A gorgeous adult red-shouldered hawk scans for prey from a prominent perch. I photographed this animal last Thursday in a very suburbanized area of Columbus, Ohio.
Upon arrival at a postage-stamp natural area not far from my house, about the first bird that I detected was a red-shouldered hawk. Its strident screams couldn't be missed. An instant later, it flew in with a big branch, and led me right to its nest site. The nest isn't complete, and it may be a false start, but I hope the birds keep on with construction and use it as the nest is in a great place to discreetly watch the birds' progress.
Shortly thereafter, its mate flew in and the pair promptly copulated. Branches and other factors conspired to keep me from getting a good shot of that activity, but I tried.
No one should complain about having this species around. Very few raptors rival a red-shouldered hawk for showiness. In my view, their presence adds much to a neighborhood, and besides, they're fun to watch. In warmer seasons, red-shouldered hawks take lots of snakes and its always interesting to watch them rise from a dive with a wriggling reptile. I'll try and keep tabs on this pair, and see if they successfully nest at this site.
PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTE: The day that I took these photos was a typical white sky winter day. The bird in the images did cooperate nicely by hunting from a perfectly exposed perch, not far off. Red-shouldered hawks often can be quite tame, and as long as the observer is quiet they'll tolerate interlopers fairly well. Anyway, with that dastardly white sky as a backdrop, I had to GREATLY increase exposure compensation, to +2.7 EV (nearly three stops). Even then, the images were still somewhat underexposed, and I had to brighten them a bit more in post-processing. The shots were made with the Canon 5D IV and 800mm f/5.6 lens, at f/5.6, 1/320, and ISO 800, in manual mode. As often is the case, ISO drove much of my settings. I really don't like going higher than 800 if possible. As the lens was wide open at f/5.6, I had nowhere to go there. I also knew I needed all that positive exposure compensation - backing that down would have reduced the need for light. But I'm not into adding huge amounts of exposure correction in post-processing as I think it leads to poorer image quality. Thus, I dialed back the shutter speed to keep the ISO in my desired range. Even though that 800mm lens is a tank, by using good tripod-mounted stabilization techniques, it's amazing how slow a shutter speed one can use and still get a sharp image.
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