On a chilly, bright, sunny morning with a clear blue sky, a Red-tailed Hawk swooped suddenly over my head as I was walking along the road, coming from behind me at lower than treetop level then flying upward, rising above the trees. It began to climb, making a large circle, turning so that its dull red-orange tail caught the sun, and rising quickly. As I watched it, a Red-shouldered Hawk appeared and flew directly toward the Red-tailed Hawk, diving toward it sharply then veering away.<\/p>\n
Both hawks made big, loose circles and climbed slowly, and the Red-shouldered Hawk dived toward the Red-tailed Hawk two or three more times. I could not tell if any actual contact was made, but it was diving at the Red-tailed Hawk just as Crows often do. The size between the two hawks was quite noticeable in this encounter, the Red-tailed Hawk considerably larger. The Red-shouldered Hawk looked more compact, its banded tail and bold coloring vivid against the blue sky.<\/p>\n
All this time both hawks were quiet. The Red-tailed Hawk sailed away out of sight, with the Red-shouldered Hawk still in pursuit, and only then did I hear its kee-yer<\/em> calls. Several minutes later, in the same area, a Red-shouldered Hawk was soaring alone and calling a loud kee-yer<\/em>, kee-yer, <\/em>very high, so that it was barely more than a sliver in the sky.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know for sure, but think the Red-shouldered Hawk probably was attacking the Red-tailed Hawk because it had come into its territory and maybe too close to its nest. This happened in the same low, wooded area around some creeks where I\u2019ve seen a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks often the past few weeks. In previous years, this has been more the territory of Red-shouldered Hawks, but over the past few winter months, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks has also been spending a lot of time here, and that\u2019s relatively new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a chilly, bright, sunny morning with a clear blue sky, a Red-tailed Hawk swooped suddenly over my head as I was walking along the road, coming from behind me at lower than treetop level then flying upward, rising above the trees. It began to climb, making a large circle, turning so that its dull […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1163"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}