{"id":163241,"date":"2024-08-19T05:47:53","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T11:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=163241"},"modified":"2024-08-19T08:29:08","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T14:29:08","slug":"a-surprise-coopers-hawk-and-a-memory-card-calamity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/19\/a-surprise-coopers-hawk-and-a-memory-card-calamity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Surprise Cooper’s Hawk And A Memory Card Calamity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She wasn’t.<\/p>\n

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But she’d only flown a few feet to the roof of a playhouse that Shane and his father built for his young son.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

From her posture and the look on her face, she means business.<\/p>\n

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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”.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n