red tailed hawk on my deck

About mid-morning an unexpected guest showed up on the deck in our back yard. I b elieve

it to me an adult redtailed hawk (i'm not a birder and am probably wrong about gender and

age, but I'm pretty sure of the species. stayed on thisnewel post for about 45 minutes

checking things out before it flew off. She was no more than about 12 feet away from the

house.

Tech details: Roughly a half frame crop from a 1ds mk.2 image shot at IS0 400, (about f/5.6

@ 1/400th) with an 85mm f/1.8 lens.