On New Year’s Day, one of these early, cold and foggy, January mornings I met again with a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk I knew from a few earlier encounters. She (I call her my she-hawk friend solely on the base of her very large size, typical for a female raptor) was perching on a low branch of a tree, maybe 30 feet away from where I spotted her, intensely looking at something on the ground. I followed her eyes and saw a male mallard, domestic type, walking fast. He probably had a problem with flying and tried to run away from danger on his feet. The duck was coming toward me and I thought about moving away when the hawk flew and landed on the top of a 6 foot post right in front of me, no further than 20 feet away. The Mallard started to run on his short legs as fast as he could; I had thought again to move away, but before I could even consider my other choices the Red-tailed Hawk took off and attacked; striking the running duck’s back with her talons. Although I was able to point my lens toward the action it was way too close and photos became blurred – my distance selector was set for distance photos, and even if not, I was close enough to take portrait shots of the bird’s heads rather than the action frame. Evidently the first strike did not stop the duck that was now continuing to run down the bank’s steep slope toward the lake. Now, without even thinking I started quickly to walk away, keeping the running duck in my sight, and tried to distance myself from both birds to have enough space between me and the possibly place of the next attack. I kept thinking that I was too close for the hawk to concentrate on real attacks. And I was wrong. The next attack came just a few seconds later and the hawk struck the mallard’s head when passing over him making the mallard’s body come down the slope in a rolling motion. As I found later, I caught the moment of this strike in the photo but I still was too close to fit both birds in the frame. When the duck regained control of the fall and stop rolling he had only a few feet left to reach the water but then the hawk struck the third and final time. This time holding talons firmly on the duck’s body. I had too many obstructions between myself and the birds, so I did not get a good photo of the last strike. The mallard tried weakly to free himself from the hawk’s talons but pushed further down the slope, his body ended up in the water and the hawk pressed even harder to keep the duck’s head under the water and simply watched it drowning. When the mallard’s wings stopped moving rapidly the Red-tailed Hawk waited a moment and started to drag the mallard’s body out of the water and up the slope to a dry place where, despite weak signs of the duck still being alive, the hawk easily over powered the prey with the strong grip of her talons. Then, almost immediately, she started to tear off the skin from the prey’s chest. First blood was drawn with the bill; first chunks of skin and feathers were swallowed before the mallard was even dead. For the next 45 minutes (the whole event lasted about 50 minutes from the first strike to walking away and cleaning the bill) she-hawk was dinning. Slowly but with strong force going through the skin and breast muscles, taking out trachea and some other gut contents during the process. At the beginning of the breakfast I was trying not to move much, nor to try getting closer as I was afraid that I might scare away the hawk. But soon, inch by inch, foot by foot, I started to get closer and closer, ending up about 15 feet away (my minimum focusing distance) from the dining hawk and taking full frame portrait shots of her head. I started to wonder how close she would allow me to get to her, but seeing no benefit of doing this, I just kept a minimum distance of fifteen feet freely moving back and fort, but tried not to cross a 15 feet line between us. When only a few small pieces of meat were left still attached to the mallard’s rib cage, the Red-tailed Hawk decided to slowly walk away stopping only from time to time to wipe her bill against the grass, then took off and landed on a post. She cleaned her bill and talons a little more and flew to the tree nearby and perched there showing a nice, full crop. I think we both had a wonderful New Year’s Morning. She having a great meal and me having an unforgettable experience.

Well, I have to admit also, that during this long hour (or a short one – depending on how you look at it) a lot of thoughts were coming through my mind. From childhood I am always spending a lot of time in the field observing wildlife but witnessing the raptor hunting is not a very common event; and having one striking prey right in the front of you … I consider that more luck than anything else. Many people think that raptors always kill their prey with one swift strike. Well, not always, as you can see it took this Red-tailed Hawk three strikes, a short fight on the ground and drowning the prey for a few minutes before she was able to tear off the first chunk of skin from the still alive duck. When witnessing all of this right in front of my eyes it seems natural that the thoughts about life and death would start filling my mind. Most animals live in constant fear of being eaten at any moment, in most cases alive. I am not sure how many people who are living a peaceful life of a paper pusher in the nice, safe and air conditioned office space could handle being thrown back in time, to a place from where we came not that long ago. When every time upon leaving the cave to find food, was a life threatening event. And being eaten alive was a ‘normal’ way to go, to say the least: a common one.
My she-hawk friend left the area a few weeks ago. She has much more freedom to choose her place to live than I do. Not knowing where she went I cannot follow her but I am little upset with myself that I took her presence for granted and did not spend more time with her when she was around. I never looked for her, instead, very often, she was crossing my paths and every time we met she always offered something interesting for me to watch. From hunting rodents (not always successfully) and toad (she ate one so fast I did not even have a chance to get very close) to walking toward me, practically ignoring my presence, when checking the ground for food or sometimes for something to play with (yes, it was an incredible experience to watch a wild Red-tailed Hawk playing) often no further then 20-25 feet away from me. In fact she came to me on foot around Christmas Day. Old legends say that animals around that time can talk. Well, she certainly did with her body language. Now, when she is gone, after the short two months of knowing each other, I am very glad that at least I took so many photos of her. They (her photos) will help me from time to time refresh my memory of this so unique relationship. Finally I found time to start going through the photos I took of her. I hope I will find more time to check them all soon.
If for any reason someone will find my photos too graphic and accuse the Red-tailed Hawk for being cruel go and see what some of our own kin in ‘civilized’ part of world can do to quite intelligent mammals but in their opinion ‘lower’ animals that they claim to have right to butcher in a barbaric way, and what is worse, seem to have fun doing it. I will not state my opinion about it, even that I have a strong one, but rather let everybody build his/her own one.

http://bluepanjeet.net/2008/11/22/1594/the-horrible-whale-and-dolphin-massacre-tradition-of-faroe-islands-in-denmark/

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/end-whale-dolphin-slaughter-in-the-faroe-islands

http://ecopathic.blogspot.com/2008/03/denmark-you-are-killing-our-whales.html


The Red-tailed Hawk on the other hand, even if it is not able to eat the whole prey, will often keep returning to it, sometimes for a few days after a kill (especially during the cold weather) and keep eating the leftovers. I saw my she-hawk friend doing that too with another bird carcass.