Red-Tailed Hawk - Nest Watch-2

PrescottPhotog

Hi Everyone, I went out to the nest today and still no youngins. I think it is getting very close because the female was rearranging the eggs all day long. She usually just sits on them in one position but today she kept moving them around and she must have changed positions on top of them 50 times. It seemed to me like she was trying to give them the proverbial "slap on the butt". The male, which is considerably darker in color (except his tail) came by a couple times but she stayed on the nest all day (which is also odd).

From everything I have read the incubation takes 28-32 days. The first time I took a picture of her sitting on the nest was 3/29 and according to the guy I talked with she had already been sitting on the nest for a while.. sooooo, pretty soon I hope, because the branches and leaves are starting to cast a lot of shadows on the nest as they bloom and grow.

As a note, I have never captured a good picture with my 2x extension, all shots were always OOF whether I used AF or MF. Now I discovered using Live View on the Mark III. As you can see from the first picture, this is as close as I can get to the nest.. a LONG ways off. Five feet in front of this shot is an electrical utility easement with no cover of any kind, everything cut down.

The last couple days I have been using the 500 + 2x extender (1300mm), manual focus, tripod and remote release plus Live View. The amazing thing is you can enable Live View and then using the LCD screen to zoom in 5X or 10X to focus. As you can see from the distance you can't even see the hawks in the nest with your eye (or at least my eyes:rofl ), just a spec of brown head. My eyes aren't good enough to manual focus from that distance through the viewfinder but by using live view and zooming in to 10X it is amazing the detail and focus I can achieve. The head shots are full crops of what I see in the LCD. The ability to focus down to seeing the fine feathers from this distance is amazing (Thank you Canon from my old straining eyes).

Here are a couple updates, hope you like them..

#1 View of the nest from where I set up..

#2 (100% crop)

#3 (100%l crop)

#4

#5

#6

#7 Dad checking in to see what is going on..

#8

PrescottPhotog

This is what the tree looked like less than one month ago.. 3/29 when I took the first picture of her sitting on the nest.. and she is still at it.

#1

dbaker1221

that nest is a great find!!!

saurora

You're getting some great shots from that distance! Just hope the leaves don't grow faster than the chicks hatch. Beautiful pair of Red Tails!

canucklehead_7

Great shots!! Can't wait to see the youngsters. ....cheers...Don

Harryb

Fascinating set, the captures are holding up well with the cropping.

PrescottPhotog

dbaker1221 wrote:

that nest is a great find!!!

Hi Dave.. As you can see from last months shot the nest was very visible.. but now you couldn't find it if you tried (maybe that was their plan huh.. )

PrescottPhotog

saurora wrote:

You're getting some great shots from that distance! Just hope the leaves don't grow faster than the chicks hatch. Beautiful pair of Red Tails!

Thanks for the compliments.
I'm hoping the branches don't cover it too.. These is one branch that is only about 1/2 inch in diameter that is almost blocking the whole nest, or will be.

PrescottPhotog

canucklehead_7 wrote:

Great shots!! Can't wait to see the youngsters. ....cheers...Don

Hi Don.. I'm really hoping that on the next trip out there will be some chicks. Its got to be pretty soon.
Thanks for the compliments.

PrescottPhotog

Harryb wrote:

Fascinating set, the captures are holding up well with the cropping.

Hi Harry.. Thanks for viewing. I'm very happy with the crops considering I totally gave up on the 2x extender until I started using Live View. I guess that's why they spend all that development time putting those little goodies on the camera huh..

bfjr

cool story and great find

Looking forward to baby raptor shots :cool

Ric Grupe

Nice post...very interesting.

I know of a Redtail nest that is even more open than yours. That's the problem. I can't get a decent shot with my 896mm (400 + 1.4 + 1.6 fovc) limitation.:cry