Peregrine Falcon with American Golden-Plover

[Jack Backs]

I'll admit not not much of a BIF guy and I wasn't really prepared for this chance encounter. I had been scouting for migratory wading birds at the confluence of the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers. I found some American Golden-plovers foraging on a mud flat pretty close to a boat ramp. I sat down at the water line of the ramp and stated observing them to
see if they would forage towards me. I don't know about anyone else but I take my glasses off if I'm going to be looking through my viewfinder for a extended period as it's sharper
without them. Anyway, I was observing through the viewfinder when the birds suddenly bolted. I looked to the side to see if if a nearby fisherman had startled them. Nope, and when
I looked up there was a raptor with prey heading towards me a a pretty fast clip. I couldn't tell what it was without my glasses. I wasn't even sure of what my exact exposure settings
were at the time but I wheeled up the shutter speed a couple clicks as I figured I had some latitude. I was was on single point AF as I am for the majority of the time. I have the Pv
button set to group AF when depressed for this type of situation. I was so concentrated on just acquiring the bird in the viewfinder...I forgot to do do it. I acquired the bird fairly
quickly and got a few frames before I lost focus lock. I didn't have the focus limit set so even the single cycle it took to reacquire focus lock seemed like an eternity. I did manage to
capture a number of frames. Not exactly tack sharp. I wish I had bumped the shutter speed one more time. Some of the softness is from a pretty heavy crop. 30% of the original
image(70% crop?). I don't know If I'd have gotten any images if the bird had been any closer. The bird was all over the frame as it was, clipped the the wings a couple times. This is
actually a composite of two images. I have similar image with the front wing fully up and a little more in front of me but I like the bent wing position as it seems to impart a better
sense of motion. I did a search of Peregrine Falcon images and while most are of better quality than this image, images with prey in flight are apparently a lot less common. Sorry for
the long dissertation.
Nikon D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII hand held
f5.6, 1/2500s, iso800