A Sunday Surprise

If you have read any of my previous blogs, you are aware that a) I said my new year's resolution was to blog once a week and b) I love animals.  Well, the new year's resolution kinda got put aside due to a good run of bad luck.  BUT...I'm back and this is about a really cool encounter with one of my favorite animals....hawks.  Around Christmas I wrote about the time we went for a walk in the woods on Christmas Eve and I finally got to take a picture of a hawk up close for the first time.  I thought I was in "hawk" heaven (sorry, couldn't help it).  A few Sundays ago, something happened that would make that time seem like nothing.  Wyatt, Joel (my step dad) and I had gotten up early one Sunday morning to go to Heber Springs to help his brother load some things.  I of course took my camera, just in case.  I never know what the just in case will be, but man am I prepared.  So of course I am always on the look out for hawks.  The kids and I have a joke that I am cursed.  When I have my camera, we don't see anything, and when I don't have it, of course we see miraculous wonders and bazillions of hawks.  I guess this day I happened to get lucky.
On the way back from Heber, the two times we happened to see hawks, I was taking a drink of my delicious gas station cappuccino.  So we laughed and said that I was still cursed.  Then Joel told me that he sees hawks on the walking trail in Conway.  He said he gets pretty close because they are used to people being on the trail and all.  I didn't really think much of it, because when he walks, it's usually at night.  On our way home, we happened to drive by the parking lot to the trail and I spotted something white in the tree.  I asked him to turn around and Wyatt and I hopped out of the truck and saw this hawk (at least I think it's a hawk).  I can't tell you what kind it is, I'm still in the process of learning to identify them.  They can have such color variations that it's really not fair!!

Wyatt and I were so excited.  I told him we were going to see how close we could get.  We walked over a bridge and I snapped another one.

We got almost right under it and I took this.  I was pretty happy!  So Wyatt and walked down the trial just a bit, and got distracted by some robins (I really am a sucker for birds).

It was so cold that it was really puffed up!  So he and I are just walking along and looking at the birds and a squirrel (Joel stayed in the truck, he's a wienie when it comes to cold).  All of the sudden I look down the trail and see this.....

Not the best picture, but you get the idea of our distance.  So of course, we take off towards the hawk.  I'm pretty sure it will fly off at any time.  But it doesn't...

We basically walked right under it, and then crossed another bridge.  That's where I took this picture, directly across the creek.  Then just to see what happened, we crossed back over the bridge and stood right under it!

Yep, it was looking right at us!  Then it did fly off and we went back to occupying ourselves with robins and a pair of mallards in the creek.

He's so pretty!  The female was right behind him.  Wyatt got the camera not long after this and was taking pictures of the ducks.  I noticed the hawk had flown down and was sitting in a bush right along the creek.  It flew down and landed on some ice along the creek and sat there for a minute before flying into the bush again.  I promptly took the camera back from Wyatt and sat down on a rock along the creek, a little ways down from the hawk.

I watched it, watching the creek and it suddenly dawned on me that it was looking for food in the creek.  So I sat there and watched, hoping that it would fly down again.  

Well, it did!

If you look closely, you will see it has a small fish in it's talons that it's putting into it's mouth.  Eley said it was biting the head to kill it (sorry if that was too harsh for you).  Then it put it back in it's talon and took off.

I know this picture is blurry, but I thought it was so cool with the water dripping from it.  It flew to a tree and was happily eating the fish.  Now my life would have been great if that was the end of the story.  I would have left there and been perfectly happy.  But, it wasn't.  We had seen another hawk earlier, farther back off the trail.  The one we watched catch the fish flew back down the trail towards the truck.  We were moseying our way back that way. We heard the hawk with the fish crying out, and all of a sudden, the other hawk took off in that direction.  We hoofed it down that way, thinking there was going to be a fight.  Boy was I was wrong!

We didn't actually see the transfer, but the hawk on the right is the one that caught the fish, and GAVE it to the one on the left.  We aren't sure if this was a mate or what, but they were definitely buds.  They sat there together for a minute, and then the hawk that caught the fish flew off to the top of the tree where we had first spotted it watching the creek.  

I apologize again, not the clearest picture, but OH so cool!  The hawk left behind sat there happily and ate the fish.  

So, it pretty much turned out to be a really awesome adventure at the walking trail.  I was so excited!  

Such a pretty thing!   Well, I may just blog twice this week to make up for lost time!   Seems like nothing much happened and then everything happened!  Anyway, just in case the week gets crazy, have a great week!  Don't forget to look around you!  You never know what you might see....  :)