The Challenge of Distance and Camouflage

If I had not turned at just the right time to see this Red-shouldered Hawk fly into and perch on this tree, I would never have known it was there. The tree was several hundred feet upstream on the other side of the river. Even with the telephoto lens, the distance made it difficult to get a series of photos of the hawk:

This set of photographs was taken between Padre Park and Mission Park on the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River on Friday, January 3, 2014.