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Posted by JNRosenthal on 10:22:45 08/19/07
I popped over to Barnes this morning to work on my photography prior to a forthcoming revisit to Ecuador in 2 weeks,(pictures of pretty birds will hopefully be available to be shared with interested viewers-however as per Birdboard rules--not here) with the hopes that I could get some shots of the juvenile cooper's hawks observed by others there recently. I had seen the adults nest building this spring, approximately 100 yards behind the nature center, but after an initial observation, did not see them again, so I did not report it here. This morning at about 7:45 the high pitched shrieks of the juveniles led me to three of them-one fifty yards away , two others perched directly over the small pond/waterfall(with the resident white duck) just down the path from the nature center trailer in the parking lot.I spent about 45 minutes observing and photographing, during which time the birds were anywhere from 50 to 15 feet overhead.(I had to dodge droppings.) Despite the shrieking and their evident discomfort with flying any distance, the pair photographed over the pond never moved more than 20 feet, and spent a good part of the time that I watched simply hunkered down or doing some other bird equivalent of playing video games. With 8x binoculars a bird's head filled the whole field of view, and I suspect they will afford any visitor good close up views and photographic opportunities.
The first image is an uncropped shot with my tele at 400 mm , the second is a cropped shot taken at 300mm.
A scheduled stop at the local Dunkin Donuts compelled an early departure, but on the way out I crossed paths with Brian Rapoza, who no doubt will post a complete list of what he observed this morning.
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