Male Northern Harrier

[Jia Liu]

Canon 7D, 400DO + Tamron 1.4x, f/5.6, 1/800, ISO 1600, Half Moon Bay, CA. he had a vole in his claws and was landing...

[Doug Brown]

This is actually a male, and I'd be happy to chang the title for you if you'd like. I like the fanned tail feathers and the included habitat. The prey is a big plus. I wish for a bit more eye contact. And it looks like you've run NR on the bird at a cost of loss of fine detail.

[Jia Liu]

This is actually a male, and I'd be happy to chang the title for you if you'd like. I like the fanned tail feathers and the included habitat. The prey is a big plus. I wish for a bit more eye contact. And it looks like you've run NR on the bird at a cost of loss of fine detail.

Thanks, Doug! I always get Harrier's gender reversed :o please change the title for me. I ran the NR on BG, not on the bird, at ISO1600, I do see some fine details were lost.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the pose, soft light, eye contact and the prey adds to it. I'm wondering if it were even stronger if the green areas in the BG were not there.

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice shot Jia, so the harriers are still around despite dropping temperatures on the coast, will make a visit this weekend!
You did a good job as pointed out the main issue here is eye contact/HA and also loss of detail either due to focus or noise. 1/800 is also a bit slow for these guys, I would take the TC off stay at ISO 1600 to get 1/1600 sec at the end it will have a higher chance of producing a sharp image.

[Steve Large]

Hi Jia,
Personally I like this image a lot and think that you did well with the detail. If it were mine I would be quite pleased with the result. As you probably know, Harriers are always looking down and it can be very hard to get a good eye contact shot. We only seem to get the females here at our estuary and after a couple of years shooting there I only saw my first grey male harrier on this past Wednesday. The females come quite close and are common but the males tend to stay away. In short, this is not a shot that you get every day.

Take care,

Steve

[Kiran Poonacha]

loved the wing spread, nice details and environ shown..they prey sure adds interest.. congrats..

[Chris van Rooyen]

Lovely posture, nice visible eye, sharpness could be a bit better. Possibly a big crop?

[Jim Zipp]

I don't mind not having eye contact as long as I can see it's eye and it's not heading away... in fact I think I prefer seeing this awesome adult male going about his business and not being concerned with you instead. Wouldn't remove any background etc either. Wonderful as posted.