This is Bird Note.

Sculptor and musician Walter Kottundu first became an raptured by birds in 2005

when he borrowed a camera from a friend.

He went to Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco

to try photographing hummingbirds

when all of a sudden a red-tailed hawk

flew about four feet above my head and I turned around and I started following this hawk. The and had a white patch on the back of its head. Walter named the bird Patch and kept coming back to the park to look at this hawk.

And on one of his visits, he saw the bird on top of a streetlight.

And it turned, looked at me, and then jumped off the street light and flew

straight toward my head. And in my mind I'm thinking, I've done something wrong, the bird is really

mad. The bird landed on the ground next to me, about three or four feet away, and it

picked up a caterpillar and ate it, and then it didn't leave.

We sat there together on the ground for about a minute until somebody else walked by and it flew away.

And that was such an exhilarating moment that probably for the next six to seven months I was at that park three to four days a week following this particular redtail.

Some days it'd be more difficult to find. following this particular red tail.

Some days it'd be more difficult to find her and other days she would find me. The bird wasn't used to everybody, but for some reason it had accepted me as part of the landscape.

It would pluck gophers out of the field right next to me.

It would allow me to walk up to it while it was feeding and when a dog would run by or another person would walk by it would fly away.

So I realized I had a really privileged relationship with a wild red-tailed hawk.

And I think knowing that it was so special, I kept going back and I was able to document its transition from a juvenile bird into an adult.

As he watched Patch grow, he noticed things about her, how some days she would seem to never miss her prey, while others

she'd fly around endlessly looking for a meal, how her favorite perch was on the cross

...