Friends, this sharp-shinned Hawk is spreading her wings and tail to fly away. I think this image is a “pleasing blur” as described by Arthur Morris and Denise Ippolito in their book by the same name.  You can check it out at: https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=298.

I have been practicing my flying shots and found that using the manual mode, setting the aperture to f8 and the shutter speed to 1/1000, while putting the iso selection on auto, works well on these flight shots. Using a central focus point and panning with the image stabilization on setting 2 is also part of my digital data for this image.  Larger birds are best for practicing the panning technique so go out and find a bird.  Practice, practice, practice.  My goal is to be able to pan the smaller birds of winter, juncos, chickadees and pine grosbeaks.  til Tomorrow MJ