HOT SHOTS: Red-Tailed Hawk Watches Busy Intersection

While waiting at the light at 214 and Pike Ridge Road on Monday afternoon, I saw something move in my peripheral vision. I looked left but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then it moved again. It was a red-tailed hawk perched on top of a piling that separates the South Arundel Veterinary Hospital from the grassy lot where Fisher’s Famous hotdog stand parks from Tuesday through Saturday.

It surprised me because it is such a busy intersection, lots of cars and trucks and buses going back and forth. And here she sat, just taking it all in—completely unfazed.

Was she waiting for a field mouse she’d eyed from the sky? Does she have a hankering for a kosher dog on a pretzel roll and didn’t know that Fishers is closed Mondays? Maybe she forgot to schedule her mammogram and was hoping that the Veterinary Hospital would accept fly-ins—it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

She let me snap a few shots, then took off.