Another day in Hawk-heaven

After a slow month in the photohide, yesterday was a blast. Finally the adult bird came and stayed for almost 2 hours. The crow must have attracted the hawk. It was incredible to watch the hawk trying to fly away with the crow. Glad I did a good job with the wire. Last time the young bird took the bird with him because I did not fasten it good enough.

Both Knut and myself almost lost faith in our hawk-project after 4 weeks of almost no action. But today at least I got paid. Just got a text from my photo buddy Knut. The old Lady has been there an hour this morning, and Knut got his photos in great light.

So now we can stay optimistic for the rest of the winter, we hope. It's so fun to be succesful when working with a project like this.

The combination of my Nikon D3s and the 70-200/2.8 vrII with 1.7x teleconverter worked really well. I'm glad I found the money to trade in my D300 and get the D3s. The high ISO capabilities is worth a lot for me working with the hawks often in low light. To freeze the action it really helps to turn up the ISO to 1600 - 4000.

For me it is a big advantage to use this zoom instead of a fixed telelens. The distance between the hide and the tree-trunk where the hawk usually sits, is only 8 yards.

We have a sitting tree further away and we hope for the Golden Eagle to come down. Still a couple of months until winter is over, so we'll see!