Waiting to ambush - Cooper's Hawk

[Daniel Cadieux]

While scouting for Crossbills I could not help but wonder where all the birds were as it was eerily quiet. Finding this guy hidden in the spruces near a feeder setup answered my question:cool: It posed for well over 30 minutes in the early morning light, moving nothing but its head from side to side. It flew away as I was changing my frozen batteries...a missed flight opportunity. At least the other birds soon came back! I'm fine with the shadows on its body here, came close to eliminating them but opted to leave them there.

Canon 40D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, eval metering, 1/500s., f/6.3, ISO 640, +0.3 EC, natural light, handheld, ~75% full-frame.

[Stephen Stephen]

Dan great morning light on this bird. It's surprising how much of the bird that you can see through the branches. I'm guessing that you got a few with better eye contact as well?

By the way, I was there yesterday morning but only saw one male WW crossbill high in a tree however a red tail hawk sat perched near the feeder for over an hour before flying off.

[Doug Brown]

Good eye Daniel. I might go with a slightly tighter crop, taking some off the top and bottom.

[Bob Blanchard]

Agree with you on the shadows. They work well on this environmental comp. Great light and head angle. Agree with tighter crop suggestion. Might be a good candidate for a near square crop?

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys! I normally would go a bit tighter...but if you look closely you can see the tail through the branches near bottom. I did not want to push it too close to the edge or clip it ;-)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great light, details and camouflage. I had a similar experience the other day, in my case it was a Northern Shrike.

[Tony Whitehead]

Very nice, Dan. That's a really intense gaze. Warm colours are great and the snow adds a dimension. I would probably burn in the corners of the image a little.