Today, I was walking around in Olin park, in Madison, shooting those remarkable craggly oak trees.
In one of those rare moments (for me anyway) a perfect scene evolved, AND, this time I had the camera
in hand.

My path was a slow route along the lake shore. Didn't want to excite the grazing canada geese.
Suddenly, there was a rush of activity. The geese scrambled. The bushy squirrel in the little
tree bolted for the big tree. And a medium sized hawk glided just a couple of feet over my head.
Caught me by surprise, as I thought I had startled the scene.

There we were. There was a hawk in the oak tree, with a squirrel on the trunk, peeking up around
the edge. They were both completely aware of each other. The squirrel was calling out to the hawk.
Over a fifteen minute span, it edged to within 4 feet of the hawk, taunting it more loudly. There
came a tense moment when they were staring directly at each other, eye to eye. The hawk got
distracted by something in a tree 100 yards away, and lifted off and was gone. Amazing sequence,
because I was right below these guys, with a 10x zoom on my Nikon. They were aware of me, but only
concerned with each other. After all, this was still a city park, and the creatures can be expected
to be somewhat tolerant of close proximity of people. I was almost eyewitness to a murder, and
would have had the evidence.

This is that sequence. Date is Saturday, November 24, 2007.
I am pretty sure this is a first year Cooper's hawk, as the eye has not yet changed from yellow
to red. Please message me if you can positively ID the hawk.

Update, this is positively a red tailed hawk. Giveaways are the yellow eyes (also in
juvenile Coopers) the red cast about the head, the white breast, the bottom spots,
and the pale tail bars. Thanks Mike, for that ID.




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