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Shooting this northern hawk cuckoo demanded all my fieldcraft skills and much patience. The northern hawk is not the commonest of cuckoos and like all cuckoos is extremely shy.
Device: Nikon D300
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal length: 600mm
VR: ON
Aperture: F/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200s
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: 0EV
Metering: Center-Weighted
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 400
Craig:
A good balance here between backlighting and some detail on the camera side too. Very good pose, like the tucked tail and exposed wing tips, head angle.
I might be tempted to crop in a bit from the right and up from the bottom, and lightly tone down some of th brightest spots in the background.
Congrats on capturing this secretive bird.
Cheers
Randy
Congrats on your approach of this guy - new one for me and with an awesome name to boot!. Sounds like a difficult one to get good images of. I like the bird's pose with primaries extending pretty far out. Good sense of habitat, and I like the fresh-looking greenery. I agree with Randy's suggestions, particualry the bright highlights in the BG (and especially the one below the wing tips, and the one directly above the head). I also find that the tree creeping in at left doesn't add much here...add rather see more of it, or none at all (preferably).
Thank you, Randy and Daniel. The bright spots in BG will be an easy problem to solve. I should've been aware of them while processing. The tree I was aware of. If I pull back and show more of the tree, then my cuckoo grows smaller, and I wasn't wanting that. The best alternative may be to clone out the tree. Thanks also for appreciating the rarity and secretiveness of the species. When I saw that bird and realized what it was, I quickly went into full concentration mode. Thanks again.
You did exceptionally well in difficult circumstances and I love the pose and the clean angle to the bird that you found. I am gonna play with the COMP. Be right back.
It seemed to hold up fairly well to the crop :)
