Look closely, there is a hawk eye looking back at you. I have known for some time they were building a nest on my property. Have been keeping an eye on their progress, I did not want to get involved in too much activity, say by making a fuss as to their whereabouts too soon. Now I am fairly sure they have eggs in the nest, as it looks like someone is staying home to incubate. I feel like I can start taking a few pics now, without scaring them off.

I only have one good vantage point where there are not a lot of trees obscuring the nest. It is at least 50-60 yards from the tree, and they are probably at least 60 feet up. For anyone interested in my pic taking gear I am using an 80mm apochromatic refractor (that I already have for astronomy purposes) on a home made alt az mount. I am shooting through 17mm and 13mm Orion Stratus eyepieces (that I also already have for astro purposes) and a 12.1 mp Sony Cybershot camera mounted on a homemade afocal camera eyepiece adapter. Which means the camera is mounted to this gizmo that is attached to the eyepiece in the telescope.

Am still getting used to the gear, so with any luck the pics will get better as I go. I can’t wait till their are little hawks getting fed by the parents! As time and weather permits I will be out getting lots of pics. Oh, Red Tail hawks…I am fairly certain.

…the first time I set the scope up to check out my vanatge point, I zeroed in on the nest and one of the hawks was staring right back at me! Full frontal view…I was like “shit!” I didn’t know anyone was home. I do wish I could get up high enough to look down into the nest, but that would be a chore of astronomical difficulty. Gonna have to do this from the ground. Anyway it should be fun.