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I woke up this morning to a very unexpected guest at my backyard bird feeder, in addition to the snow, that is. My best guess is female Merlin - it was definitely on the small side as hawks go, maybe 12" head to tail. It sat there long enough for me to go get the tripod and put the 1.4x on my 200mm.
The eyes make me think it's a female sharp-shinned hawk (all the photos I see of Merlins have brown eyes, yours has the gold of a sharp-shinned) Great shot! We've had one dive-bomb our bird feeders in the spring a few times I agree with E on the C&C... I would try to darken the lower levels in PS to bring the color out more.
Cool! I don't think it's a merlin though. I think it's either a sharp-shinned or a coopers hawk and I'm leaning towards sharp-shinned. I have a horrible time differentiating between those two accipiters though, so I could very well be wrong.
It's a nice shot Mike, but it's very de-saturated on my monitor. Even a simple click of "auto-tone" in PS, and then dialing it back a bit helped. I then tweaked the saturation just a touch and came up with this.
I'm guessing you were shooting through glass, it seems to have that effect.
On the other hand, your version would likely print better than mine, my shot would be too dark.
Looks like a nice example of a sharp shinned hawk. They, like the Coopers are known to hang around bird feeders to pick off the other visitors when they become unwary.
I think it's a sharp shinned because of the barrel shaped body, the smallish looking head, and the stripes that run all the way down the front of the belly, and finally the even length tail feathers all the way to the outside ones. All things that appear different on a Coopers.
A couple of months back my wife and I were standing looking out our large front window at a doe when a small sparrow ran right into the window, it was followed by a Coopers that hangs around here that flared up his wings just in time to miss the window. He landed about 20 feet away. Our cat, hearing the bird hit the window came running as that is a dinner bell sound to him, but before he could get to the sparrow the hawk hopped across the yard and picked it up flying off over the cats head.
I've never seen either a Merlin or a Sharp Shinned up close and personal like this. Somehow I thought Merlin because of it's relatively small size. But I humbly bow to the vastly superior knowledge of this group.
I've tweaked the white balance just a bit to reduce the warm tones in the background, and then I upped the reds and oranges to compensate. There wasn't much contrast in the original, and somehow I preferred that to adding more contrast.
Oh yes, they're both a bit soft as a result of shooting through the glass of the back door.
Is the hazy look just the fact that the lighting was not good or from the Tele converter, I take it that the converter is between the body and lens, a good one?
The teleconverter is a good one, and with this lens it gives excellent results. But shooting through a glass window in my back door, combined with poor lighting was probably the cause of the haziness you can see. If I had opened the door, the bird would have been gone!
This is tough, the coloration and striping on the front looks more Coopers to me, but the more-square tail looks more Sharp-shinned. Here is a Cornell Link on Sharp-Shinned/Coopers ID, you can see just how similar they are. Because of the tail I'd guess juvenile Sharp-shinned. That being said, last time I posted one, perched almost exactly like this in our back yard, and labeled it Sharp-shinned, I was corrected that it was a Cooper's
Hopefully the link will help somewhat with a correct ID.
Nice catch, we have a Coopers that visits, and annoys my wife no end as it chases all the song-birds away from the feeders.
I appreciate the link! After looking at all that info trying to distinguish between the Sharp Shinned and the Coopers hawks, I've decided I'll never know for sure. I'm going with Sharp Shinned and I dare anyone to prove me wrong!
Here is another shot of it that is a bit "sharper" (no pun intended). He was around for about 4-5 days, then he must have moved on.
From what I tried a quick USM of the original at about 3-4 pixels @ 100% with 2-3 threshold should sharpen things up to where the feathers are looking better and bump hue sat 10-11% and the image seems to pop and look sharp.
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I agree with E on the C&C... I would try to darken the lower levels in PS to bring the color out more.
