 The last time I went to Shark River Park to take pictures of birds, I did a lot of walking but got no pictures. This time, July 6 2002, even though the park was crowded with families enjoying picnics, I was immediately rewarded for my vigilance of the trees by my sighting this hawk.
It wasn't immediately clear which kind of hawk it was, but it was a fairly good bet that it was a sharp-shinned because it just didn't look big enough to be a Cooper's.
Sad to say, the light wasn't very good and the bird was backlit. As a result, there is some chromatic aberration in the first couple of pictures (the purplish areas).
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 Like the herons, the bird just sat there looking around. At least I was able to get quite close to it without it being the least bit perturbed.
All around, sparrows were chirping. Perhaps they were warning cries, it was hard to tell. As I was taking these shots, three young boys came wandering by. The were as fascinated as us by the bird. Pam engaged them in conversation to prevent them from accidentally frightening the bird (although, looking at that beak, it's hard to imagine it being frightened by anything!).
I was hoping to catch a shot of it spreading its wings to fly, but it did that just as I was rotating the camera and so I missed it.
But it didn't fly very far away, so we were able to follow it and get another picture.
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