Tag Archives: red tailed hawk

lucky shot

Red Tailed Hawk returning to nest
Red Tailed Hawk returning to nest
While showing my favorite desert area to my visiting friend Dayton, he spots a huge nest in a Saguaro. We decide to continue on and then stop on the way back. At that time, we see both a male and female Red Tailed Hawk sitting in a Palo Verde by the Saguaro so I grabbed my little Canon with the 24x zoom and pointed it at the nest. It didn’t take long for one to return to the nest. Lucky shot!

super zoom compact cameras

Click image for a larger version. Use your scroll bar to navigate.
Click image for a larger version. Use your scroll bar to navigate.

The Canon SX10 IS with 20X OPTICAL zoom camera continues to amaze me! Although I usually carry an SLR when I’m hiking, I do not like to carry big lenses so I miss many animal and bird shots but this test shows I won’t have to miss them anymore. At first I was just using the SX10 as binoculars but now I realize that I can get pretty good
photos from extreme distances. I would need to carry a very heavy 600mm lens to get this close. Since I’m usually just documenting flora and fauna, this kind of result is more than adequate for me!

I read yesterday that Nikon is introducing a 24X optical zoom compact (available in March). Compacts are obviously are moving up in quality by leaps and bounds. Both the Canon and Nikon are under $400.