Readers’ wildlife photos

February 7, 2025 • 8:15 am

Save for Robert Lang’s collection of pictures from Brazil’s Pantanal, we’re short on wildlife photos from other readers; this, in fact, is the last non-Langian post we have.  Please send your good wildlife photos if you have some. Thanks!

Today’s short installment is from reader Bill Dickens, whose captions are indented. Click on the photos to enlarge them. We’d also like a reader’s ID of the hawk.

A hawk has been dropping my yard recently. A couple of days ago it got a squirrel which it consumed on my back lawn. Another squirrel, which I took to be its mate, was racing around and close to the hawk while it was perched in the tree observing it’s catch. I took this to be an attempt to distract the bird.

I’m not entirely sure which species. The most common species here are Red-shouldered, Red-Tailed, and Cooper’s Hawks. I go back and forth on each of these. It has vertical banding on the chest. I think Red Shouldered or Red tailed are the most likely but I’m no expert.

The fourth photo captured by my home security system shows the banding on the wings.

8 thoughts on “Readers’ wildlife photos”

  3. Very cool! I occasionally find a mound of squirrel or rabbit fur tuffs in the yard, and I take those to mean that a hawk has done what hawks do.

  4. Immature Red-shouldered. Tail is too short for Cooper’s, venter and scapular patterns are wrong for Red-tailed.

    1. Thanks! Immature patterns is perhaps why I was struggling with a match. Presumably it’ll change over time.

  5. What happened to our friend who used to send lots of bird pix and other shots from his place in Wyoming (or was it Montana?). I’d try to find one of his posts, but you can’t search within a category.

    1. Stephen Barnard. I was able to find his name because I remembered the name of his dog. Deets! Funny how memory works.

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