Several years ago, when I was following my friend Edward Crim’s Forest Park 365 project (which I highly recommend to you), through his images and words I became more aware of just how much wildlife there is that calls Forest Park home. At the end of last year, on a lunch time walk, I came across this little guy sitting in a tree. I call him a “little guy” because in the third picture he certainly appears, to this untrained eye, to be a juvenile, which may be one explanation for his odd behavior of just sitting in a tree branch for a long while and not flying away immediately upon my approach. He did fly away a couple of times and once I chased him down, before he flew away too far. Alas, I only had a little 50mm lens with me, so these images involved a fair amount of cropping. Not that I actually have a fantastic wildlife lens mind you 🙂 At any rate, some of these turned out fairly decently.
Ah, I might have added a touch too much vignetting to the first two of these, but it does make them more dramatic.
Very nice photos.
Thank you, Rory. And thanks for stopping by.
Amazing captures!
Thank you, daphot75. I had a brief look at your blog and your photos are very nice.
Fantastic! I have been hoping to get that close to photograph hawks for a long time. You have set the bar very high and I am definitely inspired. Thank you so much for sharing these.
Thank you, Jeremy. As I mentioned, it was really rather a serendipitous meeting.
I would say that “fairly decent” is an understatement. The first shot is especially amazing! Would you mind explaining to me what vignetting is?
Love it!
Beautiful bird and beautiful photos!
Thank you, Mrs. Yates. Thanks for stopping in. I hope all is well in your neck of the woods, your lovely neck of the woods.
WoW! I am super impressed with that first shot, no matter that you cropped it – it looks GREAT!
“Fairly decently”!! These are incredible shots. Absolutely gorgeous. What a tremendous bird, and how nice that he kindly stuck around for you a bit. I am enamored of hawks and envy you your close encounter!
Superb shots.!! The first two pics have great views. You really managed to get the right angles at right time.!!