I thought this might have been an osprey at first since the underside of this bird was very white and even with my best effort I had no recourse except to peer up at its belly from below. Otherwise to my naked eye it was a raptor-ish silhouette against the sky and not much else.

This is because it was perched at the tippy top of a very tall tree. Upon closer inspection of the photos, this appears to be a red tailed hawk.

The headline photo is a crop. I took tons of pictures of this bird as it obligingly did not move for several minutes, and it was tough to decide which ones were my favorites. All the while it was certainly watching the surrounding songbirds like, well. You know.

Bonus bird butt:

I was having some focus issues, here, which I was at first trepidatiously considering might have been caused by some delicate yet expensive component in my lens getting broken by any of the bone-shattering knocks it recently took in my motorcycle luggage.

However once I got home I discovered that it was probably down to my UV filter being absolutely filthy. You can easily see some of the dirt on it against the sky, here. Once I gave it a damn good scrubbing it seems all was well.