Red-tailed Hawks Buteo jamaicensis
Near Elmira, ON
24 November 2013
This morning, while driving through Waterloo County near Elmira, on a cold sunny day, Miriam and I spotted these two Red-tailed Hawks perched together in a tree. It is quite unusual to see them in such close proximity at this time of the year. Once breeding has been completed and the young have fledged, the two members of a pair usually go their separate ways, and the larger females can often be quite aggressive towards the smaller males if they get too close before having established a pair bond.
These two manifest the variability in plumage of this chromatically dimorphic species. One flew away quickly (as they usually do, being very familiar with persecution by humans), but the second bird remarkably stayed at its perch for quite some time, enabling us to take a few pictures, albeit somewhat distant.
