Posts in Category: hawk
Sitting Pretty: Red-shouldered Hawk
One of the highlights of my visit to the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was my first tour on the Pontoon Boat trip on the Rio Grande River itself. I was assigned as a guide, otherwise I would have missed the adventure, since I would never have thought of a boat trip as an ideal photographic opportunity.
As it turned out, happily, the Pontoon Boat is great for photography. It is relatively slow at its fastest, and very stable, and the captain is super cooperative with photographers, jockeying and steadying the boat, and getting in close to the banks, to provide photographers with excellent views.
And you can get close. Wildlife on the bank does not see people on a boat in the river as a threat, so they tend to sit while the boat drifts well inside their normal comfort zone. This handsome Red-shouldered Hawk for instance, never did lift off as we drifted by right below it.
I especially like the blue sky with a light gauze of clouds background 🙂
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200 optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter). f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
White-tailed Kite
So, to do this justice, you need to click the image and open it full screen in the lightbox viewer (or click here). The sky was dull overcast yesterday at Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center, but when I saw this White-tailed Kite “kiting” out over the tropics section of the center (the former trailer park), I had to try. The Canon SX50HS has a much improved Sports mode, and I got of two bursts of 10 rapid sequence shots. The best part of the mode is that the auto focus seems to be tuned for moving subjects…and picks up birds in flight very well.
Of course the Kite is an ideal subject, as it hovers in one spot while hunting. And at least yesterday it was hovering not kiting…its wings were in constant motion to hold it in one place.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped for image scale (in Lr) and pasted up in PhotoShop Elements.
Coop at Cape May!
The weather could have better when I got to Cape May yesterday. By the time I got out onto the boardwalk behind the Hawk Watch at Lighthouse State Park, at 4PM, it was pretty dark. There were a fair number of birds, mostly Yellow-rumped Warblers, but they were skitterish…never staying in one place for more than a few seconds. Challenging photographic conditions and I am still learning the new camera.
And then, of course, being Cape May, this Cooper’s Hawk flew up into the tree right above my head, and sat there while I took way too many shots. It even let me sidle along the boardwalk for a clearer shot through the branches. Very nice! It was dark. The bird was against the grey sky. Not the best conditions, but it does not matter how bad the light or the angle, when a Coop lands that close and sits, you take pictures!
I got to try all the various focal lengths available, from 2400mm (2x digital tel-converter function, as above) back down to the 1200mm optical zoom.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 2400mm, 1200mm, 1800mm, and 2400mm. f6.5 @ 1/160th – 1/400th @ ISO 125-400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. All shots required some purple fringe removal.
2/18/2012: Roseates with a View, Merritt Island NWR
We will back away from the intimate bird portraits today and present a group of feeding Roseate Spoonbills as accent to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge view. This is landscape (waterscape?) and the birds are really secondary. The fact that they are bright enough to occupy one of the power-points in the composition (junction of the rule of thirds lines) is just a bonus.
This shot began life as standard jpeg of the scene, exposed in Program mode on the Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100.
I used Dynamic Photo HDR to tone map it for extended range and added detail, though I toned down the auto settings for a more natural look. I then took it into Lightroom, cropped at bit at the bottom for composition, and used a Graduated Filter effect from the top to lighten the clouds and sky (again going for a more naturally balanced exposure and realistic look), and another GFE from the bottom to darken the vegetation so that your eye is drawn up to the bright birds and the horizon. Added clarity and a touch of vibrance, and sharpened the whole thing. The result is just subtly heightened when compared to the straight Lightroom processing version. A little extra pop, but nothing that stands out as obvious HDR.
Which is exactly what I was after.
12/17/2011: Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Bosque del Apache
One morning at Bosque del Apache, having got to the refuge early but without a car, I shouldered my tripod, my spotting scope and the tiny Point & Shoot I use behind the eyepiece, along with my binoculars and my ever-present super-zoom Canon and walked out along the center, two-way, road on the tour loop. Even though I was on foot they insisted on giving me a receipt at the toll house to prove I was official when I flashed my Duck Stamp (Migratory Bird Conservation Stamp in actuality…every birder should buy one! and not just because it gives you free entry to all National Wildlife Refuges). I found Cranes along the road and got some good shots in the early light (which perhaps you will see one of these days)…but the best bird of the day came when I was (very) foot weary and almost back to the Visitor Center.
I had just turned out of the refuge road onto NM Route 1 and was walking along the wide verge between the pavement and the brush when a hawk came up off the ground 50 feet in front of me and went by me at waist level. It was small, so I was thinking Kestrel, and I was also thinking “too bad I was not looking more carefully…it is surely gone now.” But I turned anyway, and scanned the brush along the edge of the pond.
What do you know? There it was, perched on the back side of the brush about 60 feet from me again.
Figuring it would not sit there long, I sat the spotting scope down and pulled out my Canon SX40HS. All in all the super-zoom is a lot faster getting on the bird and getting off those quick shots. And I have come to trust the 1.5x and 2x digital tel-converter settings on the Canon to give me decent hand held results out to 1680mm equivalent. So, I worked by way into the brush just there to see if I could get a clear line of sight to the backside where the hawk sat. It was a Sharp-shinned…a small male…not much bigger then my first guess Kestrel would have been. And, indeed, there was a marginally clear shot.
It was tricky focus but the auto focus on the Canon was up to it. I keep the Canon set to continuous, which, with a fast Class 10 SDHC card, gives me something near 4 frames per second. I shot a burst at full optical zoom (840mm) then clicked in the 1.5x digital converter and took another burst (I have the converters set on my short-cut button). Between those two bursts the Sharpy turned its head just enough more toward me so that the sun, coming in from the side, caught the eye and lit the orange iris like an LED. One more click of shortcut button and I got off a burst at 2x, or 1680mm equivalent. The top shot is one from that burst, the second shot is from the 1.5x burst.
Sometimes you just get blessed beyond any deserving.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 125.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
3/16/2011: Cooper’s Hawk, Wings on Wednesday
The San Diego Birding Festival has turned up some nice local birds over the years, around Mission Bay, in the marina or in the San Diego River channel just beyond. This year a pair of Cooper’s Hawks were building a nest in a tree right in the parking lot of the Marina Village Conference Center where the Festival is headquartered. As you might guess, this is a very photographed bird 🙂
The male was about 10 feet over and up in this same tree, busy breaking off branches and flying them back to the nest. I am not sure any of us were fast enough to catch him in the act, but it was interesting behavior. He would snap the branch off with his beak, drop it, and catch it on the wing to take it back. Very impressive! Momma had apparently come over to the harvest tree to supervise his choices, as she was not active in gathering (and therefore provided the easier target for digiscoping). Decent light, somewhat offset by an active bird and good stiff breeze moving the branches. And the bird was further away than it looked. In the top of one of those very tall Eucalyptus and several rows of cars over, so I was working at maximum zoom on the camera. The second shot is near maximum zoom on the scope as well. All in all I am happy with the results. Both images took some extra sharpening on the birds head.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) about 3000mm equivalent field of view, 1/250 @ ISO 160, f8.5 effective. 2) about 4500mm equivalent field of view, 1/200 @ ISO 200, f13 effective. Programmed auto.
Processed in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness.
In both shots, the bokeh of the moving leaves behind the bird, the pattern on the branches, the light itself, add interest and impact to the shots.