A Certain Call

Occasionally, it pays to be a nerd.  Chipmunks have a certain call they use to alert the neighborhood when they notice an aerial predator.  Like this red-tailed hawk.  So now that I know this, every time I hear the chipmunks calling, I stop and look into the forest.  Last week, it was a Bard Owl.  Today, it was this hawk.

I was looking 100 feet or more, downhill, into the woods. So I almost missed him. He was only about 30 feet away, just off the Mountain Mist trail where it forks off the Bankhead Trail.  (In Monte Sano State Park, Huntsville, AL.)

By the way, this is another example of the truth-in-photography thing that I like to talk about.  If I routinely "processed" my pictures, how tempting would it be to sharpen this up a little?  To make the background greener? (Or was it more golden?)  Or to put a catchlight in the hawk's eye that was missing in so many of the other pictures I took?  And to remove that annoying leaf?

But this is how it looked.  Or as close as I can take it. The light was bad.  The hawk was in the shade. And the leaves didn't magically disappear.  I'll have to go back and find another hawk, in a better scene, with better light, and a better lens -- if I want a better picture.

Nikon D7500 — Nikon 18-300mm F6.3 ED VR

300mm

F6.3@1/25th

ISO 4,000

Polarizer

Daylight Balance onFlash

Cropped

DSB_4255.JPG

©Don Brown 2024