On the way home from work last Tuesday, I noticed one of our local red-tailed hawks was perched in its usual spot on top of a cellular phone antenna tower. I had been looking for another opportunity to try out the new telephoto extension on the camera, and the best test is to use it on a subject I've photographed before, to see how much closer I can get under similar conditions.

So, the same as I had done a couple of times last year, I drove into the parking lot near the antenna tower, snapped a few photos of the hawk perched on the antenna, and then more as the hawk got spooked & flew away. Fortunately, the flying away involved some circling around overhead first, so I had plenty of opportunities to take some in-flight shots.

The only downside was that it was cloudy and getting close to sunset when I did that last week. Then last night (another Tuesday), I saw the hawk was there again, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, with vivid blue skies. The hawk followed much the same pattern again, taking off a few minutes after I arrived, but this time I had much better lighting, and more time for in-flight photos before the hawk disappeared beyond the tree line.

I put all the new photos in the existing Flickr set from when I visited the same spot about a year ago. You can tell that the recent ones toward the end turned out a lot better than the early ones from last year.