Taken a couple weeks ago on a country road. This hawk was sitting on a telephone pole. Stopped and jumped out. Handheld. I was surprised the the bird made a semicircle around my vehicle before taking off.
Red-tailed Hawks usually make beeline straight away from you as soon as you put on the brakes. I have a wings down image but I still like this one a little better even though the left wing position isn't ideal.
It kind of made me wonder how many BIF images of Red-tailed Hawks I had. Searched Lightroom, not many. It did kind of make me chuckle, I had a few so-so ones from 2011. I was using a manual focus 400mm/f3.5
Nikkor. I would "punish" my youngest teenage son (and there was never a dearth of reasons) by making him drive me around country roads while I rode shotgun and took images from the passenger side.
Nikon D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII
f8, 1/4000s, iso500