The bird turned up in a photo posted to r/sanfrancisco this week, the kind of image that accumulates upvotes not because anything dramatic is happening but because the composition earns it: a large raptor, brick-red tail fanned slightly, perched above the Duboce Triangle rooflines and the distant smear of downtown. The photographer noted they were visiting the city. The hawk, presumably, was not.

Red-tailed hawks are not rare in San Francisco — they nest in Golden Gate Park, hunt the margins of Dolores, ride thermals above Twin Peaks — but Corona Heights has a particular quality that seems to suit them. The park is mostly exposed rock and scrub grass, a chunk of the old Vulcan Quarry that the city never fully tamed into lawn, and the elevation puts a hunting bird at exactly the right height to watch the open slope below for movement. Birders who frequent the park say they've clocked red-tails there across multiple seasons, sometimes the same individual returning to the same perch.