Holland, Michigan
Photos of the great events, people and landscapes of Holland, Michigan.
View this group at Flickr.
Life on Ice
After a long day of fishing, this man is pushing his family back to shore on a homemade sled.
Photo by Michael Nieboer
Photo by Michael Nieboer
Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)
In Case you were wondering why they are called Red-tailed hawks, well, now you know.
Nikon D300 w/500mm f/4
1/1600sec. f/4.0 ISO 400
Vertex Photographic Bean Bag on the side of my GMC photo blind.
Photo by Squirrel_bark
Photo by Squirrel_bark
Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)
Taking advantage of a rare sunny day, I went out to the local airport to see if I could spot any hawks. Our airport has a lot of open space (duh!) which is surrounded by trees. This makes good hunting grounds for hawks. It took less than 2 minutes to find a red tail sitting high up on a utility pole.
Pulling off the road, I sat and watched the hawk for about 10min. Just then a large garbage truck went by and the bird flew off. I thought I was out of luck as the bird headed to the far end of a very large field. Getting out of my truck, I focused my lens on the now distant bird. No shot, it’s way too far. But then, as luck would have it, the bird took off again and right in my direction!
I switched to Continuous Autofocus and activated all 51 points so I would have a chance to get the bird in flight. Tracking its flight, I waited until it was in range and fired off a short burst of shots. Even thought the bird was now backlit I was happy that I got this bird at eye level and in flight.
Returning home, I uploaded the morning’s images to my computer and got a rather pleasant surprise. When the bird flew off, I had assumed that the garbage truck had spooked it away, but instead the bird was actually hunting and just saw breakfast way out in the distance! Its return flight shows a mouse/vol? being carried in its talons! These things have some awesome hunting skills!!!
Nikon D300 w/500mm f/4
1/500sec. f/8 ISO 400
GMC Rolling Photo blind
Vertex Photographic bean bag on truck window.
Lessons learned,
1. Hawks have great eyes.
2. Be ready for anything, Looking at my shooting data, I realized that aside from changing auto focus modes, opening up to f/4 and increasing the shutter speed would have helped keep everything nice and sharp. Next time. :-)
Photo by Squirrel_bark
Photo by Squirrel_bark
