Category: Observation

One Screaming October

I must admit, this was one of the scariest Octobers I have experienced in a long time.  If you recall from the last post (link here) , every day this month was packed with task after task trying to get everything done for the big party.  If you recall from that post (or looked at the comments) you might remember that there was a quick mention of an “event” I was training for.  That was a tad understated since the event was actually a half marathon… and it was scheduled for the DAY BEFORE THE PARTY.  Actually, check that… it was literally the NIGHT BEFORE THE PARTY.  I am not exactly sure what came over me when I decided to enter this race, but I had a Life List entry for this year to make it through 2 halfs sometime during the year.  As you know, I made it through the first one back in September (link here).    That didn’t leave a whole lot of time to get the second one in before the end of the year.  Originally the thought was to hit the Vegas Rock and Roll 1/2 in December, but then I stumbled on the Screaming Pumpkin Race.  First of all, it was at night which is my favorite time to race.  Second it was a course I was familiar with and the cherry .. it was Halloween themed.  You can’t go wrong with that can you?   ummm, actually you can if you forget about all the other things that had to get done around that time.

The main issue was getting time to keep the maintenance runs up.  I was already trained up for the half in September so it was really a matter of keeping the legs fresh and the endurance up.  My runs were cut down to three a week – if I could even get that many in – and the miles were backed down into the 7 to 9 range which made it sliiiightly easier to get in between tasks.  Unfortunately, sometime at the beginning of the month something bad happened … to the point I would have argued with any doctor that tried to convince me I didn’t give myself a hernia.  That was the last thing I needed.  I did make the training runs, but found myself going slower and slower at the splits.  CRAP!  The interesting thing is there was no visible sign so there was some optimism that it was just a nasty muscle pull.  As race day approached, I became so busy that I actually forgot about it and somehow it ended up feeling pretty good  – nothing like mind over matter – if someone could bottle that the medical industry would be devastated.

Hit the jump to read all about the event!

Continue reading One Screaming October

An “Epic” Haunted Trail 2012

There are times when you look back and simply surprise yourself.  Sunday happened to be one of those moments for me.  In late September Linda and I had a long discussion about whether we could actually pull off the Annual Halloween Party this year.  Project Auuunnnoold had the basement in full hurricane mode, Linda’s trip to Iowa was coming up, I had an event to train for and way too many odds and ends to get done before even considering having people over.  It’s hard to give up a tradition and eventually we decided to give a try but pushed the date out later than usual to provide a few more work hours to address the reams of to-do lists.  Linda’s key requirement – there had to be a working bathroom in the basement.  Two weeks before show-time Auuunnnoold was wreaking havoc on me.  Walls needed to be anchored, wire needed to be ran, drywall had to be hung, tile laid, grout ground in, plumbing finished and doors installed.  I cannot tell you how thankful I am to have such good friends and family.  With the saving assistance of Jeff, Rocket, Pez, Pakage and Vonno we managed to pull it all off.  Drywall and wiring went in the week before, tile went down on Monday, grout on Tuesday, grout sealed on Wednesday, plumbing finished and a Thursday and I was literally installing the doors Friday morning.  In the midst of all this I was cleaning up like a madman and dealing with the high decorations – Linda was busy decorating the rest of the house and planning out the food and drinks.  After a huge event Friday night I was back cleaning up the mess from the doors only to wake up early the next morning to prep the outside for the party and attack the new tradition of “The Haunted Trail”.  Oh, on Tuesday I had to dispose of a body… but more on that in an upcoming post.

So, I picked this picture as the lead image because it represented how I felt leading up to the party… and it was the lead decoration on the 2012 Haunted Trail – Yep, we got it all done but huge credit has to go to RenderBoy who came to our rescue and did a stellar job.

The alert viewers out there might have noticed an intriguing orange cord in the image above.  That’s right folks, this year we stepped it up and brought the element of power to the trail.  Thanks to a truckload of extension cords, RenderBoy was able to get power all the way down to Serenity (link here).  If you are familiar with the property you are likely amazed at this point!  Now we had a whole new avenue for decorations and RenderBoy used it to the fullest.  As a special treat, I’ll take you through some of the trail.  Before that, I need to mention my favorite photography quote “One bad picture is a mistake, a hundred bad pictures is a style.”  61 blurry pictures pretty much puts me in the style category so in celebration of Halloween I give you the Blair Witch style of the Haunted Trail (translated.. crappy cell phone photos – it definitely deserved better).  Also note this is just a subset of the shots – you can see all the pictures up on Eddiesoft’s Photo Gallery (link here).

Hit the jump to see a sampling of the trail!

Continue reading An “Epic” Haunted Trail 2012

Concert Recollection: Why Don’t You All F-Fade Away

It was a truly an educational day today! Rocket dropped by to help me out on Project Aaauunold. It’s down to the wire (intentional pun) around here to get through about 10 more phases of the project before this upcoming Thursday. Lucky for me I have slightly deranged friends (and family!) willing to waste their free time to give me a fighting chance of actually pulling these tasks off. The cool thing is I’m picking up all new skilz.. umm that may be a little too strong, let’s go with knowledge. My college days were spent playing around in the 5-10v arena – not so much in the 120 range. As a result I’ve always been a little hesitant when it comes to house wiring. Thanks to Rocket, I am now pretty comfortable with most of the wiring scenarios and probably most amazing – I FINALLY understand the three way switch. It has taken him about 20 times to explain it, but it finally sunk in today – thanks to getting all my wiring tasks done early today I can spend a few minutes cranking out a new post.

Let’s go with a recollection from our most recent concert outing. I was about to categorize it as the last concert of the season but looks like we’ll be heading back to Vegas later in the year and Linda is already researching all the venues for things to see. This particular recollection is from August at the Illinois State Fair. As you know we have been hitting the “classic” tours this season (link here and here).  This year the Fair was featuring a combination of bands I grew up with and one dark horse.  We tend to head down to Springfield to see the Butter Cow anyway and decided to catch the concert.  My expectations were pretty high based on the entertainment value of the previous concerts this year…well, at least ONE of the bands delivered that night.  Fortunately for me, I can always resort to people watching when things go bad.

Since we are all about observations around here, I thought it would be interesting to visually show you the definition of success in the Rock and Roll field.  Starting off the night was none other than the Georgia Satellites (the dark horse).  If you just said the who?  then you are probably in good company.  They really  just had two songs of any popularity – Keep Your Hands to Yourself (one of Linda’s favorites) and the cover Hippy Hippy Shake.  The fact they actually produced a greatest hits album is quite shocking.  Now let’s see what the downhill side of a two hit band looks like.

Ugh.. not good.  I’ve seen more fans at a local bar with an 80’s hair tribute band.  To their credit they did play their signature songs and actually filled up the rest of their set with a bunch of other covers.  Say goodbye to #5 in 1986.

Hit the Jump for the rest of the bands!

Continue reading Concert Recollection: Why Don’t You All F-Fade Away

Movie Recollection: Atlas Shrugged II

I can’t believe how busy I am at the moment.  I have a run I need to get prepared for, Project Auunold to get to a specified state before next Thursday, an event to plan and as of 2 hours ago a well to fill.  What has fallen off the table are my posts and for that I must apologize.  Not wanting to throw in the towel yet, I’m still working on posts just primarily in my head.  Actually, in my head an on my lunch break.  As mentioned previously the main inhibitor of speedy posts is the self imposed prep work.  This is lessened by going the photography route since I have become pretty proficient at the post processing workflow.  However, in those cases where I do not “hammer” (ah, a clever foreshadowing) you with photo topics, I need to awaken the creative juices and build a graphic from scratch.  Since time is scarce at the moment I’m forced to improvise and simply drag out a piece of paper and a pen/marker and throw something together over lunch.  15 minutes later I had today’s post graphic.  Not spectacular by any means, but it will do.

If you haven’t figured out by the title or the graphic, the recollection today is on the recently released Atlas Shrugged II.  This movie series has become somewhat surreal for me.  If you recall from me previous post (link here) , the first episode of this movie didn’t exactly leave a very good impression.  I think shuddered was the word of choice.  Once again, my friends wanted to go see the second part and weighing in the aspects that I had already invested time in the first movie and it was a chance to hang out with friends I hesitantly agreed to go.  At worst case I figured I might get another post out of it.  Turns out at least I got another post out of it.

[hold please … have to go get another 400 gallons of water].. tick tock tick tock…  [back now – the water is now being emptying into my well so I have exactly 15 minutes to complete this post]

Now I get the premise of the book and the clear evils of big government theory which aligns with my own opinion.  I also believe that the rest of the people in the theater have the exact same political position.  The problem is one of preaching to the choir.  It isn’t people like myself this message needs to get to, it’s the people like those that continue to embarrass themselves by writing comments/opinions into the local paper or those that ooze out of every biased media channel you tune to these days.  So in essence it is really a wasted effort unless you can entice those people into sitting through the message.  To do that you need to be entertaining to a fault – flashy if you will.  Maybe have Adele create the soundtrack or employ special effects people to produce visuals that don’t look like they were done on a lunch break.  On the latter I must admit that they have improved over the last movie (translated, no ridiculously long train shots) but better in this case still gets a failing grade in my book.  Case in point, when a plane crashes into a field, I’m guessing the cockpit won’t look like the carpet was just cleaned by Merry Maids.  Want to know another key to success in a multi-episode film – try to at least keep the main characters played by the same people.  I’m am not sure there was even one single repeat character which makes it harder to pick up a plot line for sure.  Oh, per the comment regarding making it entertaining… this means the director needs to understand what shots should stay and which sections should hit the cutting room floor (or in some cases melted in a red hot fire).    The finest example of this is the completely baffling scene of watching a leading character remove furniture from a cottage and put it out on the lawn.  One piece after another…and then the scene switches with zero context on what was removed (or why for that matter).  Just gobbling up some of the 112 minutes I guess.  Trust me, there were plenty of examples like this that could have reduced this episode down enough to actually include the third episode and at least tell me who the hell John Galt is.

There were two parts in the movie that stuck out for me.  The most shocking part is that Teller (from Penn & Teller) had a line in the movie (I’ll let you ponder on that for awhile).  The other part involved a portrait they panned over.  Every single person in the audience turned to the person next to them and said “Is that Jay J[]?”  That would be reference to a local ambulance chaser that would probably try to sue me if I actually used his full name.  I’ll give you a hint though – his commercial touts him as a “SUPERLAWYER”.  We all had a good chuckle over that one.  By the way, a third thing that stuck out [ha] was what I’ll refer to as cleavage cam.  What they skipped in special effects shots they clearly made up by making sure their actresses’ assets where ummm well lit.  Beyond those moments, this movie is pretty much one big snooze.

Almost forgot to elaborate on what makes this series so surreal.  Atlas is all about the competitive marketplace, the payback on investment, the earnings on creativity and the rail against handout if you will (looky there, one huge novel reduced to a sentence).  Applying those concepts to the present, one should be rewarded for the originality of the movie (eesh) just like the theater should profit from the experience they provide yada yada yada.  Pretty sure I mentioned in the first post I lucked out and was given a ticket to see the first episode (too tired to check right now).  That played a small part in the equation to convince myself to go – guilt over getting a free ride the first time out.  So up to the counter I went to lay my hard earned cash down …. when the theater owner directs the two of us in line to get our ticket at the concession stand.  That would be a first time for that at this particular theater, but off we went.  The guy ahead of me (who was actually from our group) was asked what show he wanted tickets for.  Oddly enough the clerk was busy glancing at a monitor when he asked this.  When my friend responded with Atlas the clerk checked the monitor out again and proceeded to tell him the movie was free today because the computer was down.  He then asked me what I wanted to see while once again glancing at the monitor.  This brought on the exact same response after another glance down at a monitor.  That’s 2 for 2 in seeing the movie for free.  Now the guilt was overwhelming so I was forced to purchase a small drink which was literally half the ticket price ($3.50).  We asked the other members of our party whether they had to pay and turns out they did (computer must have been up then).  15 minutes later more of our group came in and turns out they had to pay too.  Living the good Karma!

The last of the 2000 gallons of water is now safely down the well – it’s finally time to hit the sack – have to get some sleep because tomorrow I have to learn how to tile.

Making the Best of a Dreary Day

I have entered the lair of the enemy and lived to tell about it. How is that for a dramatic intro? So truth be told, for the last three days I have been in Iowa. Specifically, I have been in Iowa City, the home of black and gold and a dreaded enemy of Chief Illiniwek. Why would I subject myself to three days of Herky Hell? What would bring an Orange and Blue die hard to subject himself to an arch rival? Actually, the answer is pretty simple. Linda had the opportunity to benefit from their fine medical facilities at the University of Iowa and for that I will gladly swallow my pride and express my gratitude. I think we are now on a good path to getting some issues under control and if it takes a little humility to make that happen – well, bring it on. Just for the record, I’ll still root against them in any sports competition… although since the Illini once again suck pond water it will be done with more of an inside voice.

One impact of this is a significant reduction in available blogging time. With Project Auuuunold in full bore, another half at the end of the month and taking care of the other issues it doesn’t leave much time to tickle the keyboard. It is too early to throw in the towel, but need to warn you the focus will probably be on photography related topics since the post processing work is actually faster than the prep work for the other types of posts. As a start, here is a set taken off my porch one dreary day a few months back. There is a lot still to learn about the Beast and a little low light practice is never wasted. The Beast is a VRII 4.0f end to end glass . With the 1.4 Teleconverter on, it drops to 5.6f which thirsts for light out in the field. It was time to try out some different settings and modes to see how best to shoot birds when the light is not ideal. One bi-product of the drizzle caught me by surprise.  See anything interesting in this shot?

Nothing catch your eye?  Hmmm, how about another shot in a more traditional crop… hint, you might not associate this as a typical BoaS?

Hit the jump and I’ll zoom you into the subject.

Continue reading Making the Best of a Dreary Day

The Exotic! Youuuuu Caaaaan’t Haaaaandle The Exotic

I’ve been thinking about Linda’s comment regarding my recent post of a Hawk (link here) and her reference to it being too boring for my blog.  She’s claiming that she is just looking out for the best interest of my peeps.  Well, this has been the main noodle topic on my training runs as of late.  What can I do to address this perspective and maybe even provide that needed push I need to get caught up on our photo shoots.  It occurred to me at mile 10 last Wednesday that I have the perfect remedy.  I do indeed have shots of more “exotic” birds and those are actually on my to-do list from back in July 2011.  And people still wonder why I subject myself to the torture of running…. well other than letting me eat what I want (hehehe) it gives me ample time to noodle and I’m betting everyone could use a little more time to noodle.

If you recall, I previously posted a few pics of the Indiana Zoo taken by Linda (link here).  To complement that I will now roll out the carpet for the first of the Indianapolis Zoo Aviary shots.  Drum roll please.

Is that EXOTIC enough for you?  Guessing you might have just gagged a little bit.  Hey, they all can’t be studly like the Hawk!  This is obviously not a bird you will come across just walking in the park here in the US.  To be honest, I couldn’t even locate this bird in any of my bird references (I do have a few that cover more than North America like the Sibley guide).  This required me to hunt down the Indianapolis Zoo website and go through their animal list until I located the birds (yes, there is more than one in this set).  Without a guide reference I had to once again employ our friends over at Wikipedia.  Turns out they have a page devoted to both the birds on this post.  This creature which only a mother could love comes from Central Africa.

In clear evidence of evolution, this bird was obviously maligned by the pretty boy birds to point where distance became his only friend.  This led to becoming one of the highest flying birds with the ability to exceed an elevation of 36,000 feet.  Jonathan Seagull has nothing on these creatures.  The impressive flight ability is definitely aided by their 7 to 8 foot wingspan, but still impressive for a bird that can upwards of 20 pounds.   Clearly they follow the vulture trait of living off of carrion, but I am sad to report that this bird is listed as endangered.  Note it lost two notches since 2007.  Let’s all give our best wishes that we can save this bird for our future generations to gag.. I mean observe.

Okay… Time for the second bird.  Please put down any food you might be eating at the moment and consider moving your keyboard away slightly to the left or right to cut down on cleanup.  Take a deep breath and hit the jump to see the second bird in this post.

Continue reading The Exotic! Youuuuu Caaaaan’t Haaaaandle The Exotic

A Pleasant Feathered Surprise

If I was a pressure cooker I’d be whistling up a storm about now.  More like a “perfect” storm from trying to prepare for a practice run to help friend learn the course for our upcoming relay marathon, working on Project Auuunold, trying to resolve some difficult architecture issues at work and most stressful of all, being two posts short on the last week of the month.  I’ve come too far this year to blow my quota so I will officially give up sleep and try and get through it.  The good news is this post topic literally fell out of the sky into my lap.  Umm, that might be a slight exaggeration, it actually did not land in my lap, rather in a tree about 30 feet from where I was sitting on our porch.  As luck would have it, I was actually out there photographing some of the many hummingbirds that have made our porch feeders their regular stomping grounds.  The ones I was focusing on ended up getting startled by something and split for the woods.  Not a big issue since they find their way back after about 15 minutes of calm.  During this delay I was fiddling with the Beast settings when something darted by and took up perch in a clump of nearby leaves.  Hello there greenish bird I’ve never seen around here before!

A quick flip to my user setting for bird on stick and I was snapping away.  By the way, I need to commend our friends at Nikon for adding the U1 and U2 Manual modes to the D7000.  This has been a godsend for quickly moving between stationary bird settings to bird in flight mode.  A quick flip of the dial brings my ISO to 400 and shutter speed to a slower setting for the perch shots and when it decides to take off all I need to do is flip it again to get my ISO up to 800 and shutter speed doubles – from that base I can quickly adjust the exposure setting to capture the moment.

Since I had not shot this bird before I was concentrating on getting a variety of poses and views to help identify it – head shot, breast shot, wing shot, tail shot etc.  This turned out to be very helpful during the identification phase.  Based on a discussion with John at work and a hefty amount of research both in my reference manuals and Google, I narrowed it down to a Vireo and then specifically either the Warbling Vireo or the Red-Eyed Vireo.  Both of these breeds have compatible ranges so that checked out good.  Both have a greenish hue and display a white to blush yellow  breast.  Initial indicators made me lean to the Warbling type.  There were some reservations regarding the fact the Warbling has as smaller stature than what I witnessed and the beak looked smaller on them than on this specimen.  The National Geographic North American Bird guide threw me with their illustration of the Red-Eyed Vireo – their graphic indicated a much darker green to grey wing coloring which did not match this bird.

Hit the jump to read more about this new bird to the Blog

Continue reading A Pleasant Feathered Surprise

Something More Exotic – The Green Heron

Now this is embarrassing.  Linda actually gave me grief because I chose to spotlight a “boring” (yes, that is the exact word she used) hawk in my last bird post (link here).  I was quite stunned seeing as how I thought it was a pretty cool bird even if it isn’t so rare in these parts.  It has a deadly beak, razor sharp talons and an extremely efficient killer.  What’s so boring about a Red-Tailed Hawk?  Her response – you need to feature something more “exotic” (again, her exact word).  First of all, we live in Illinois – my options are pretty limited beyond our various wildlife vacations.  Good thing she apparently missed my post with robins and sparrows (link here).

[sorry, emergency break needed – I have to go rip my Illini shirt off and throw it in the garbage (they are now losing 45-17 in the 3rd qtr at home)… be right back….sorry about that .. now back to your regularly scheduled post]

Where was I.. oh, so the pressure was on for this post.  Nothing like being called out by your number one fan.  I was actually planning on holding on to this one a little while, but due to the situation I am forced to bring it out now!  The newest entry in my bird list is …..[drum roll]

….the Green Heron.  This bird literally dropped in on us one day while we were out taking pictures in Jubilee Park.  Actually, we were testing out some glass we rented from rentglass.com.  We are considering upgrading our 200mm workhorse to a newer VR equipped version and wanted to see how it compared to our existing glass.  There wasn’t much going on at the pond in terms of birds so I was off shooting dragonflies and anything else I could find that at least had wings.  Linda was a ways back taking some shots of dirt or something (hoping for something to miraculously fly into the field of view hehehe).  All of a sudden I see a large silhouette fly by on the other side of the pond and take up a position at the very top of some large trees overlooking the pond.  It was not apparent exactly what it was – looked kind of like a Blue Heron, but it looks like someone had squashed it and gave it a much thicker beak.  Immediately I began trying to get Linda’s attention (since she was closer to it) without startling the bird.  This was basically fruitless so made my way back to her.  The bird was really to far for the 200mm so switched the teleconverter over to The Beast and went about trying to get as good a shot as possible which primarily consisted of trying to compensate for the backlight.  In general, the shots are not as crisp as I would have liked, but I’ll give myself a break with the conditions – thankfully there’s the magic of post processing.

Back at home it didn’t take long to identify the Heron – the benefit of NOT looking like a sparrow.  This particular one is likely a juvenile since the coloring is still in the brown range where the adults sport the more green/blue hues on the head and wings.  These birds are generally found in a family group or, as in this case, solitaire.  According to the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America reference, this is one of the few NA birds that employ tools to hunt.  They will place an item like a leaf or piece of bread on the surface of the water to lure fish into coming to the surface and thus right into their trap.  Guessing they are just a few evolutionary years away from developing bow fishing.  One thing I found extremely fascinating – a polite description for really being creeped out by it – was the eye placement.  Looking from the side it looks fairly normal (reference first image).  However, from directly below you can see the eyes actually appear to be sticking out from the side of the head.   This must be handy when fishing since it can watch the kill zone without bending its head down to the water like the Blue Heron.  For my loyal followers I risked thorns and swarms of mosquitoes to move in closer so you can witness this strange arrangement.

Hit the jump to see a few more pictures of this interesting bird

Continue reading Something More Exotic – The Green Heron

A Struggle to a PR

Every have one those moments when have to do something, but you know you are going to get hurt in some manner while doing it? – you just don’t know the when or the how.. but it’s definitely going to happen. I have some speed recall slots from a few of these times in the past (my Black Belt tests and a few races where I made it to the starting line knowing my hamstring was not in a good place come to mind). Turns out I had a similar moment about a month back. Now normally I will just accept it and initiate the healing as soon as possible, but this time there was more at stake in the coming weeks. So there I stood staring at a flatbed of very heavy items that had to be offloaded for Project Auunold. Too heavy for Linda (well, she wasn’t going to go anywhere near it even if she could thanks to a past incident) and the delivery team didn’t send enough people. With an internal sigh I went to work and 30 minutes later I was trying my best to stand up straight. Not a big issue in context of that particular day, but a huge issue considering the IVS Half Marathon was a mere two weeks away. MAJOR SUCKAGE. With only a week to go before taper, the training runs were in full ramp, but luckily I had capped a 13 mile run the previous day so the endurance was already locked in. With the help of my chiro (if you just smirked, you probably are not a runner) and a tremendous amount of care and feeding, the back finally settled down a week later – I had to cut down the mileage, but I was still determined to get some miles in (don’t think the chiro was too happy with that).  9 Miles on that Sunday brought my confidence back up … but that lasted only 4 hours until I jammed my hip hitting a bad dip while mowing which pushing it totally out of whack – a test run the next day confirmed the damage – like running on Jello legs. CRAP. More stretches, more chiro, more heat, more ice and definitely more electrodes. Turns out the left leg was jammed up two inches shorter than the right. With the taper, the runs were only around 5-7 miles so that provided some relief. Literally two days before the race, the hips were finally snapped back into its proper alignment.

… and what does that mean?

That’s right, I added another half marathon finisher medal to my collection. As with last year (link here), this was at the the IVS Half Marathon in the hilly Springdale Cemetery.  I’m pretty much addicted to this race now and anyone who trains on hills would love it as well.  One thing is for certain, you will feel like you EARN that finisher medal.

Hit the jump to learn more than you probably want to know about the race!

Continue reading A Struggle to a PR

A Hawkish Perspective

Stand back, there’s likely going to be a spray of dust as this post comes up – been a few days (okay, weeks) since I’ve put one of these babies out.  To be honest, I’m reaching new levels of busy around here with absolutely no sign of let up until after Halloween.  Last week was another big event which is finally past (yes, post to come) but all my free time at the moment is being directed towards my huge Aaaauuunold Project.  However, this is NO excuse to miss a month quota so on with the show!

Today marks another appearance of bird that is secretly growing in population around here.  Up until the last 3 or so years, it was common to drive miles and miles without seeing this particular bird intently scanning the ditches and fields alongside the highway.  Nowadays you are likely to spot one every 5 miles or so.  I cannot tell if this is an indication that rodent populations are thriving or they’re taking a page from the rabbit play book.  The good news is there are plenty of opportunities to get shots of these birds of prey around here.

In case you live in a cave, this is a Red-Tailed Hawk.  As mentioned, it has actually shown up a few times on this blog with the most memorable post being the snake sighting (link here).  There have been a few other Phoadtography posts that had some shots as well, but none of them allowed me to get this close to the specimen.  This particular set of images came from a sighting about 2 miles from my house.  On my way to work I had noticed this bird hanging out in dead tree watching the cars go by, but my calendar was full and thus had to pass up the opportunity.  On the return home I was giving some extra scans along the treeline to see if another opportunity might be had.  Sure enough, it had taken up a position about a quarter mile closer to my home.  This was too good of an omen to pass up so high tailed it to the house, grabbed the Beast and headed back.  Unfortunately, it was backlit by the sun making it difficult to get the shot I wanted.  5 shots later it spotted the huge glass pointed at it and became very skittish – can you blame it?  It turned away from me and took flight up and across the road.  This put him in much better composition position.  More cautious this time, I moved the truck up into position across from it.  This worked muuuuch better.

Hit the jump to see more shots of the Red-Tailed Hawk

Continue reading A Hawkish Perspective