It would have made for a comical sight for any passing drivers on their way to the toll booth. . . Getting out of the car was out of the question for me, unless I wanted to take pictures of the hind quarters of a retreating hawk, which I surely did not. Thus I had to stay in the car, and usually, the attempt to shoot pictures of an overhead bird out of the side of a sedan equates to some very cramped and uncomfortable contortions for the would-be photographer. So I wonder what a customer of the toll road would have thought as they passed my car and saw it idling on the side of the road, with the brake and reverse lights on, the driver seat reclined but no sign of the driver save one leg hanging out the driver’s window (don’t ask), and a big oil-drum lens pointing at the sky. Of course, nobody actually uses that godforsaken road, so nobody had any stories to tell their friends later on about the lunatic they saw earlier at the toll plaza out in Findlay Township.

 

Rough-legged Hawk is a species I have been chasing with my camera for a long time. They are not particularly difficult to find in Pennsylvania in winter, and even not particularly difficult to approach, but for some reason all of my previous outings specifically to photograph this bird came up well short of the mark. Who knew that it would finally happen -- in spades -- along an on-ramp to a toll road on a morning when I wasn't even remotely focused on this species.