{"id":168366,"date":"2025-05-21T06:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T12:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=168366"},"modified":"2025-05-21T07:07:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T13:07:59","slug":"coopers-hawk-with-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/21\/coopers-hawk-with-prey\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper’s Hawk With Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last evening, while puttering in front of my kitchen sink, I noticed a flurry of activity (pandemonium, actually) in my garden through my kitchen window. A Cooper’s Hawk had ambushed one of the small birds at or near my feeder and landed with it on my back fence.<\/p>\n

The only camera gear I had quickly available was my “baby lens” (Canon 100-400) and an outdated camera (Canon 7D), so I grabbed them off my kitchen table and hoped beyond hope that when I opened my patio door (very, very slowly) it wouldn’t spook the hawk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Miraculously, it didn’t.<\/p>\n

The hawk had captured what I believe to be a House Sparrow? and was beginning to pluck its feathers. Here we see one of the sparrow feathers falling in front of the hawk. My neighbor’s house in the far background doesn’t make a very good backdrop but at least their lilac bush softens some of the blow.<\/p>\n

I must say, that’s a pretty dramatic dying ‘pose’ on the part of the sparrow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The hawk turned sideways and plucked some more feathers before flying off with the sparrow. I screwed up the takeoff shots so you won’t be seeing any of those.<\/p>\n

I had a lot working against me for these shots and it shows. I was using an outdated camera, a smaller lens than I really needed and I didn’t have time to get my camera settings ‘right’ so most of my photos were underexposed in camera.<\/p>\n

But it was an exciting event and I got some documentary shots, so I’ll take it. And there was a bonus. The hawk’s victim wasn’t the beautiful male Lazuli Bunting I’d seen in my garden only moments before. Now that<\/em> would have hurt.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good thing I had my camera sitting on my kitchen table. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

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