Album: red tailed hawk at Poplar Beach

Andrew Payne in La Honda caught these exciting pictures of a red tailed hawk at Poplar Beach [Aerial photo].

According to Andrew, "The hawk was just hanging out on a sign looking for food in the field. I didn’t have my big lens with me, but I was able to get very close to him. He wasn’t worried about me at all."

"I was being lazy with exposures since my dogs were in my truck whining to get out for their walk. So I just did the semi-auto "sport" setting which gave me like 1/1500 exposure at f 8 for most of the pics. I was using Canon’s 24-80mm lens which works out to more like a 38-128mm when adjusting for the different image area of the digital SLR."

Barbara Costa identified this bird as a subadult red-tailed hawk on the La Honda list and provided me with some additional detail, "The black patagial mark [only visible from below a bird in flight] is pretty diagnostic of red-tailed hawk.  Birds don’t attain the red tail until the second autumn of their lives, they can breed before they have a red tail. Sexes are alike. The red tailed hawk is the most common soaring hawk we have on the coast. The red shouldered hawk is second."