Saturday Surprise

This morning reminded me, once again, why I walk every morning. It’s almost my mantra: most days you’ll see the same things, but some days you’ll see something exceptional.

The exceptional thing this morning was discovering a Red-shouldered Hawk nestling.

I and other morning walkers had noticed the hawks building a nest. This was their third or fourth attempt at nest building (as I’ve documented earlier), but nothing seemed to happen in the nest and things got quiet. However, in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that the Red-shouldered Hawks seemed to be particularly active in the same area. But they never got near the nest. Just a few days ago, I wrote this post, the pictures for which were taken very near to the nest.

This morning the hawks were in the same area, so I thought I’d take a look at the nest.

I found someone looking back at me.

Red-shouldered Hawks fledge in about 35 to 45 days. I suspect this one is about 14 days old, perhaps a bit more. They’re able tear apart their own food in about 18 days and I think this one is nearing that.