Crested Caracara

Laura and I were out the door, October 14, at 6:30AM and on our way to visit the Crested Caracara at Gaspereau, Nova Scotia. We found the bird on our second pass at 8AM along Highway #1 sitting atop a utility pole. I tried to photograph the bird with a heavy hand held 850mm lens, full frame, but alas despite vibration control the images were fuzzy and useless. When I was setting up my tripod Richard Stern arrived wisely using a hand held setup. The bird flew into the trees directly into a back lit situation with the morning sun. I didn't move far enough along the road to counter the backlighting before it fly to the north east, hence all my photos were contaminated with noise.

I detest noise in photos since it makes them near to useless for printing so after the noise removal process a lot of detail was lost in the images. I will revisit them later using different techniques.

I have several flight photos as it flew away but unfortunately they are tiny sillouettes and not useful.

Look for this bird to reappear in freshly plowed fields at Grand Pre, Windsor or along the Noel shore. On the other hand it could still be in the area.

Crested Caracara

Crested Caracara Crested Caracara Crested Caracara Crested Caracara

Here's a much better photo taken at Lawrencetown in September of 2013.