My name is Amy and I live in the Chicago area.
Besides birding I love to travel. 
BPW: Red-shouldered Hawk
Here’s another Viera bird. During our first visit we heard a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk calling, over and over. The next day I watched an adult polishing off a meal on a post at the back of the wetlands.
More photos of this bird at my Flickr stream here.
When the meal was done, the bird joined another RSHA in a tree further from the road.
Later we saw this RSHA perched over the wetlands.
More photos of this bird at my Flickr stream here.
Red-shouldered Hawks range where we live but I have never seen one around here before. With so many of the birds at Viera and in Florida in general, you can get such good looks. The birds seem so much more relaxed and approachable. It was great to see these hawks at the wetlands. This was not a lifer but among our best looks at this bird (besides a couple of other times – in FL of course!).
This post has been submitted to Bird Photography Weekly, hosted by Birdfreak. I love BPW because not only can I see great bird photos, but I can read the cool reactions people have to them. There might be a bird I would consider common that is a lifer for the poster. Yet other posts will be of birds that would be a lifer for me, taken in someone’s back yard. Then there are the familiar but far-away European birds that make me feel homesick for Holland. It’s always a great mix. Check out this week’s submissions. While you’re at it, why don’t you submit your own BPW post?
12:16 pm
I really wanted to see one when we were last in Florida (the Florida subspecies is so much paler than ours), but we never saw one.
What was it eating?