Stopping by for breakfast…
A very brief posting this morning as my guest seen above made sure that there were not a lot of the usual targets in the neighborhood. The raptor seen in today’s shot is a Cooper’s hawk. This hawk is in a group of raptors called “accipiters”. The members of this family are distinguished by their short broad wings and long legs and tail. All these characteristics make the accipiters excellent fliers capable of maneuvering through dense woods at high speeds. Their primary food source is smaller birds, and therefore they are not uncommonly found around local bird feeders. Hey, they gotta eat too! When I looked out my window this morning to see what was feeding at my stations, they were all vacant. Then I noticed a large bird rustling though the yews I have planted at the back of our deck. I don’t think he was successful in today’s hunt for when he flew to the perch where I photographed him, his talons were empty. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
Tech Tip - With the bird being up on a limb with intervening branches and twigs between him and me, I found may newly acquired practice of “back-button focusing” to come in very handy. Most of us started out by acquiring focus of the target by pressing the shutter release half-way down and then pushing all the way down to trip the shutter. Only recently have I adopted the back-button focusing method and am quickly finding I am getting more “keepers” in my shots. If you’d like to learn more about this technique, check out the YouTube video by one of my favorite “gurus”, Steve Perry by clicking the button below.
