It was just about ninety degrees here yesterday and today is even hotter. I climbed up the hill to check on the the fruit trees (the apple trees are flowering) when this hawk flew right over my head –so close that I could almost feel him.
It seemed as if he was hunting for something, so I stood absolutely still. I’m sure he was looking for a rodent and I didn’t want to disturb THAT!
A couple minutes later he flew back over my head and landed in this tree. Either he didn’t know I was right there or he didn’t care.
I only had my phone so I wasn’t able to zoom in any closer but here he is. I believe it’s a juvenile Red-tailed hawk with the longest tail I’ve ever seen.
At first my son thought I had sent him a pic of a roadrunner because of the long tail, but I think it’s definitely a hawk because the roadrunner that I’ve seen around here is much larger and also walked/ran on the ground.
This is an older pic of our resident roadrunner side by side with the hawk. I think the click of the camera really annoyed him because he immediately flew away and didn’t get whatever he thought he was going to eat. Sorry, Mr. Hawk!
Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud 
Wow. I love these guys. I followed one up a steep hill at Mission Trails. He stayed about 2 feet in front of me like he was my guide or something. I didn’t know how beautiful they were until I spent those 20 minutes with one. Awesome birds.
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I feel SO lucky to be in the middle of a once beautiful city (that’s raping every bit of available land) and I still have my little corner of the world that’s full of wildlife.
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Sometimes I think of Mission Trails as it was when I was first hiking there. It wasn’t a park yet. Fr. Serra Trail wasn’t named and was a fun two-way road. The hills were empty. There were abandoned cars in the stream the flows Into the San Diego River. It was a world of drug deals and hookers in vans along the road and parking lot by Old Mission Dam. I hiked for hours completely and totally alone with my dogs. THEN it became a park and I was on the Board of Directors for the Foundation which was good. It was about protecting it for development, using it for education, yada yada. All that happened. BUT what also happened is that people started going in larger numbers and now they have to close trails because of overuse. Also the then-small communities like Santee have grown like crazy. It’s just another place for which I would need a time machine to return. Luckily, all the trails are engraved in my heart ❤
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FROM development
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How awesome you got to see it in its original state (minus the drugs and hookers of course) I never did and I’m really sorry about that! I did get to experience hiking and camping around Mammoth before it exploded into the tourist mecca it is now. There was nothing there in the summer, still only known as a place to ski in the winter, but it was amazing. You could hike for days and never see another human. Saving natural spaces from overuse is a hard job. Santee was NOTHING when I was in high school. No one lived east of La Mesa unless you had a farm or a ranch. Oh well, progress is not always progress.
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No it isn’t. I always wished I’d seen Mission Valley “before.”
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I remember Mission Valley when the cows were still there, before they built Fashion Valley. I only got to see them for a couple years tho before it was all destroyed. Eventually, here in SoCal, everything of value is destroyed.
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