The Hawks Told Me Where the Owls Were Hiding
Story from June 23, 2025
Since January, I have had nearly perfect luck imagining an animal seemingly moments before it shows up in my camera’s view finder. So, it was quite surprising when over the weekend I went whale-watching in San Diego and didn’t see a single whale, especially given the circumstances: I was with the husband / father / caretaker who’d gone too long without doing something for his mental health. I saw a green heron, great blue heron, an egret, and some kind of bright orange fish in the water all before boarding the boat suggesting we would have good luck. A few hours later just before letting us off, the crew announced, “…None of the other boats saw anything either, but this boat comes with a guarantee…” Everyone got a voucher for a free ride that never expires.
After returning from San Diego, I was anxious to get back to the forest to photograph two families of hawks, coopers and red-shoulders, before they fully fledge and split off to live alone. After dropping my kids off at summer camp, I headed to my usual photography trail. As I parked I told the Universe, “I know where to find the cooper’s hawks and the red-shouldered hawks. It’d be great to see an owl.” Just as I get into the wooded part of the trail, a beautiful cooper’s hawk lands in the tree just a stone’s throw away in perfect lighting with no obstructions. I pull my camera up for the easiest of shots, and it malfunctions. By the time I reset and get the camera back up, the bird has flown away. I go on to capture some of the NatGeo-esque material I’ve ever recorded—a red-shouldered hawk eating a small bird, then another hawk swooping in to steal the meal. I thought to myself, “You’d be greedy to ask for more” and turned towards my car. I hear the cooper’s hawk call off in the distance; I keep walking; it calls again and again; it starts calling non-stop in a way I’ve never heard a hawk do before. “You can’t leave without finding this bird.” I spend the next 15 minutes circling a single tree before I find the bird, and even then I can only see its feet and its butt behind a branch. I stare at this scene for another five minutes before I realize, “That’s not a leaf!” I had been staring at the face of an owl and hadn’t realized it. I went on to capture a scene of four cooper’s hawks attempting to scare two great horned owls out of a tree. I can’t discern why they behaved in this way, as it went on for hours. Interestingly enough, I went back several days later and that very tree had fallen over—not completely, but the broken branches and the off angle was clear.
The symmetry of these two experiences speaks to meMy family needs to spend as much time as possible in San Diego because, said as simply as possible, life is short. Suggesting trips and making them happen is (very justifiably) something my wife struggles to do alone, and while I was previously happy to go along with any plans I wasn’t suggesting them. Now, this free whale-watching voucher that’s burning a hole in my pocket makes me want to suggest the next visit. Similarly, if I had photographed the first bird that landed in the tree beside me, I wouldn’t have been able to justify finding the tree hiding the owls. The lesson: don’t be too quick to judge something as bad / a failure / negative. Maybe you just haven’t gotten to the good part.
