Northern goshawk couple

[Christian Neumann]

I took this shot last weekend on a small cemetery just a five-minute walk away from my home in downtown Berlin. At the moment, the female is sitting on the eggs most of the time, while the male is hunting and delivering food to the female. Feeding occurs generally two times a day, early in the morning and about one hour before sunset. When the male arrives with prey (usually a domestic pigeon or a rat), it lands on its favourite perch and calls for the female. Generally, it flies away before the female arrives. This time, however, I was lucky to catch both goshawks on the perch. This is the Eurasian subspecies (gentilis) which differs slightly from the north American subspecies (atricapillus) The dark red iris color of the left bird (the male) indicates that this is a very old individual.

I decided for the 5D Mk II instead of the 7D because of its higher resolution (allowing stronger cropping) and because of its better ISO noise performance and accepted a smaller aperture and slower shutter speed. I used the EF 400 mm f/5.6 with a 2x extender which is a rather shaky setup. So I used cable release and mirror lock-up and focussed manually using live view mode at 10x magnification.

Comments and critics are welcome!

Canon EOS 5D Mk II with EF 400 mm f/5.6 L USM plus EF 2.0x Extender III
1/200 @ f.11, ISO 640
Cable release, mirror lockup, tripod, focussed manually

[Dave Leroy]

Boy that female looks so much bigger than the male. Nice to see both with eye contact and really like the composition. Light angle is not ideal but take what you can get and you are nicely lined up with the perch. Good job with the 400mm plus 2X.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

They sure are pretty. Light looks a little harsha but i like the poses

[gail bisson]

I really like how the male and female differences are shown here ie red eye vs yellow eye and size as well. A good teaching image,
Gail

[Ignacio Yufera]

I don't think I have ever seen a photo of a N. Goshawk pair other than at nest. In my experience they are even more elusive in Europe than in N. America.
Great to see the big size difference, and to see both their faces in focus. Congrats.