With the much welcomed unseasonably warm weather this Easter long weekend across Ontario and the Caledon area the wildlife is literally buzzing around everywhere now. While sitting on my deck enjoying a few beers I managed to capture this Red Tailed Hawk flying around over the field behind me, a few times he flew right over top of me. I was able to grab a couple nice pictures of him that show off his feathers quite nicely, click on the photos for larger versions. Photos taken with my Olympus 70-300mm zoom lens, for more info on Red Tailed Hawks click here or two see to previous close up photos I have taken of them click here.

Quite often I see Hawk’s in Caledon, they are territorial and usually stay in certain areas so after a while you know where to find them. However getting good pictures of them even with a big zoom lens is often a challenge. You may see them on the sides of the roads, sitting on power lines or dormant trees looking down into the fields, they for the most part ignore the traffic of cars focusing only on finding their prey. Unfortunately they don’t stay still for long, if you happen to stop for a picture you literally have a second or two at most before they see you and take off. So quite often in order to get a good hawk photo you need to stalk them, sneak up on them when they are looking the other way or like my other close-up photo stop in the middle lane of highway 50 and shoot from inside the car. This particular red-tailed hawk I followed from tree to tree for a few minutes, seeing me as a threat he would keep flying away to another spot but generally would still stay in the same area. Click on the above and below photos for larger pictures.

On my way home I caught this Red-tailed Hawk (correct me if I am wrong) just south of Bolton along side Highway 50. He was scanning the ditch below for food and I must have made him nervous as he flew away fairly quickly once he spotted me. I didn’t notice it until after I had loaded up the photos on my computer but this particular hawk is tagged, click on the image for a larger view, if you look closely you will see a red tag on his foot. For more info on Red-tailed Hawks, click here. Picture was taken with my zoom lens sitting in the middle lane of Highway 50 (do not do this, its very busy and dangerous).

Here are two more pictures:

You can also see my previous Hawk post with pictures here from earlier in the year.

While driving to work every day along highway 50 I often see a number of hawks. For the longest time I was trying to get a good close up shot of one but didn’t have much success until recently. The hawk above I managed catch just south of Bolton near the Toyota Dealership, unfortunately I only managed to get one close up picture before he took off. The larger hawk pictures below are from the Palgrave area, just south of Highway and the last picture is a baby Hawk also just south of Bolton.