Photography Adventure: White Hawk and Heron rookery

Last Monday I finally found the time to revisit a couple places I had done photoshoots at several years ago. I have wanted to reshoot them because the first time I went, I was still shooting with one of the first prosumer digitals on the market, a Sony Mavica with a 14x optical zoom that stored it's pictures on a floppy diskette. That camera was from 1996 and back when it was made the term megapixel hadn't been coined yet (or if it had it wasn't commonly used yet). So this camera shot at less than a megapixel. Needless to say the pics from that camera lacked quality. The lens was great but the picture quality was non-existant.

For this particular photoshoot I took along my son and assistant (driver and photographer). I shot with the 20D with the 100-400 lens, Ben shot with the 10D and the 28-135 lens. We arrived in the morning and made our first pass in our search for the white hawk. This bird is a very large albino red tail hawk. It had been years since I had seen it, and I wasn't sure if it was still alive, but I did have contacts in the area who had seen it this season so my hopes were high.
On the first pass we didn't see the bird. We went way beyond the area I had seen it in previously and explored a nice nature preserve. My jeep always gets me where I want to go, even over miles and miles of gravel and dirt roads. Then on the way back just as we were discussing whether to hang around in hopes of a sighting or whether to head to our next destiantion, there she was. A huge beautiful white hawk, in a tree near the road. She was to close for my lens to get a bead on her before she flew away, and I only got a couple shots of her hasty retreat. But I was so happy to see that she is alive and well. Once she disappeared into the vast forest valley, we went on to our next stop, the heron rookery.

The heron rookery is in a massive tree. The first time I shot it I counted over 50 nests in that one Sicamore tree, and as many birds. We hiked a mile or so through the woods to a river valley, through a couple barbed wire fences, and through a creek to find the tree. This time my heart sank to see that a house had been built on the bluff behind the tree. Most of the nests were gone, probably blown down in the winter winds, and we only saw a half a dozen great blue heron inhabiting the nests. It was still exciting to see these giant birds exit thier nests, fly off, and come back riding the winds to ever-so-gently land amongst the limbs. The sound of the raucous calls gives the scene an erie, African-like aura. I hope that the lack of nests was normal for this early in the spring and that the others would repopulate the tree in the next few weeks.

Once we had a nice lunch at base camp, we went back for another attempt at the white hawk. As luck would have it, we saw her in the distance down a dirt road and across a field. I was able to get some shots of her, both with the 100-400 lens and with the 1000 mm telescopic lens. I don't recommend a 1000mm mirrored telescopic lens for wildlife photography since it can't freeze the action of a moving subject, but it can be useful for a subject that otherwise would be to far away to get any kind of shot of. TIP: If you ever want to try using a telescopic lens with your camera you need two accessories, the camera mount and the T-adapter for your model of camera.

The white hawk was kind enough to give me some pretty nice shots this time. One is posted for your viewing pleasure. Note that this picture is made much smaller than the original for efficient Net loads. If you are interested in purchasing this or any of my photography, send an email to me at kdentonh@ix.netcom.com.

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