Photographing Raptors In December

 Last Friday I went to the Raptor Center.  Clouds hid the sun and turned everything grey, which made photographing the hawks, owls, and vultures difficult because the mesh of their mews popped out.  I played with the ISO of the camera a bit, which improved the shots a little.   The best shots were when the handlers came out and displayed the birds.


I think the trick to photographing animals in cages is to get close to the bars or mesh and only photograph animals that are far away from the barrier and zooming in as much as possible; this will blur the barrier, especially if you make sure to manually focus on the animal's eyes, feathers, or fur (yes, this works a lot better on subjects who are staying mostly still).   Shorter lens-to-subject distance, shorter depth of field.

Arg, and I had set the aperture to an 8 f-stop, so I had a really wide depth of field for the photos; if I had used an 1 f-stop, the aperture would have been wider, I could have used a shorter exposure time, the depth of field would have been narrower, and I would have been able to blur the bars out more.  Oh well; on the plus side, the grid in some of my photos is useful for studies of the birds' symmetries.


If the sun had been out (it had been the day before) there would have been more light on the birds.  And it would have been warmer.  There were quite a few folks there:  families and possibly a group of home-schoolers.  I was slightly surprised because it was Friday after Christmas (i.e. the Third Day), and I thought folks would be out of town or shopping, but I'm sure it was good business for the Center.


The birds seemed interested in me, which was charming and also made me worried that I was agitating them.  I was wearing my grey/green wool cloak to stay warm and to also have something to cover the camera with, and in the back of my mind I worried the birds might think I was a Really Large Bird.


Luckily none of them seemed to freak out.  I don't know if it was the cloak, or the camera, or the tripod, or my voice, but they all seemed to follow my movements as I aimed the camera at them and took photos (the vulture seemed very curious about my singing).  The exception were the birds on the wrists of handlers; then they were mostly interested in eating rats and mice.


It's rewarding to see the raptors and photograph them.  The hawks always remind me of Egyptian art, and I could look at the feather patterns (on their wings especially) all day.  Next time, I'm going to have to go on a more pleasant day and bring my Book of Art so I can try sketching them.

Near the end of my visit, I ran into an old acquaintance from my madrigal days with Pearwood, and we spent about five minutes catching up.

Christmas Sharp Shinned Hawk.

Christmas Day, I managed to snap some photos of what I think is a sharp-shinned hawk.  Originally, I planned to try to photograph some deer, but when I stepped out onto my folks' deck, a bird swooped out of the underbrush and onto an oak.  It was a smallish bird, and at first I wasn't sure it was a raptor.

I took a few shots, then it glided over to a fence post, and it changed color from brown to blue.  I'm not sure if this was from a different angel of view or if the feather were picking up the blue color of the sky (surprisingly relatively cloud-free).  I almost thought I was looking at a bluejay.

Raptor Weekend

 We had a quiet weekend, which was a nice way to unwind from a hectic week.


The nights have been just above freezing, but the days have warmed up to the high fifties.  The evening skies have featured the new moon, and the morning skies Orion.


Saturday, Mark and I took a hike to the Cascades Raptor Center.  They had been closed for about three weeks to deal with some construction, and this was their first open day for a while, so there were a lot of visitors.


We were lucky enough to see three of the raptors out of their mews, a hawk, a screech owl, and a golden eagle.   Mark tolerated my photography as we listened to docents tell us about the various birds and answer visitor questions.


I didn't realize that raptors salivate a lot, and apparently, one docent gets a lot of bird spit on him.  The most surprising observation was how much Dante, the golden eagle, squeaked like my folks' German shepherd when I rub her ears as he tore a rabbit carcass apart.


I managed a few pictures of the other birds, and it was a chance to experiment with making the camera focus on a bird and not on the bars of its enclosure.   I'm not sure that I had a favorite raptor; I like them all and was enamored by all their sleek lines, and curved beaks, and the patterns of their feathers.


Mark fell in love with the snowy owl's feet -- it had white downey feathers that looked like fluffy slippers with sharp claws poking out at the toes.  I obviously have to get get him snow owl slippers for Christmas.


We stayed for probably something like two hours before hiking back to the car.  Just before we got to the parking lot, Mark spied a wild red tailed hawk in a tree.

New Year's Day Hawk

New Year's Day we went to Corvallis to visit my folks.  Part of the visitation included a hike to the local park on Bald Hill.   As we were walking from the fairgrounds up to the hill, Mark pointed to a white flash along a fence:  it was a hawk of some sort.

I zoomed my camera in on it, took some shots, and then saw that the field was apparently open.  So.  I started walking toward the hawk.  Closer and closer.  Wishing I had a tripod to keep the camera more steady.  Then the sun reflected golden from the hawk's eye -- a solar spark jumping through my camera and piercing my vision.  Hypnotized by this Eye of Horus moment, I stalked closer; only part of me heard Mark say, "We've lost him."

Eventually, the hawk flew away.  I'm not sure if I got too close, or if it was done done resting and wanted to get on with hunting.  It swooped over the grasses of the field several time and once or twice appeared to strike at something on the ground.

I never did catch back up with the family, which had hiked past the Old Barn and took secret, twisting trails to the top of Bald Hill.  And actually, I wasn't exactly sure if they had gone via the way of the barn or if they had taken the left-hand path to the top.  When I did make it to the Barn, there was no sign of them -- so I returned back the way I came and walked back to the fairgrounds.

Some texts were exchanged and I was waiting for my niece to possibly appear as a vanguard, when I noticed that the hawk (or a hawk) had returned.  I slowly stalked closer, snapping photos as it disemboweled and ate a rodent.  The sun had sunk and was about an hour away from setting when I took the second set of photos.

Later, after consulting with my brother-in-law and various Facebook Friends, we couldn't decide if this was a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, a Goshawk, a Harrier, or some other kind of accipiter.

More shots here:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/LSdKdRNQP62E6sAe6