Grounded Red Tail

[Richard Smith]

I came across this young Red-tail Hawk this summer in Colorado. He was sitting on the ground and allowed me to approach within about 10 feet before deciding to leave. In Oklahoma, where I live, Red-tails are never on the ground and will not allow a close approach so, because his behavior was so "unred-tail" and because he was young enough that there was not yet a red tail, IO thought it was some other Colorado species. He was also quite a bit larger than most of the Red-tails I see.

Tell me what you think of this guy. Canon 7DII. Tamron 70-300 @300mm. 1/1600 @ f8. ISO 640

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the head angle and the pose, wish the light was softer.

The image looks very soft and lacking in details to me, it looks as if it was out of focus and it's also very tight on the bottom. you could zoom back or switch to portrait orientation to come up with a better composition.

TFS