Taxon suggests Cooper's hawk, so I will agree. This observation is a small hawk, that I must have startled as I walked out the back door toward my car. I saw a blur of motion and then there was a small hawk sitting on the red fence that separates our driveway from the neighbors. It showed no concern about me, holding its position, with no intention of leaving. Almost 11 minutes elapsed. It dropped to the ground and began to stick its head under the lantana shrubs, then it suddenly opened its wings, leapt forward, talons first, and flew off to a nearby oak tree, carrying its prey.

This isn’t a great picture, but we have been watching this hawk for a couple of months now. We believe there is a nest in a tree in front of an unoccupied house at 803 Bentwater Pkwy in Grand Prairie. In February, we saw her fussing in the same tree on a couple of occasions. Then we saw her mating with another hawk a few days later. The females make a lot of noise beforehand. The foliage has filled in so that you cannot see the nest, but a few weeks after she mated, we saw three crows chasing a hawk around the same spot. She’s been standing guard on the roof periodically and we can hear her making noise in the tree sometimes. I have better photos of this type of hawk. I believe it is a Red Tailed or Cooper’s Hawk.