Just outside the kitchen window, a California turkey hawk swooped over my roof barely missing the house and glided down swiftly to grab something off the lawn. As it passed so close to my home in Vista, I glimpsed the red, bald skin above the white beak and top of it's tiny head. The large bird flew around behind my house to circle above the fields near the creek just below King's lake. I wanted to see it's red head again, so I climbed on the roof to get a better view. A thousand feet behind my home I noticed two white kite hawks hovering a hundred feet high searching the grassy field for prey. They catch mice, lizards and insects to feed their young in the nests located in the tall white barked trees by the creek.
The kite hawks began circling higher and higher as I watched. Soon they were so high, I squinted my eyes looking up about one thousand feet. The birds stopped climbing and hovered at a standstill looking down searching for movement in the grass and sage brush below. They must have seen something because they folded their wings and dove at the ground like bombs. They dropped very fast, and opened their wings to slow down only at the last second before striking their prey. I couldn't tell what food was caught, but the young one's in the tree nest were fed something.