Red Tail Hawks Mating in Maine

I was driving home from visiting family one very nice spring day, near the end of March and what an amazing day it was for bird spotting.  In just over an hour covering about 50 miles of back roads and highway I saw six Bald Eagles, two Turkey Vultures and five Red Tailed Hawks!  I have always felt I had a sense for when I was going to spot a bird, and on this day my radar was working overtime.

I stopped to take some in flight pictures of the first two Eagles I saw.  At times they were flying really low to the ground, allowing me a few chances to snap off a few good close ups.  The next two set of Eagles I saw were either too far away in the distance for my zoom lens, even with image stabilization, to take very sharp images or I was in an area where it would have been unsafe to pull over to the side of the road.

Female Red Tail Hawk, waiting for her mate.

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It seems about every 10-15 miles I was seeing a Red Tailed hawk sitting high a top a tall dead pine, waiting for prey to scurry by below.  Apparently on this day, one of the females was waiting patiently for her mate, and watching on as he collected pine branches for the construction of their nest.  As I snapped picture after picture of her sitting in the sun, I noticed another bird suddenly appear through my view finder.  It was her companion, the male Red Tailed hawk, swooping in to mount her and mate.

I could barely believe I was witnessing this through my Canon zoom lens, fully focused and trained on the pair for the entire event.  I snapped off about 10 quick shots while Hawks mated, and then as quickly as he appeared, he flew away and continued to work on the nest.

A few minutes after the mating, just as I was about to pack up my gear and call it good, a few Crows decided to come check out the scene.  Crows, several of them, were flying circles above and around the female Red Tail, at times swooping and diving at here, cawing and crowing at her as they tried their best to disturb her and scare her from her roost.

It was only after a few dive bomb attempts by the culprit crows, that the male Hawk decided it was time for him to come defend his lady, who he was building a home for and who undoubtedly now carried eggs that he fertilized.  He flew in through the attackers, landing in very close to her, then as the Crows advanced with another attack, he launched in to flight after one of the crows and another pair of them made chase after the Hawk!

This left the female to fend for herself while one remaining Crow stayed back to heckle her a bit more.  Several attempts to scare her away were not enough and eventually the Crow gave up and flew away.  Shortly after all the action was over, I watched as the female Hawk flew away in the direction the male was last going.  I feel pretty lucky to have witnessed the event, even more so that I had a camera with me and that I am now able to share theses great pictures with all of you!  Happy Birding!

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