Almost got it

JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
On the recommendation of @Jim Sanderson I stopped by the San Joaquin Wildlife Preserve on the way back down from Christmas at my sisters in Sacramento yesterday. This was my first time really shooting birds with the Tamron 150-600mm G2 on my Nikon D850. I shot it primarily in Crop mode so that I would already have the images filling the frame.

Overall I liked the experience of shooting with the Tamron, all of these are handheld. We got down there as it was getting later in the day and so I didn't have a lot of time to experiment or play around. I do have a few questions that I need to ask of our Nature guru's here, but I will start a new post later with that.

So... as a total birding noob, I realized that I need to call something more then a bird... I do have sea gulls, pelicans and bald eagles figured out. But pretty much anything after that throws me for a loop. So I don't know what kind of bird this is even. :(

The bird was on top of a wooden birds house that they had planted every so often. My biggest mistake here was in the last frame, I sensed by his movements that he was about to fly off. What I should have done was zoom back out a bit when I thought that. Instead I ended up with half of the bird. Now the good news was that I felt good about just getting even half of the bird taking off. :rolleyes:

All comments and suggestions are welcome,

Jim


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AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
Looks like an immature Red Tail Hawk.

Once they start moving high shutter speeds are a necessity and panning skills can be hit or miss. My skills on that last count are mostly centered around the miss side.
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
AlanLichty said:
Looks like an immature Red Tail Hawk.

Once they start moving high shutter speeds are a necessity and panning skills can be hit or miss. My skills on that last count are mostly centered around the miss side.
Click to expand...
Ha ha… Yeah, I kept my shutter speed up. The lens as Vibration reduction so that helps, but I still kept my speed up to keep any movement of the bird sharp. The last one I easily could have had, had I simply been smart enough to zoom out a bit more and shoot it wider. I just couldn't pan fast enough to keep up with the explosion from the bird as it launched itself.

I was thinking perhaps a hawk, but I didn't even want to try and guess... :eek:
 
Ben Egbert

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Star with Petersons Western Birds. A great place to start for birds. Alans ID looks right to me. I probably would have stopped at Red Tail without knowing it was a immature.
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
That's exactly the book I yanked off my shelf for this - the picture is on page 175. I carry a copy in my RV as well as a Plants of the Pacific NW book along with several geology field guides.
 
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