Several years ago I went camping with some family at Chenango Valley State Park in New York. It turned out to be a really good spot for birding. And we didn’t even have to leave our campsite.

On multiple occasions we were able to watch a group of juvenile Cooper’s Hawks fly around in the forest. This was right near our campsite. It was the prefect viewing opportunity.

My dad and I had so much fun watching them and photographing them.

It was rally dark in the forest there. This required using settings I normally would not prefer to user in the photography.

I rally like this image of one of the juvenile Cooper’s Hawks on a tree branch. It is clear in this photo that the juvenile has managed to catch some prey. And it is really cool to see the bird flapping its wings and the movement of the wings is evident in the edge of the wing in the background.

I created this image using my Nikon D300S camera body 300mm lens and teleconverter. The aperture was f/5.6. And it was dark so the ISO was dialed up to 2000. Even with the ISO this high I could only achieve a shutter speed of 1/500 second which is less than ideal for handholding a camera and photographing moving wildlife for me.