Today's walk report: 091821

Walk, Doc, talk and a hawk.

I drove to the campus again because I could and because I've had an on-off headache for two days. I figured after some relief from what I was going through at 2 AM I deserved a break. It was still early, less than 30 minutes past sunrise. When I got out of the car I decided to call Docken. Ring, Ring... hello, good morning, this is your wake up call, I'm sorry to disturb you but I thought perhaps you might want to pay attention to your circadian cycle and wake up... Huh, I should do what now, you say?

No, no, no... It was a nice chat and it went on all the way home and beyond.

And look who was waiting for me the moment I stepped onto the dirt path leading into the garden. Good thing too because this was my only photo-op throughout the walk. I'm attributing the general lack of activity to cooler mornings. It was 52º to 58º from start to end.

This is a juvenile Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii). I've seen Cooper's hawks perched atop fences before but never so low as this bench. Again, this is all I got, so you get several pictures. The background plant is Eriogonum fasciculatum, aka, California buckwheat.

As much as I tried I was in a poor position to get a decent in flight shot. Either the bird was flying directly at me or was almost immediately behind something. That's it for today. Now excuse me while I relax and float downstream.