Juvenile Cooper's hawk mantling

[arash_hazeghi]

​This photo shows a newly fledged juvenile cooper's hawk, the white fuzz on the head and the back of his wing shows this is a very young bird. His breakfast was a whole dove delivered by dad early in the morning. His protecting the kill by spreading his wings around it and making really loud calls to warn dos siblings not to interfere. You can see the dove's feet and its tail feathers still intact. I was lucky enough to see this scene in SoCal a few days ago.



image made with 1DX 2, 400 DO II + 1.4X III. ISO 2500. F/5.6 at 1/2500sec.hand held. I wish he was standing on dense grass but he chose to land on the patchy area. Processed with DPP 4.4

hope you like it

[William Dickson]

Beautiful looking frame Arash. The details on the bird are very nice. Great POV and I really like the facial expression.

TFS

Will

[dennis greenwood]

Nicely capture of the bird mantling the prey,as per Will ,top expression on the bird

[Ritesh Nangare]

Beautiful expression catch here love the pray hiding pose of bird.

TFS.....

[shane shacaluga]

Awesome frame! That young bird was not gonna miss his dinner

Good you got him off the high grass

Are they already breaking into the prey or are the parents still helping?

TFS

[Doug Brown]

Great pose and behavior captured Arash. The hint of prey adds a lot to the frame.

[Marina Scarr]

Great behavior captured here. Love seeing the down feathers depicting the age of this hawk, as well as a hint of its prey.

[Loi Nguyen]

wow, what not to like? beautiful behavior captured here, a scene most people have never seen. I really like the layering 3D effects of the feathers and the open beak call. Loi

[Tim Foltz]

Arash, nice behavioral shot, good detail and catch light too.

-Tim

[David Salem]

Nice to see this newly fledged juvie on a dove. Love the mantling pose and the wide open beak as it fends off it's prize from it's siblings. Nice details too. Glad that you got this on your quick trip down here.

[Arthur Morris]

Neat-o. How would the BKGR been if you had gotten down on the ground?

a

[arash_hazeghi]

Neat-o. How would the BKGR been if you had gotten down on the ground?

a

there was a fence behind the grass area, couldn't get much lower...

[arash_hazeghi]

thanks all

[Arthur Morris]

there was a fence behind the grass area, couldn't get much lower...

Thanks. I figgered that there was a reason that you did not get lower...

a

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks. I figgered that there was a reason that you did not get lower...

a

FG was quite busy too with lots of leaves and pieces of tree bark, wish he had chosen to land on the perfect clean grass nearby instead!