{"id":76764,"date":"2019-10-07T05:16:17","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T11:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=76764"},"modified":"2019-10-07T05:49:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T11:49:40","slug":"coopers-hawk-takeoff-and-flight-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/07\/coopers-hawk-takeoff-and-flight-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper’s Hawk Takeoff and Flight Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

For me flight shots of Cooper’s Hawks are literally unheard of but yesterday morning I got four of them, plus photos of it taking off. They’re not perfect but I’m happy to have them.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And it wasn’t the same Cooper’s Hawk I photographed last week. I found this juvenile in extreme northern Utah and over 100 miles from the location of the previous hawk. Unlike the earlier very calm juvenile this one was high-strung and jumpy as hell which is more typical of the species.\u00a0I can see the spookiness in its eyes.<\/p>\n

“He” wasn’t very close but I kept my lens trained on him anyway to see if I might get a takeoff or flight shot. I got a bunch.<\/p>\n

I’d estimate that Cooper’s Hawks are at least twice as fast as much larger Red-tailed Hawks during takeoff and in flight so in the past I’ve never had any luck with those kinds of shots of this species, none at all. Which is why I’m so pleased with these, despite the close, cluttered and not very attractive background.<\/p>\n

Ok, let’s get on with it. All seven of the photos included in this post are sequential with no skips.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Leaning into the takeoff. It was this “lean” that prompted me to begin firing my burst quickly enough to catch the launch. Without it I’m sure I’d have been too late.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Wings up and…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

we have lift-off.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I was just lucky that most of my photos caught the bird with its wings up or…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

down rather than in the less desirable horizontal position.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In this last shot I nearly clipped a wing at the top of the frame so my composition isn’t ideal. I actually got two additional shots with the bird completely in frame but the hawk isn’t sharp enough in either one to include them here.<\/p>\n

Yes, I absolutely do wish I had been a little closer to the hawk and that the background had been more attractive and further away from the bird. But these are my first decent shots of a Cooper’s Hawk in flight so getting them was a bit of a milestone for me.<\/p>\n

Still a work in progress but at least it’s progress.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

For me flight shots of Cooper’s Hawks are literally unheard of but yesterday morning I got four of them, plus photos of it taking off.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,380],"tags":[2323,95,146,190,605,311],"class_list":["post-76764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-coopers-hawk-diurnal-raptors","tag-accipiter-cooperii","tag-coopers-hawk","tag-flight","tag-juvenile","tag-take-off","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-7695-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-jY8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}