I have been trying to photograph the Northern Harrier for a couple of years now. While I have had many excellent opportunities, somehow I managed to blow it one way or another. Today is my lucky day. After a fruitless search for anything at all to shoot in the most gorgeous light, I was about to give up when this Northern Harrier silently glided past my peripheral vision and landed on the ground next to an American Coot that it had killed. I maneuvered the car into a respective shooting distance and took gazillion of pictures. The bird was unfazed and kept shredding the Coot into pieces. So I carefully slid into the back of my SUV, opened a rear door, and slipped out. The bird ignored me. So I scooted my butt inching forward bit by bit, and managed to cover half the distance between the car and the bird. I supposed I could have gone closer to get a full frame image, but I didn't want to scare the bird away from its dinner. Image is about 50% crop of FF.
1DX2
500f4 II + 2X III @ 1000mm
1/3200
f8.0
ISO-1600
HH while sitting on the ground.
Thanks to David Salem for showing one of his stomping ground in SoCal.
Hope you like it.
Thank you.
Loi