Backyard Hunting has begun

On December 17th,  I saw this bird in a tree in our backyard.  I believe it to be a Cooper's hawk, perhaps 2nd year.  This is not the first hawk of the season to be hunting in my yard.  There have been a couple of others that I did not get photos of.  Both of the others were much smaller, I ID'd them as Sharp-shinned hawks, and had yellow eyes meaning they were immature birds.  This one was perched kind of high up in our tree so I headed up to my "bird blind" (aka laundry room on our 2nd floor with a small window, just perfect for a blind) to hopefully get some good shots.  I always take a few pictures before opening the window, just in case my action of doing so causes the bird to flee.  This bird was not concerned about me, only finding its next meal.  The light was nice although shadows crossed the eye of the bird and I had to wait until its head was turned just out of shadow in order to get some catch light in the eye. 

Here's the horizontal version of this same image.  Which one do you like best?  

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New visitor, Lazuli Bunting

This little beauty is a Lazuli Bunting. I'm not even sure just how to pronounce it, but it was another first time guest in my yard this spring. He was soon followed by several others and visited on a daily basis. I assume they were just passing through since I haven't seen them in the past couple of days now. I'm still so new to birding and this migration thing, that I don't know if we aren't offering the right food now or if they were just fueling up to finish their trip. Which ever the case, I hope they return at sometime in the future. Their coloring is so pretty and it's only the second bird with blue that's visited my yard, the other being the brewer's blackbird. Until next time...