Juvenile Cooper's Hawk

[James Salywoda]

Juvenile Cooper's Hawk

Very typical habitat for bird's of prey as they like perching in these dead trees.
This was taken in early light last weekend as I liked the alert resting pose as this hawk
was aware of my every move. I evicted a few branches from around the head.:D

Nikon D300s AFS 600 F4 1.4 TC
1/1000 F8 ISO 800

Thanks For Looking

Jim

[Stu Bowie]

James, you are so fortunate to be able to capture these raptors. In ALL my files, I have less than a handful of images of raptors. I like the alert pose, sharp, ( including those talons ) and good space to look into. Where the BG is open, its nice and smooth.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

James, very good sharpness and liked the DOF play.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

beautiful,sweet bg and very nice pose!

[Danny J Brown]

James - This must be one of the Coops from the tree where you got the amazing male harrier shot. Nice one, but I'm still not over your shot of that ghost.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Nice one James! Very sharp focus.

[Hal Everett]

Beautiful image of the bird. I would crop a little off the left and prune the branches back from the hawk

[christopher galeski]

very nice pose,like the BG,the birds nice and sharp,and I like the branches.thanks.

[Phil Seu]

beautiful sharp image in nice light. i would consider a vertical crop

[Steve Zamek]

Very nice composition on this one, James. It's rare to be able to include a tangle of branches and still maintain eye focus on the bird. In this shot, the tree complements the bird instead of obfuscating it. The soft multi-hued background is lovely. I wish the branches in the upper right were with the DOF, but that's a small nitpick.

[Art Kornienko]

Second vote for the vertical crop. Super lighting and bg.