Hawk Poses | a 7 Image Story It’s all about a single hawk, a Red-tailed Hawk, that posed for me at several locations along my walkabout today through the forest. While walking along the trail, I spotted the hawk in a tree about twenty yards off the trail. It must be accustomed to people walking the trail. It did not move as I walked by and stopped to capture images with different poses from different angles. It was obviously hunting. Then suddenly, it would take off after its prey. After a miss, it would then land on the branch of another tree along the path. As I approached again, it would let me captive several poses before moving to another tree along the trail. It did not seem to care about me. Rather, its attention was focused sharply on hunting.
Red-tailed Hawks blend into the the background forest so well it’s hard to get a nice image. Even after several locations and several angles at each location, the backgrounds are still distracting. Perhaps, another walkabout through the woods after a snowfall will yield better images. Most Red-tailed Hawks around here stay all winter.
Photog Note: The Nikon 1 V3 is still my preferred carry camera for capturing daily walkabout images. It shoots much like a DSLR, but is much lighter to carry. Although a bit noisy at higher ISOs, the image quality is quite good, particularly for posting. The 2.7 crop factor helps improve images where the subject is very small like birds. Even very large birds, like the red-tailed hawk, get pretty small in the frame at even a short distance. A Nikon AFS 70-300mm lens on a Nikon 1 V3 with its 2.7 crop factor, becomes a 189-810mm lens. Of course, the image quality will not be nearly as good as with the expensive lens, but it’s still possible to capture very nice bird images. For more information on bird photography with a Nikon 1 V3, see Nikon 1 V3 for Birds | a 7 Image Story.
Each image will be posted individually this week with a bit more narrative under category Hawk Poses.
Click any image below for a slide show.
Thanks for the hawk story, Hank. Great talking with you yesterday.