Kestrel Hawk BIF with the Tak 300

Colorado CJ

Well, after photographing a raptor for the first time yesturday, I'm starting to get the itch for birding photography. Today I went to a lake about a mile from my house to see if I could get more bird photos. I was expecting to get just some geese or something, but was very pleasantly surprised to get another Raptor!

I took a couple of photos of a small bird that was flying very fast in the high winds out over the lake. When I went to look at the preview screen, I was amazed at what I saw! I captured a few images of a small Kestrel Hawk! I never knew I had one living so close to home. I'll definitely be out at the lake often to see if I can get some photos of the Kestrel at his/her perch or while hunting.

I can tell this birding part of photography can get addicting very quickly

Here are the images. These were shot with my Tele-Takumar 300mm F6.3 Preset lens wide open. The images were a little washed out as I was shooting almost directly into the sun. I post processed the images as best I could to get the Kestrels details out, but couldn't do anything with the color of the sky. It was hard enough focusing on this little 8" bird while he was zooming past


Kestrel Hawk 1 by Colorado CJ, on Flickr


Kestrel Hawk 2 by Colorado CJ, on Flickr


Kestrel Hawk 3 by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

deb22

That's pretty good, those are very fast birds. Now that you know they are there you can go out and get some more, when they hover you will be able to get even better shots or even better when they are sitting still which if you are careful you can get fairly close. Yes bird photography is very addicting and lots of fun. Keep posting as you get better shots so we can see how its going with you.