Yesterday's missed shot of the day - August 22, 2026 [burnsteem100]

No decent photos, but preserving a record of the event. ;-)

@cmp2020 and I were walking in the yard when we heard the birds starting to make more noise, so I suspected that a hawk was nearby. Suddenly, I saw a large bird moving quickly up from the ground or low-level flight behind a tree. Some sort of smaller bird was chasing it.

They were headed towards a very small clearing between branches, so I raised the camera, hoping to get a shot when they passed between branches. I took a short burst of photos, but as you can see, I missed - almost completely.

And then they were gone.

After the birds left, @cmp2020 informed me that he actually saw two small birds doing the chasing.

Judging by the reddish tint in the tail feathers, the larger bird may have been a Red-tailed Hawk. Or, judging by the white trailing wing feathers, maybe the larger bird was a Turkey Vulture. Or maybe those coloring hints are just tricks of light from a fast sequence with poor lighting and an unprepared camera.

In the patch of brush where this occurred, I have previously seen mobbing behavior from Blue Jays, Eastern Kingbirds, and Northern Mockingbirds.

One final hint is that I had Merlin listening in my pocket while I was outside. I accidentally left the app without saving the recording, so I cannot match up time stamps from the photos and the audio recording, but sometime during that walk, Merlin thought it heard a Common Nighthawk (which would actually be very surprising, I think).

Here's what a Common Nighthawk sounds like, but neither @cmp2020 nor I remember hearing this sound:

FWIW, after reading the story, Claude thinks that the bird in the photo is probably a Red-tailed Hawk.

So what kinds of birds were doing the chasing, and what kind of bird was being chased? I guess we'll never know.

It's just another one of life's unsolved mysteries. ;-)