Just a single image of a male Northern Harrier in flight but this shot means a lot to me.
Canon 7D, 1/6400, f/5.6, ISO 640, EV – 0.o, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc
I have many nice harrier images taken during winter around the marshes of the Great Salt Lake but for me this species has been a nemesis bird during spring and summer. Most of our harriers migrate north in early spring and those that stick around become very difficult to approach. For three summers now I’ve been trying mightily to get a decent flight shot of a harrier to no avail. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done some crazy driving (I’m usually shooting from my truck) trying to intersect the flight path of one of these birds only to have it veer off before it got close. As Mia often says – these birds like to “yank my chains”.
Then, about three weeks ago, this male apparently forgot to “yank” and flew relatively close to me. I rattled off a burst and got this one image that I like. My techs for the image weren’t ideal but it still worked out and I’m delighted. I guess it doesn’t take much to satisfy this bird photographer sometimes…
This post will be a bit of an experiment. I’ll be out of town for a couple of days so I’m preparing the post now and will test the delayed posting feature of WordPress. Hope it works.
Ron