Juvenile red-tailed hark

[PeterAit]

This guy was scoping our back yard for lunch. I wish it had taken one of our plentiful squirrels! You gotta love those talons! Nikon D-700 w/ 80-200mm f/2.8.

[francois]

Half relaxed! Great shot, I like the fierce look.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Great shot!

[John R]

He does look fierce and has the look of saying to the photographer, I have my eye on you. Your image appears to be at least as sharp as the hawk's talons. Did you by chance sharpen the whole image? Because both the sky and bokeh look overly sharpened.

JR

[Rajan Parrikar]

Good shot. I would have mistaken it for a falcon.

PS: You have a typo in your post header.

[Kevin Gallagher]

 That guy is packing some serious hardware! Some years back I started putting feeders out in the yard to attract birds to photograph, every now and again I would find a bunch of fluff and feathers in small, circular formation on the ground. Then one day, I saw a Cooper's Hawk at work. I continued feeding the birds but always kind of felt bad for the ones that got picked off. Good catch Pete!

[Alan Klein]

Nice shot.

[PeterAit]

He does look fierce and has the look of saying to the photographer, I have my eye on you. Your image appears to be at least as sharp as the hawk's talons. Did you by chance sharpen the whole image? Because both the sky and bokeh look overly sharpened.

JR

I probably applied sharpening in LR, but I fail to see any artifacts. Here's the image straight out of the camera with no processing except cropping.

[John R]

I probably applied sharpening in LR, but I fail to see any artifacts. Here's the image straight out of the camera with no processing except cropping.

Not really artifacts, just the look of sharpened bokeh to my eyes, especially the green areas. I always thought bokeh is soft and unresolved. Or perhaps its my eyes or that what a smaller(?) f stop looks like? Doesn't matter much, it's still very nice.

JR