Christmas Red-tailed Hawk

After a Christmas Eve dinner last night and a morning breakfast with my family today, I drove out to a few birding locations that I like to visit when I’m in Hershey. Bird activity was kind of slow but Red-tailed Hawks (and a few Great Blue Herons) were all over, hunting for small rodents in the tall-grass fields. Of the six red-tails that I saw, only one was an immature. The young hawk allowed me near it as it perched on telephone wires along the road. I spent a few minutes photographing it before driving away. It was late this afternoon when I came across this hawk so the sun was too low to light up the bird well, but I am pretty happy with the results. What a nice Christmas present and great opportunity to study a young Red-tailed Hawk up-close!

Red-tailed Hawk - An immature in PA. (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Red-tailed Hawk – An immature in PA. (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Red-tailed Hawk - An immature in PA. (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Red-tailed Hawk – An immature in PA. (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Red-tailed Hawk - An immature in PA. (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

Red-tailed Hawk – An immature in PA. (Photo by Alex Lamoreaux)

All of us here at NemesisBird.com would like to wish our readers a merry Christmas and happy holidays. We hope you are all spending some time with your families, enjoying the fresh snow that fell last night across most of the northeast, or watching the Indiana Jones marathon on TV right now (like I am), or eating lots of good food, or of course – finding a little time to go birding, even if just appreciating the birds coming in to your feeders.