Close Encounters of the Hawk Kind
There is little city park called Anton Schumann Park about 15 minutes from the Airbnb I'm staying in tonight, so I took a walk over there. Little did I know I would get to take pictures (with my Pixel 6 phone) of a hawk from only about 2 feet away as it ate a squirrel.
When I first came into the park, I saw a sign that said "homestead", so I went around the corner to check it out. There is an old ranch house, there that apparently has some history behind it. I plan to go back again another day when I have more time to check it out.
But since the sun was close to setting and I wanted to see if this park would be worth coming back to, I decided to go walk the trail real quick ...Â
I was actually talking to Kelly on the phone when I came around the corner and saw this hawk just off the path. I remember saying "It's a hawk! Oh man, I wish I had my big camera, it's going to fly away before I get close enough to take any good pictures."
But then as I kept getting closer the hawk did not fly away. Turns out it had a freshly killed squirrel that it wasn't willing to abandon, or even risk flying away with. I ended up walking up so close that I literally could have reached out and touched the hawk ... which allowed me to get way better pictures than I expected to get with just my phone.Â

I did take a short video of the hawk actually eating the squirrel (warning, graphic). But I can't figure out how to embed it here, so you'll have to go over to Instagram to view it. Click on the picture below.
