A few photos to share

[HAB911]

There was a Hawk nest across the street and the parents have been frequent visitors to my yard. Apparently, the young are out of the nest now and my yard is being used as a flight and hunt training ground. What I assume are the young have been in a couple of my trees for the last few weeks, on low perches, screaming their heads off. I have slowly approached them daily, and now they allow me to get as close as I wish. Estimate I have 100 close ups of these beautiful birds!

In this one, I imagine he is contemplating how edible I might be, lol.


Enjoy!

[Ocelot II]

1. Raptor rapture. Great photos!

[HAB911]

6. Raptor rapture. I like it!

[dutch777]

2. Really good shots! So much fun to watch. We had eagles for neighbors at the last house

Watching the adults on the nest and then seeing the first signs of heads bobbing up to eat was so cool. The best was what you are seeing now, the fledging and the chicks testing their wings. The chicks would hop up on the edge of the nest and flap and build up wing muscle strength. At some point mom and dad stopped bringing food to the nest so the hunger drove the chicks to finally take wing. Some were good at it, some had lots to learn. One year their were two young and the runt just really did not get the hang of landing. He'd fly into the tree, try to flare his wings for landing and mostly missed the nest and the branches and would go tumbling down through the tree until some branch caught him. We called him Crash. It was quite the entertainment for a few weeks until he got his skills up. Every few years the nest would get wiped out in a winter wind storm. The eagles left about October so they were in no danger but the mess the huge nest made in the neighbors yard was a sight. Packed with guano and fish heads, tails and skeletons I always felt like we had the best of the deal-- a good viewing angle for the show and none of the mess.

[mitch96]

10. "We had eagles for neighbors at the last house". Same here. I was fortunate that I could

walk to work and every once and a while I would see the "neighborhood" Coopers hawks flying about. Sometimes they would be on a low branch and I could actually walk up and get a good look see.. Amazing animals.. As usual I did not have a camera with me at the time..
Drat..
m

[Diamond_Dog]

3. Wow!

Those are stunning!

[RainCaster]

4. Thank you for sharing this with us

Truly beautiful photos.

[FuzzyRabbit]

5. Amazing photos.

I've never seen birds eyes so well. These hawks have huge eyes. No wonder they can spot their prey from high in the air.

[elleng]

7. FAB!!!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. Wow, my dear HAB911!

Great captures of these magnificent birds!

I'll bet the racket they were making was impressive.

Thank you for sharing!

[Blue Dawn]

9. What a gorgeous bird!

Your photos are stunning.

[mnhtnbb]

11. Wonderful shots!

[Grumpy Old Guy]

12. Amazing photos!

I am seriously jealous! I love shooting raptors. These photos are beautiful.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

13. Amazing pictures

I want to ask if I could use your pics as drawing reference of what a hawk looks like?

I have a collection of pictures I use as drawing study aids.
It's really hard to find decent reference pics

I have no hawk close ups.

Could I use your hawk pics to study from?

[HAB911]

14. Of course you may

I would like to eventually see the output!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

19. Ok. Thank you very much

[HAB911]

15. Thanks to everyone for the kind words

I owe it all to my Hawk family who are allowing me such close access!

[birdographer]

16. Wonderful!!

Really great shots!

[PatSeg]

17. Those are wonderful

What kind of camera and lens did you use?

[HAB911]

18. Nikon

Df with Nikkor 200-500 and D750 with Sigma 150-600

In head to head I would have to give it to the 200-500, but it is close. Sigma seems a little light on contrast, not a big deal

[PatSeg]

20. Thanks

I love my Nikon cameras. I have a Tamron 150-600 lens, but I think it needs to be calibrated or maybe it is just too heavy for me these days. Now I usually use my Nikkor 55-300 for outdoors.

Wonderful shots, thanks for sharing.