perched with one leg tucked up. Though I stayed in my car and stayed quiet to avoid disturbing the hawk the mechanical camera noise (all bells turned off) of my Canon 60d dslr camera alerted him and he looked right at me. Bottom pic shows this bird is molting so will be transitioning to adult plumage. SeEtta

Yesterday I planned to drive into the La Lomita Church (a local historic site) park where my dog, Chase, can run around off leash usually as there are usually no one else there. And it's a pleasant place to do a little birding for a few local specialties. As I drove towards the park I spotted a small hawk on a post in front of the entrance--it was this Gray Hawk. I angled my car a little further so I could take photos of the hawk from inside my car to minimize disturbance. Doggone my Canon 60d dslr camera-even with all the bells turned off it still makes a clicking noise when I take photos and the hawk appeared to hear them and flew up into the trees. Fortunately I was able to carefully drive to a position where I could take these additional photos using my car as a photo blind.  SeEtta

Stephanie Galla and I went birding in the Upper Rio Grande Valley yesterday. We were pleased to find not only one but 2 Gray Hawks while we were at Chapeno. The photos of in flight Gray Hawk are of one of the birds. The perched hawk is the second Gray Hawk. They were both pretty near each other for more than 15 minutes without apparent antagonism so seems likely that in this season they are a mated pair. While we were at the feeders in Salineno Michael Marston and a group he was leading arrived and shared the fun. Michael spotted this Zone-tailed Hawk as it did a fly-over. It kept circling as it moved away so the hawk was more than a hundred yards away when I got this photo. Several Atlamira Orioles came in to feed while we were there. We enjoyed watching this Greater Roadrunner at Falcon State Park as it hunted insects on and near the road for more than 20 minutes. There was a flock of about 15 Least Sandpipers on the rocks in the Rio Grande River a...

I received several emails this morning about the hawk in my prior post that I found at Santa Ana NWR--all said it was a Gray Hawk. One of those was Tim Brush who is well known and highly respected authority on birds in the Rio Grande Valley (and probably elsewhere). SeEtta