There have been multiple Cooper’s Hawks around the neighborhood for the past couple of weeks and I have been trying to photograph them each time I hear them. It was only two days ago when I finally was able to catch a decent photograph of one of them. The specimen in the tree was magnificent and he was very patient with me as I worked my way around the tree to photograph him. He eventually flew away when some Cedar Waxwings flew off and he tried to nab one of them.
A Cooper’s Hawk captures a bird with its feet and kills it by repeated squeezing. Falcons tend to kill their prey by biting it, but Cooper’s Hawks hold their catch away from the body until it dies. They’ve even been known to drown their prey, holding a bird underwater until it stopped moving. Dashing through vegetation to catch birds is a dangerous lifestyle. In a study of more than 300 Cooper’s Hawk skeletons, 23 percent showed old, healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula, or wishbone.
This image was taken with my Canon EOS 7D Mark II using my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 II Lens set on 400 mm. The camera was set on Manual mode with the aperture set at f/8, shutter speed at 1/2000 and the ISO set on Auto (ISO 500). This is a single image processed in Lightroom.
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© 2016 T. Kahler Photography
Beautiful bird. Only thing throwing me off is that little tuft of feathers on the right side of his head. With the angle looks like he has some sort of ratty mustache going on. Have to tell your model to comb his “hair” before posing. :P
He liked the wind blown look so I just went with it…
The Fabio of birds.