And we have fledged!

Yesterday afternoon when I got home I checked out the red-tailed hawk nest across the canyon and didn’t see anybody home. Then I started scanning the trees on both sides of the canyon to see if the parents were around. While I was looking the dad flew in with prey and perched on the top of one of the trees. But he didn’t start eating right away so I thought he might have been showing the prey to the kids. Sure enough, we found one of the juveniles perched just a short distance away.

The adult male’s plumage is nice and sleek, and he perches quite easily on a branch that sways dramatically in the afternoon wind. The juvenile’s feathers are rumpled and its head looks small, probably because it hasn’t been feathered very long, and it had some problems with balance.

At some point the juvenile managed to hop over to its dad, who then shared some of his food.

So we knew for a fact that at least one of the juveniles had fledged; however, we didn’t find the other juvenile anywhere. We did see the adult female perched atop a tall snag on our side of the canyon; she was looking around but didn’t seem worried so we figured that the second juvenile at least wasn’t on the ground or in some other danger.

And lo and behold, as the sun was beginning to set and light the other side of the canyon, we found both juveniles and the adult female perched on trees across the way. So both of the kids had fledged successfully!

I don’t know what the juvenile on the left is doing and why it appears not to have a head. We still haven’t actually seen either of the juveniles flying, but by the time it was getting dark both had returned to the nest for the night. I imagine they slept well after all the day’s exertions!