Leucistic Red Tailed Hawk

[manaheim]

Ok, these shots are HORRIBLE, but this is a rare bird so it's kind of neat to see and I figured folks might be interested.

We have one of these making the area around my workplace its home. We see him all day long but he's skittish so hard to get on "film". Bizarre, really... I get within 300' of him and he runs. In one shot you can see he's like "Yeah, I see you, you bastard... you with that big black thing in front of your face...", and about 10 seconds later he bolts.

I'm like "dude... even if I could climb up that tree to get you, odds are you could tear my arms off before I could do any real damage to you."

Silly bird.

Anyway, I'm hoping for a sunnier day soon so I can go stalk the bugger and get some shots of him with better light. If I manage to get a GOOD shot, I'll post that. These pics were taken at nearly full extension on a 70-300 lense on a dark day with one of the guys who works for me distracting the hell out of me. lol He meant well, he was just trying to help.

 

[Overread]

I like them - I think you have done well shooting in less than ideal light at what I suspect is out of the best range for your lens.
One thing I would ask is if these were hand held? If so then you coud try getting out your tipod and when he comes into view deploying and shooting with that added stability (amazing I would recomend a cheapy tripod for this over a more expensive "pro" one as cheaper ones tend to have the central bar and leg expansions fixed, so you only have to open one leg and all the others are opened at the same time - makes for an easy to fold up and open out tripod -- rather than the better models which have independent leg opening.