Raptor extravaganza

This past weekend i went to a big falconry gathering here in New York. It was awesome, there had to be atleast 50 different birds of prey. It gave some good oppurtunities to get portrait shots of raptors i would never get in the wild. They had birds including Goshawks,snowy owls, Gyrfalcons, all sorts of hybrid falcons, Hawks, Pretty much everything. It really made me want to become a falconer. Well I got a lot of pictures so this may take two posts :)


Below is a Hybrid falcon of some sort


Below is a red tail with a beautiful red background



The coolest part of the day was when one of the falconers flew his falcon. he swumg his lure around and the falcon would dive extremely fast! and hit the lure. I got the perfect shot feet out and u can see the lure in the left part of frame, he was flying so fast it was too hard to focus on it

The mighty falcon

I found a merlin along with the kestrels and other winterign raptors. We pulled u pretty close to this guy. I shot from the sunroof, which is the best way to get good shots. Hopefully this fall i will get even better shots, of this species. At fire island hawk watch i have seen over 300 merlins fly by in a single day. The best part is they are all eye level. In spring time i will post pictures of my favorite bird the peregrine falcon. They nest twenty minutes from my house!