About the Image(s)

Last August, right around noon, I was walking down a path in the Japanese garden of the Huntington Museum and Gardens that has a stream running alongside it when I spotted a Red-Tailed Hawk perched on a big rock, looking intently at the water. Then it jumped in the water and took a vigorous bath and climbed back to the rock, then jumped back twice for more vigorous bathing. Finally it settled on the rock utterly wet
and seemed like it wasn’t sure of what to do next, still staring at the water. Then it started to emit a dramatic loud and hoarse scream and, from time to time, looked up towards the sky. I too looked up and there was another hawk, probably its partner, flying above the area. I was amazed at how remarkably small, deflated and vulnerable
compared to its usual majestic, fluffed up self this red-tailed hawk looked.

It was about 12:30 pm on a very warm summer day and the sun was shining brightly when I took this image. My camera settings were f6.3, 1/1600 s, ISO 640 @214 mm.

Post processing was done in Adobe Photoshop.
I added another image of when the hawk was wet but not looking too vulnerable and
deflated.