More Arizona birds

[milktree]

This is the best red tailed hawk photo I've ever taken:

For non bird photographers:

Photographing birds in flight is hard. They move quickly and unpredictably, which makes keeping them in frame hard. Plus, keeping them in focus is hard because the distance keeps changing, and it's really easy for autofocus to decide the sky or trees are more important. So, getting those two right feels like a real accomplishment. Add to that the difficulty of getting the exposure right when the bottom of the bird is in shadow and the background is (typically) the sky, which is bright. Finally, a lot of flight pictures don't look like action pictures, they look... static, even though there's clearly flight going on. This looks dynamic.

click through for large images:




Some others:

Hepatic Tanager (Female. Males are red)



Pyrrhuloxia (Male, not a weird colored cardinal)

Comments

[milktree]

Thanks! I'd like to say it was pure skill, but that's not true. :)