(c) Greg Saulmon 2013

The fledgling Red-tailed Hawks are still a fixture here in downtown Holyoke, continuing to hone their flying and hunting skills as they prepare to go their separate ways.

It’s getting harder, at a distance, to tell the juveniles from their parents — especially the father hawk, who’s smaller than his partner. It’s also getting harder to find all of the siblings together; as they’ve been exploring the neighborhood, I’ve seen no more than two together at a time.

My hope is that all three are still doing well, but until I can find the three of them together it’ll be hard to confirm that they’ve all survived the dangerous weeks that follow fledging.

For now, they’ve still been sticking fairly close to the nest, having little adventures across the canal and even into Lyman Terrace, where I found one calling for food Sunday morning. In another recent episode, one drew the ire of an American Kestrel when it landed on a roof at Open Square. The kestrel dive-bombed the young hawk for several minutes before departing.

That was an encouraging sighting — I hadn’t seen either of the kestrels downtown for several weeks, and was starting to worry that they’d left.

Here’s a gallery of photos shot over the past week or so:

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