Between Two Raptors and a Kingbird

December 13, 2014

Not expecting sunshine today, it was past 10:00am by the time I got on the trail at Rios. Eve had e-mailed me the other day that she had seen the Hooded Merganser on the east trail at Rios. It was time for me to go and see for myself if they are still there after the rainstorm.

There were lots of birders this morning. It was great to see familiar faces among them. Greeting them as I walked past and noticing the trails were filled with birds enjoying the break in the weather as much as all of us. I spot a Cassin's Kingbird on one of the snags of the upper trail that leads towards the freeway.

Cassin's Kingbird measures 9 inches long with a wing span of 16 inches. They eat flying insects by aerial hawking and sometimes go to ground to capture the insects. They also will eat some fruits. They usually can be seen on a high perch and swooping for insects. As I take a shot, he flies off near a huge Eucalyptus tree. Hoping for some flight shots of the Kingbird, I hiked towards the giant tree.

A Red-tailed Hawk appears and lands in the huge tree. Losing track of the Kingbird but grateful to spot a Hawk, I slowly approach the huge tree... The Red-tail must have spotted me coming close, he takes flight and I watch it soar low and wide above... 

A nice shot of his underside as he passes by.

The Hawk circles back and gives me a good look over.

Eye to eye...

As he loops around, the Red-Tailed Hawk spots something that changes his curious mood into high alert.

A serious stare at whatever it sees.

The Red-tail comes back, flying low and close, but he is looking past me at something that definitely has his attention.

I turn around and look through my lens to see what the Red-tail is alerted to and wow, there is an Osprey flying directly at us!

He is focused on the Red-tailed Hawk and never takes his eyes off.  He is in a challenging intimidating flight posture...

I have never seen a challenge and attack from this angle before.

I keep my camera on the Osprey as it swoops past me with looks that could kill. Wow, if I was the Red-tail I would be gone!

This is the last shot as he swoops towards the Red-tailed Hawk. I turn to take a photo but by the time I raised my camera, the Osprey had swooped at the Hawk and the Hawk had turned upside-down with his talons out.  He quickly decides not to wait for the Osprey to make another swoop. As I finally get the camera focused towards the action, the Red-tailed Hawk is flying away to the east.

The Osprey circles once overhead and lingers with his serious glare towards the fleeing Red-tailed Hawk. After a few more low circles acting as if he were hunting for fish, he flies off westward.

Wow, that was pretty intense! It was time for me to head home. Walking west following the tide channel a Pied-billed Grebe surfaces from a dive. He looks pretty nervous... probably from watching the encounter of the two raptors. Lol, feeling a little uneasy myself.

In fact all the birds appeared fidgety... and as the Grebe swam past, I spotted the female Hooded Merganser!!  She spots me, too, as I click away with the camera and it looks like she is ready to leave.

Sure enough, there she goes... Just a few steps and she is quick to get airborne.

She is up and traveling fast. Mergansers are such quick fliers. Did you know that the Red-breasted Mergansers are the fastest horizontal fliers? They can fly 70 miles per hour. LOL, I think this little Hoodie is almost as fast! Her hood flattens as she gains speed.

A nice look at the wing patterns. There is something about her eyes that makes me smile. "Hoodies" always look so "wide-eyed". I am also smiling because I finally got a shot of a Hooded Merganser today!

A few hundred feet past where I saw the female Hoodie, I spot a male Bufflehead. Walking quickly to get as close as possible but he spots me and dives... hoping that I would keep walking past... but I backtrack quickly to get in front of where I think he is going to surface.

Yes, he comes up right in front and the camera is clicking away!

One adorable close-up! The sunlight really brings out the rainbow color on his head. Wow, never been this close to one before.

Buffleheads are one of my favorite ducks. They are so adorable and have such a cute look because of the bonnet-like marking on their head.

  

Only the male Buffleheads have the white heads. I love showing you the beautiful rainbow that shows in the sunlight.

One last shot of the cutie and he soon takes flight heading east as I head west.

I reach the top of the trailhead and decide to give the peninsula trail a look-over. No Nelson's today but I did spot this Black Phoebe on the snag with a dragonfly. He banged it around and held it for a while.

I don't know what happened but he just spit it out... and in an instant he went and retrieved it again. It's time to leave and let the Phoebe eat his meal in peace.

Have a beautiful fun day everyone.