Sunday, June 24, 2012

Big & Small Birds at Peck Park

Are these merlins, or peregrine falcons? After looking at images on Google, I think maybe female harrier hawks? Here is a close up of the same photo.

Beautiful day at Peck Park in San Pedro, overlooking the Port of Los Angeles.

Of course, once these birds took off--one at a time--the ever-present crows that populate that park swarmed and chased them away.

Here is another picture. My guess is that the birds were 14-15 inches long.

And below right is a picture of a black phoebe--birds that I cannot ever remember seeing until recently, but which now seem to be all over.

2 comments:

Will Campbell said...

Those two raptors could be juvenile red tails. Their tails seem too short to be Cooper's hawks.

Vickey Kall said...

You're right about the tail--but having just seen a fledgling red tail that was almost twice the size of these two, and who couldn't yet fly, I don't think these two are red-tail hawks. But then, I don't know how much variation there is in size.
Prairie hawk is another possibility.