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.