One morning last month I arrived, camera in hand, at my favorite Saguaro stand to discover with some disbelief that a male American kestrel whose whereabouts and habits I’d been loosely tracking was already atop one of the tallest cacti enjoying  a breakfast of Northern Mockingbird.  This was not just a random Saguaro, but the exact one where three years before I had photographed a Gilded Flicker pair nesting in an old cavity with two entrances, one on either side of the cactus at different heights.

The cactus sits at the base of a small hill, and I immediately skirted the breakfast scene and scrambled up the rocky hillside to get the kestrel at eye level, the early morning sun behind me.  For a wildlife photographer nothing beats perfect light on a natural history scene, and I had given the falcon enough space that he never even looked up, never stopped plucking and dismembering, seemingly totally oblivious to my presence.  I watched in awe for several minutes, adjusting exposure, and moving a few steps for the best angle to include the raptor’s whole body and insure identification of his victim.

And then things got interesting.  A young couple out for a morning stroll came walking down the hill from behind me, their path leading them directly under and past the kestrel’s saguaro.  Under normal circumstances I probably would have quietly hailed them and pointed to the top of the cactus so they wouldn’t flush the kestrel, but I figured breakfast was just about over and the bird would probably take off when he saw them approaching. If I timed it right, that might lead to a cool flight shot, so I kept quiet to see how it would play out.

Not the way I thought, as it happened.  Not only did the kestrel not flush, but the couple remained totally oblivious to what was going on atop the cactus, walking right by and never looking up.  Not only were they unaware of what was happening directly above them, but they never noticed me either.  I was amazed that anyone out enjoying the Southwest desert on a perfect morning had not been more aware of their surroundings, given they had come down the hill with the scene before them right at eye level.

I felt a little guilty too, because pointing out the circle of life I was recording might have been a spark for them, inducing an interest in nature in general or birds specifically.  I often see hikers, dog walkers, and tourists gazing up at the Saguaros, marveling at their height, posing under them for selfies, or photographing them with cell phones, especially in late spring when they bear their showy white blossoms or their ripe red fruit.  Okay, a wild bird intent on its next protein has an “excuse,” but humans should surely be more conscious of what is going on around them, right?

But wait!  There’s a punchline coming.  The kestrel finished up, cleaned the remains out of his talons, wiped his beak against the Saguaro, then flew off.  I walked on down the hill and spent an hour of so taking my usual turn around the area, checking the stream, the lake, and the date palms where the ripe berries often attract the expected desert denizens.  There was nothing else avian going on that I wanted to shoot, and I began thinking about lunch. 

Let me digress for a moment to set up the punchline.  Back in the day when I was researching for my owl book, I never passed a single tree or Saguaro without glassing all its holes and boles looking for owls in daylight.  Friends and acquaintances would tell me about known owl locations, but only one time did I ever find one myself in daylight, a Whiskered Screech-Owl watching me from an oak cavity in southern Arizona.

So, I’m walking back up the hill past the kestrel’s Saguaro, the closest way to get to my car, and I stopped to glance at the top where there were still some mockingbird feathers attached to the spines, blowing in the wind.  As my gaze drifted downward off the remnants of the raptor’s breakfast I was stunned, almost dropping the camera, to see something protruding from the lower cavity hole of the previous flicker nest.

Whelp, turns out I am the punchline!  Speaking of oblivious, a Western Screech-Owl was sleeping in the sunny south-facing opening to the old flicker nest.  I shot over a hundred frames of the kestrel, never looked at the back of the camera, never glanced at the hole where three years ago I had shot hundreds of flicker frames for weeks, never had it occur to me to look for owls in daylight amidst all these Saguaros, all of them riddled with cavities.  And the owl had been sleeping there the whole time the kestrel was chewing on a Northern Mockingbird up on the roof.

Now that’s oblivious!  But hey, it’s a testament to how caught up I get in the moment of realizing a good photo op.  That’s lame, but it’s my only excuse.