Red-tailed Hawk Says We Can Do Better 9/29/25

Several days ago I filmed a Red-tailed Hawk kiting effortlessly on the ocean breeze. I was really happy with the clip, but after I posted it, Mr Red-tailed took a look and said, "Oh, we can do a lot better than that!" So when I was back out at Mussel Rock yesterday looking for the whales and dolphins, he popped by again and said, "Film this!" He came incredibly close and kited right in front of me. I felt like I could reach out and touch him.

I am just enthralled with the video. It was such a joy editing the video, watching it over-and-over, pausing on different details and marveling at the sight. One thing that just had me mesmerized was watching how incredibly still his head remained while his body was bouncing around. Obviously that's an amazing adaptation that allows them to maintain great vision on something, but just the physics of the whole thing astounds me.

Mr Red-tailed was being very cooperative and photogenic. I ended up with about 40 minutes of video of him kiting and flying. It was incredibly hard cutting it down to just what's here. There's so much on the cutting room floor. I may end up having to create another video with some of the other footage.

A little "behind the scenes" info. I normally shoot most of my wildlife footage using a monopod, as it gives me more mobility and flexibility. But that's a bit more difficult when you're shooting video, as it's really difficult to stay stable, especially when shooting with a long telephoto lens. So this day I had switched to my tripod, which is why the footage is a bit more stable than the last video. This was especially helpful, because he was so close he was filling the entire frame - there's no cropping/zooming in this footage. But that meant that I couldn't digitally stabilize the footage on the computer, since that requires doing some cropping and zooming and I didn't want to lose any of the image. However Mr Red-tailed went a little off script for the footage in the last section of this video (with the blue sky) and came in a bit too close-and-high. My tripod head wouldn't allow me to point the camera up enough to get him. So I grabbed the tripod, lifted it up onto one leg and used it kind of like a large, awkward monopod. I'm amazed that footage came out as well as it did.