In addition to the unique and attractive Cactus Wren featured in my last post, our surveys at the UCI Ecological Preserve on Thursday and Harriett Wieder Regional Park on Friday captured some attractive bird photos that you might enjoy. The first two show a Red-tailed Hawk perched several feet above my head at the UCI site. It's hard to tell whether the tail is red as the outer tail feathers highlighted by the sun do show some reddish tones. I suspect this was a young bird. The dark belly band is very typical of Red-tailed Hawks...one of the primary identification marks of this bird. What is red, however, are the feathers just above the hawk's yellow legs. I suspect that is blood from an earlier meal. The next bird, seen is a Say's Phoebe. This medium sized flycatcher, with the distinctive orange belly, leaves the lowlands during most of the summer but returns in the fall. Other distinctive traits are the dark primary flight feathers and tail, and the dark patch around the eye. Its cousin, the Black Phoebe cheers us year round with its black-and-white plumage, bobbing tail and loud whistled "tsip" or "tseew" call. Next, I captured this shot of a juvenile Cooper's Hawk just before it was chased into hiding by a murder of American Crows, which survey their territory and gang up on predators, perching around them to keep them under surveillance and attacking them in acrobatic swoops and dives. This is a juvenile as indicated by the bold vertical brown streaks down the front and the brown crown and back. Adults show thin, reddish horizontal stripes on the underside and dark grayish to black crowns and backs. True forest hunters, Coopers' shorter, rounded wings and long tails help it to turn and dive through the trees after their primary prey...smaller birds. I think of them as dogfighting WWII fighter planes. As a last thought I've attached a second photo of a Cooper's Hawk taken at Harriett Wieder Regional Park. This adult is standing on its prey, a common pigeon, which was too heavy for it to easily carry away. This bird shows the adult field marks discussed above.

Hope you find something here that you enjoy. I had a good time finding and photographing these birds.

jak
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