So I finally made my way sheepishly back to the place where my camera died. Theres a resident family of Redtailed Hawks in the river valley not far form my home so I brought a friend along with his camera to have a little shooting fun.

At first we had to search for them because of the cloud cover but the day got progressively better. Here's where we first spotted them. Apparantly according to residents.. the pair nest on top of the building in the background.



We then watched in astonishment as this one took one of the birs (I think they were pigeons) out in midair only seconds after this shot.



Having never seen that happen before I was caught completely off guard and missed the shot of the take down.

They then circled closer and closer to us as the weather improved allowing us some excellent oppertunities which we did our best to capitilize on.











Then things got quiet after we assume they had each made a catch. They made some dives out of our viewing area behind a few trees and then flew back above the buildings and never came out to play again.

When shooting earlier I had noticed something fall from the talons of one of them on it's ascent to the buildings. So being good photographers we found what it was that they had dropped.



It appears to be the face/head of a large mouse or maybe a small rat.

Then as we got back to the car we found this guy posing for us.



All in all it was a great day. I learned a lot more about shooting at max zoom and how to reduce noise both in the field as well as in photoshop afterwards.

We also got a few shots of a Great Blue Heron as it flew around us.. but none of them are worth posting. He was too far off and way too blurry / out of focus. But now that we know he's there....muahahahaha.


:cornut:

Jay