Cooper's Hawk

I took this last April. I was relaxing on my deck one evening having a beer...I mean drinking a cup of coffee when I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and a sudden squawk.
This Cooper's Hawk had nailed an American Robin in my yard. It flew off and landed on my neighbor's butt ugly plastic fence post. I went inside and grabbed my D500/500mmF4VRII/TC-14EIII combo.
I didn't bother getting my tripod out of my vehicle so this was taken hand held. I've often questioned the value of VR on this lens but in this case it was probably helped some. It was late in the day
and the bird was in the shade but field behind the bird was still in the sun. I managed to get pretty close to the bird for this portrait as I wasn't interested in including the post. I don't particularly like
using iso1000 but I wanted at least 1/1000s shutter speed for hand holding.

D500/500mmF4VRII/TC-14EIII

F6.3, 1/1000s, iso1000

Pretty sharp and pretty darned good with lots of detail. From where I sit, the bird could go lighter still. LMK If you need any help with that.

with love, artie

Pretty sweet. I really like the pose the feathers in the mouth and the bit of blood on the beak. I agree with Artie that it could go a bit brighter. Great detail throughout. TFS

Details look very good. Love those feathers. Excellent background. Love birds in shade with the background in sun.

Thanks for the input. I looked at the posted image on my work computer and agree the bird looks too dark. It looked OK on my editing computer so I
turned down the brightness quite a bit. It's normally pretty dark in the man cave when editing. Hopefully this looks a little better.

Better and well done.

with love, artie