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.

I had to walk down an alley to get to the park, but there was some nice scenery along the way.

This isn't a very big park, but I suppose doing this loop a few times could add up.

There's a gate to keep cars from entering, but a nice opening to walk through.

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.

Schumann Scheel House

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 ... 

The Lower Loop Trail. That sounds promising.

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."

At the time, I thought this was the closest I might get.

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. 

He let me get really close

I soon discovered the reason the hawk didn't fly off. I feel a little bad for the squirrel, but glad I got so close to a hawk.

At one point the hawk backed away, but he wasn't going to leave that squirrel behind.

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.

Click Here to watch the video on Instagram