Bathing Coopers Hawk

[Stephen Stephen]

I spent about 45-50 minutes with this bird on Saturday morning. It was very exciting.

He/she spent the last half of that time drinking and gently bathing (3 separate times) in the ice cold creek. We were in a ravine and I had climbed down a steep slope in hip deep snow which covered brush and dead branches. The lighting was difficult half bright sun and half shade.

After its bath it flew towards me and landed in a tree about 20 feet from me but I couldn't create a clean image through the branches.

This image probably could do with some selective sharpening but I'm glad I had the opportunity to witness this behaviour.

For the HAP I did get some eye contact images but not while it was bathing.

Rebel XT and Sigma 50-500mm @ 500 on Manfroto monopod. ISO 400, 1/500, F8

Cropped to about 50% of full frame. OOF branch in foreground cropped out.

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s219/Squidcan/Birds/Coopers08_05.jpg

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

What a wonderful experience that must have been Stephen. Well framed image with excellent exposure and the focus is on the eye which is sharp and that is the critical spot . I love this image and I think you did extremely well under difficult circumstances. Thanks for sharing !

[john crookes]

focus is dead on which is nice exposure may be able to darken the tops of snow piles as they are blown here but it is one of those if this than that areas might be able to reduce a little of the blue cast in shadows which is typical for snow scenes

good observation and well worth the effort of photographing this elusive for me hawk

[Jody Melanson]

Don't you love it when opportunities like that happen? Nice behavioral photograph.

[Daniel Cadieux]

You sounded pretty happy when you explained this sighting to me the other day and I can see why. The only thing that could have been better would be the absence of the stump above the hawk but you can't pick and choose when situations like these arise. Congrats!! :-)