Two days ago while I was puttering around in my kitchen in the late afternoon, with my peripheral vision I saw the flash of large dark wings fly past and very close to my dining room window. I rushed to that window and saw that it was a large, probably female, Cooper’s Hawk that had landed on the jungle of grape vines covering the fence that I share with my good friend and neighbor Shane Smith.
My photo gear was on my tripod right next to my patio door so I removed it from the tripod (which was set too low for use in this situation), rested it on my kitchen counter and slowly opened the door – hoping against hope that the hawk was still there.
She wasn’t.
But she’d only flown a few feet to the roof of a playhouse that Shane and his father built for his young son.
She’s a magnificent looking young hawk that I’d seen in and near my yard before. She’s a semi-regular visitor that comes to hunt the songbirds at my feeders. I’ve never seen her attack birds at my feeders but I have seen the evidence of at least one of her successful kills in my garden. Feathers everywhere.
After a short while she walked to the peak of the roof of the playhouse, presumably so she could check out the birds at Shane’s feeders, which were further away in front of her. Here she briefly looked back at me.
When she shows up, all the panicked songbirds (mostly House Sparrows, House Finches, Lesser Goldfinches and a few Black-capped Chickadees) make a mad dash to the grape vines on our shared fence, where they hide. Here she’s looking down and back at the grapevine where many of the little birds were hiding.
From her posture and the look on her face, she means business.
This is the window I saw her fly past, right to left. Initially she landed on the grapevine I’ve labeled with a black “A”. Then she flew to the playhouse roof, marked with a “B”.
Here’s where my camera was when she landed on the grapevine, then on the playhouse, both of which can be seen through the open door. I ended up photographing her by removing my gear from the tripod and resting it on the kitchen counter, while standing where I was standing when I took this photo.
I took many more photos of her, including shots of her preening, taking off and in flight, but due to a malfunctioning memory card the third photo above is the last one that transferred to my computer. After that the memory card malfunctioned and now, neither my computer nor my camera is able to read the card. My camera tells me that I need to reformat the card in order for it to work again. But of course, doing that would erase my photos so I haven’t yet had the heart to do it
I’m pretty sure I’m screwed and all those photos are unrecoverable. But if you have a magic bullet for recovering photos from a malfunctioning memory card, I’d sure like to hear about it.
Ron
Notes:
- In 15 years of photographing birds, this is the first problem I recall ever having with a memory card.
- To make things worse, I looked at all those photos on my camera screen before I attempted to download them to my computer, and the takeoff and flight shots in particular really piqued my interest. At this point I wish I’d never seen them. As they say, ignorance is bliss.
Thankfully I haven’t had this problem yet – but I have to comment on Cooper’s hawks and your shots. As is many of your readers, I am in love with Cooper’s hawks. Particularly the young ones. We live in a rural old aged community with a lot of open space, a wooded river and no kids, dogs on a leash and pigeons. We have lived in this area for 11 years and every winter a young Cooper’s takes residence hunting the pigeons or anything else that takes his/her fancy. I had a ball taking images of a Cooper’s, because she was young could care less about me in the window or sneaking an image from an open door. I love your shots and hope you solve your problem!
Do you take so many photos in a day that it just wouldn’t be practical to write the same data to both memory cards simultaneously?
Ron,
One day I accidentally deleted my son’s entire vacation from his camera & memory card. I then went online and downloaded a program to recover the deleted files. I don’t recall the exact software, but I’m pretty sure you can just google something like “file recovery from SD card” or something similar and find such software.
I had a memory card fail after only transferring a couple of pictures (out of over a hundred) to my computer. I tried doing everything it sounds like you’ve already tried. Ended up taking it to our local computer repair place and they used some sort of data recovery software and rescued all my photos. Cost me $25, but to me it was worth it. I replaced both the memory card and the card reader I use to attach the card to my computer. Haven’t had any problems since.
Karen, it may be a good idea for me to replace my card reader too.
I would if I were you. I didn’t explain my whole convoluted story, but after I bought a new card, I ran into the whole “can’t transfer any photos” snafu again. At that point, I was afraid something was wrong with my camera, but decided to try replacing the cheapest component of the process: my card reader. Haven’t had a single problem since then. Best of luck to you!!!
Well crap on a cracker about your memory card! I hope you can recover all the images!🤞
Yay for that beautiful Cooper’s Hawk! You’re such an excellent photographer that the birds are coming to you!
“You’re such an excellent photographer that the birds are coming to you”
Marty, based on how often it happens I must be a pretty crappy photographer… 🙂
Hiss and spit. And rather a lot of other less printable expletives. When my memory card went bad (on my trip to Antarctica) it could not be recovered. I really, really hope that shoreacres tip works for you.
And from the photos that you could be downloaded of this glorious bird I will on your behalf say some more things. I don’t know whether sadness or anger would dominate.
Dang, it happened to you in Antarctica! Always at the worst time, isn’t it EC.
Fortunately I could buy another on board the ship but many, many photos were gone. Including penguins porpoising through the waves.
Beautiful bird! Sorry you are having a rash of issues, first soft focus now memory card failure. Hopefully you can find a source to recover the photos. Just curious will you use the card again if it formats?
No, I won’t. Even if it works. Not worth the risk. I just bought a new one.
I did not either, the one that failed for me was new, first use. I sent it back and got a replacement.
I’ve had the card that failed for two years. I bought it when I bought the R5.
I had something similar to your flashcard malfunction. Because I could see the photos in camera on the flashcard but download them to my computer, I found (in the old camera box) the cord that connected my camera to my computer and downloaded them that way. I think I remember seeing you have the Canon R5, which has wifi capabilities–possibly you can transfer to your computer through you wifi connection?
That wouldn’t work for me, Julie. My camera can’t even read the card.
That is indeed a magnificent young hawk! I hope you are able to recover the other photos off that card. Technology is great, but always a pain when it fails.
A pain indeed, Bill. I’ve been dealing with the aftermath for the entire morning and I’m not done yet.
We have a female Cooper’s visit our feeding station. She has learned to make a pass by the feeders to simply scatter the birds. In their panic one or two invariably fly into our large window overlooking the backyard. The momentarily stunned bird (usually an American Goldfinch) drops to the ground below the window and the hawk returns to pick it up and fly off. It’s the only time we get window strikes and I’ve never seen this hawk hunt in any other fashion here. It’s interesting that it has learned this trick and I have heard similar stories from others.
I hope you can recover your photos. I had a card fail like this once but luckily, I had downloaded the photos the day before and was simply reinserting the chip into the camera. Reformatting worked but I didn’t trust using that card again.
c
Dan, from the stories I hear, in those encounters between Cooper’s Hawks and songbird prey it’s sometimes the hawk that suffers the window strike.
I don’t trust using that card again either so I just purchased a new one. They’re never cheap.
Beautiful hawk! Very intense stare…… 🙂
Sure hope you can recover the photos from the card. I’ve had them “start” to go bad before but never anything like that! 🙁
Thanks, Judy. I hope it never happens again.
Excellent photos Ron. I always like to see them come as long as they don’t catch anything in the yard, but of course they have to eat as well as all nature’s creatures, so I have had to endure watching them catch and devour a slow to take off Mourning Dove.
Good luck on the memory card. I have never had a malfunction with one.
Thanks, Everett. This was a first time for me.
Your Cooper is regal Ron! Your backyard has sure provided some bird fun recently. Your readers are spot-on with recommendations for the memory card recovery. Art’s point about memory card life is also true – they do run out of ‘write’ capacity with high use. Most people never experience an expired memory card- but you use all of your technology to it’s fullest capacity. Good luck with the recovery.
Kathleen, I just got home from Pictureline where I purchased a new CF Express card. And as I type this, a software program is retrieving the photos that I lost from the defective card. I hope…
Well this morning just got better. A Coops! My favorite. My best days in falconry were with the Coops.
Your description of just noticing a flash flyby is a Coops trademark. Most people never realize what that flash might have been and go on with the day. But not the savvy birder.
She is a beauty. The young ones are always entertaining. As you know, Coops are typically very flighty, but the young ones are more apt to stick around for a photo op.
I know that look, and it is just exactly as you describe it.
As for that memory card. I have had hard drives take a dump, and have went to a company that specializes in data recovery from damaged devices. The one I went to was able to recover everything. There must be one in your area. A Google search should find you one. Good luck with that. Hope to see some of those shots.
“the young ones are more apt to stick around for a photo op.”
Michael, this young bird usually won’t tolerate my presence in the yard. But this time she apparently couldn’t see me clearly through the open door inside the relative darkness of my house, so she stuck.
I hope we all get to see those shots.
As Michael indicates there are companies that do data recovery from memory cards and hard drives. Many of them are online and you send them the hardware if you do not find one close. I do not have one to recommend. One word of warning: the memory card chips that store your data do have a finite life. Kind of hard to believe but they do wear out with high use. It is worth researching. Some people put a use life of shelf life date on their cards and change them out. Worth considering and also reinforces taking your images off the card to your computer and backing them up from there as I believe you do.
Art, I definitely plan on ‘retiring’ this particular card. As far as I’m concerned, it’s already retired, whether or not reformatting makes it work again.
I surely hope that Shoreacre’s solution works for you ! The photos
that you displayed in this post portray a truly MAGNIFICENT
hawk, clearly in her prime, and the little birds know it….for the last 2
years, I had a Cooper’s that hung out on my back fence, and
there were “feather piles” on my lawn almost daily–she/he was a
deadly hunter, but seems finally to have moved on…….
Kris, I heartily agree about her “magnificence”. She looked at least as impressive through my viewfinder.
Once upon a time, I accidentally erased a memory card. Someone recommended I try Recuva: a file recovery program. I downloaded the pro version for what I remember being $19.99, and gave it a spin. I got back every photo. I remember it being designed for Windows systems, and you might be using a Mac. Still, it might be worth exploring, since it’s said to also deal with corrupted hard drives. If you’re using a Mac system and have a friend with Windows, perhaps you could get things back that way.
I bought an older version several years ago, and it still works quite well on the few occasions I’ve needed it.
Thanks for the tip, Shoreacres. I’ll look into it. I use Windows.