Sunday, December 6, 2009

Week 32, Day 227, December 6, 2009, One Hawk, Two Hawk


As I was driving to a friend's house I noticed a red tailed hawk in a tree.  I stopped to take a photo, and the hawk immediately flew to another tree with another red tailed hawk.  Very seldom do I see two red tailed hawks in the same tree.

When I was young there were very few hawks in this area.  I guess the DDT killed off many of them.  We did have a couple of red tailed hawks in our woods behind our house.  Because they were rare at that time, some people from Syracuse University came by to study them.  Even though there are many more red tailed hawks now, I still feel awe in watching them.

Lessons Learned:
  • I only had a few moments of photography with these two.  I wish I had my polarizer filter on my camera, but I didn't.  I figured it would be better to get a few photos before the left, then no photos at all. 
Photo details: Exposure time 1/500 sec, Aperture f/7.1, ISO 100, Focal Length 200 mm, Lens Canon 70-200mm f2.8L USM, tripod.

3 comments:

Andrew said...

Why the tripod if you were working at 1/500th? Did you have your polarizer with you?

Nice shot though. If you have enough megapixels, you could probably do a crop pretty easily. I like the lighting.

Gary's third pottery blog said...

they are very solitary, not often seen together don't you agree?

Gallow said...

Andrew,

I did have my polarizer with me, but it wasn't on the camera. The hawks were not around very long.

I used a tripod, because when I set up I didn't know what my settings were going to be. Also it's a heavy lens, and very difficult to hold still when it's set to 200mm. Even at 1/500th of a second it can be difficult.