I was fortunate to come across this most cooperative juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk over the recent holiday break. Using the newly acquired pre-capture mode in my camera makes it much easier to grab shots like these. By half-pressing the shutter button, the camera stores half a second’s worth of frames in its buffer. Immediately after the action takes place, fully depressing the shutter button will instruct the camera to write the images from the previous half-second onto the card. As long as you are on the ball, missing unpredictable action shots like a bird leaving its perch will be a thing of the past.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 