As I was carrying my camera out to the car before heading to the farmer's market, (Much to SWMBO's chagrin,) I saw what appeared to be a bird of prey land on one of the power poles I use for testing out new lenses, so I pulled the lens cap and went to town with my 55-300 PLM. Here are the better shots.

I panned poorly on several and accidentally changed to F/10 rather than staying at f/9 or f/8. Broad Winged Hawk soaring at 190 and 210mm as well as screaming at me for disturbing his rest on the power pole. All shots were taken while standing in my driveway, P/P in DxO then cropped.

[reh321]

In the third one, it is hard to make out his face, but in general these are fine photos of a difficult target. It is encouraging to see how well your KP + PLM lens focused.

[tomcook]

Nice! I rarely get decent shots of our local red breasted hawk. You inspired me to keep trying.

[SSGGeezer]

In the third one, it is hard to make out his face, but in general these are fine photos of a difficult target. It is encouraging to see how well your KP + PLM lens focused.

He flew off the post before I got more than 10 yards closer and I had to hurry when shooting because the wife was complaining about my swinging about trying to shoot the bird as it came overhead, when she wanted to leave, "right now!" Also the sun was behind him and almost directly overhead, maybe just a little to the bird's left when on the pole so not the best conditions.

[funkythiru]

Nice shots.

[SSGGeezer]

He is still in the area and flew over a couple days ago while I was watering my tomatoes so I did not get any more shots of him. I will try to get down to the preserve where there were about 4 or 5 of them and get some images in the next few days. Numbers are based on the ones I could see as well as the ones I could hear calling back and forth while tracking visible birds.