Spotted: Juvenile red-tailed hawk near San Francisquito Creek

Bird photographer Rick Morris snapped these photos of a juvenile red-tailed hawk earlier this week near San Francisquito Creek. He explains:

“I went out into the backyard a few days ago and walked toward the edge of the yard over looking the creek and saw a hawk flying down the creek in front of me. I saw it land on a tree, so I quickly went to the back door of the house and asked my daughter to grab my camera, adding, ‘be sure to use two hands!’ since it’s a heavy and very expensive camera/lens combo.

“Luckily the hawk was still sitting in the tree and once it saw me, it took off along the creek back toward me. Unfortunately I had decreased the shutter speed to 1/800th of a second to take a portrait pic but then forgot to increase the shutter speed back up. Fortunately a few pictures still came out fairly sharp.”

Photos by Rick Morris (c) 2024