![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/northern-harrier-4351-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-4351-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n1\/800, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nbegan to feed on the duck. It was a lot of work to get the frozen meat off of the carcass but during harsh winters every morsel counts.<\/p>\n
The harrier actually lifted off of the duck and flew back to it at least one more time. But this was in the early days of my bird photography and very soon after I’d purchased my first 500mm lens so my photography skills were primitive at best and I didn’t know my new lens very well. As a result I botched many opportunities for interesting and even unique photos as the hawk descended vertically and very slowly on the duck.<\/p>\n
I’d give my shutter finger for another crack at it. I believe the results would be very different today.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n- About my image techs: Very soon after I bought my first 500mm lens I read somewhere online that the “sweet spot” for sharpness with my lens was f\/8 so that was the aperture I used for nearly all of my photography. Obviously that was a stupid move. In this situation f\/8 gave me very slow shutter speeds, especially for birds. The only reason these photos are sharp (except for the first one which is a little soft) is that the harrier was descending on the duck slowly and not flapping its wings. The epitome of “dumb luck”…<\/em><\/li>\n
- I guess I’m getting slow in my old age. I didn’t even notice that the first three photos in the series need rotation to level until after I’d published the post. Oh well, too late now.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft have nothing on this hawk.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80553,"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":[6,334,2782,392,341],"tags":[86,4907,146,180,579,234,2518,4908],"class_list":["post-80549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-feeding-on-a-duck","tag-flight","tag-ice","tag-landing","tag-northern-harrier","tag-vertical-takeoff-and-landing","tag-vtol-aircraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/northern-harrier-4340-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kXb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80549","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=80549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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