Here is a whimsically edited shot of a hawk that I took a couple of weeks ago. It is posted in response to the request for photographs about ‘red’ from the Digital Photography School. 
Juvenile Red Tailed Hawk
The original looks like this…
September 19, 2009
Red Tailed Hawk
April 21, 2009
Florida 2009
It’s been quite some time since my last missive here. But better late than never.
Lucky us: we got to go to Florida again this year, and even better, had Elliott in town for company. We took him out to the place where we saw all the heron and pelican and what not activity last year, the E G Simmons county park. Unfortunately there was precious little activity there this time. A few pretty butterflies and a single great blue heron was about it. Thought there was an Osprey on it’s (artificial) nesting site.
After that anticlimactic day Gerry and I returned to another site from our 2008 visit, John Chestnut Park. Last year is was warm and we saw alligators (5 to 6 foot) and cardinals and maybe an anhinga. This year is was much colder. We drove into the park and the first thing on out minds was to pick out a table close to a lake where I thought I might have seen an ibis last year. We had hardly arranged our picnic on the table before these two fine specimens flew directly into our space and proceeded to beg for food.
After a while (well after we packed the remains of our picnic away) they returned to fishing in the pond behind us. While watching the great blue walk back to the shore, I notices a biggish bird flying rapidly between two trees on the opposite shore. Using binoculars it was clearly a Banded Kingfisher, and in the gallery below there is a crop of a very bad of picture which was taken at the extreme limit of my zoom and hand held. So that picture is there just for ID purposes. Also spotted (who could miss him) was a large Ibis, patrolling round the margin of the pond.
As we walked around the pond to get a little closer to the ibis, I saw a little blue heron fly in and perch on a post. By a roundabout way behind some trees I managed to get close enough for a couple of reasonable pictures of the gorgeous bird, about who’s face it is all too easy to anthropomorphize.
