Chasing shots of birds at Sandbanks

Another shot from my older camera, dug from the archives.

A Canadian military chopper hovers over the county on a training mission.

Living relatively near a military base and surrounded by open country, there are fairly frequent training sorties conducted by the military passing overhead in the summer.  I think this is a Twin Huey, but  I’m not sure – it could be a Griffon. I’m a) not on the right angle and b) not that good at picking them out from small details anyway.

This single chopper was doing landings and takeoffs not far away… recently we saw 3 choppers flying in formation which would have been an interesting pic, except I wasn’t ready with my camera (it was in the bag in the back of our van). Wish I’d caught that picture.

A marsh hawk on an evening hunt, hovering over Wolfe Island, Ontario

Normally, I would only post pictures I consider to be my better stuff on here – a certain level of clarity needs to exist to meet my standards. A few I’ve posted haven’t been super-stellar, IMO, but when you are digging in your archives for material sometimes you just begin to feel you are being TOO fussy.

This one I am NOT going to be too fussy about because this one is for me – a ‘new’ sentimental favourite. At first, I’d assumed it was a marsh hawk.  Then when I got home, I looked more closely and a trick of the light made it look like it was possibly a Hawk-Owl and that got me very excited and I posted it as such. However, after an hour or so of research, I found a picture which matched up the angles and confirmed my first suspicions. Still, this is the first time I have been close enough to any hovering raptor to actually get a picture worth using. So, even though it isn’t the owl I hoped for, it is still, for me, a cool photography moment. We’d gone on a scouting expedition intending only catch-as-catch-can shots and fate smiled.

I’ve done everything I can to sharpen it – but it was taken sitting from the side of the road in a running vehicle and I’m afraid that I can’t make it any better. But, it’s a special one for me, and I am hoping to get another crack at him in the future when we return to Wolfe Island.