Blog Archives
Back From the Edge
Friends, I feel a little sassy and assertive this morning, back from the depths of a head cold that dumped me in my bed for three days, back from the edge of darkness. The face of this broad winged hawk woke me this morning and started giving me a pep talk, something about rising and shining. Well i will rise but the shining will have to wait until i have my fourth cup of coffee, so far only two. This hawk face needed something, so i started working with a new ( to me) piece of software, Color Effex Pro 4. I added some detail extractor and tonal contrast to liven up this image. I would highly recommend the detail extractor for raw images as it can sharpen without adding the outside ghosts that photoshop seems to excel at. While this added some noise to the background (sharpens noise) I could have easily edited that with a layer mask, but later. til Tomorrow MJ
Broad-Winged Hawk
Friends, this beautiful baby is a broad-winged Hawk and they are migrating in great numbers over Hawk Ridge. The day this was taken over 5000 passed over the ridge, and on the ninth of september over 15000 were counted over the ridge. They tend to leave the nesting area in large flocks and can form “kettles” as they circle in the air. Their diet is a varied one ranging from frogs and lizards to small birds, even on occasion they may eat a large insect. They are very numerous in the air, but they rarely visit the lower reaches of hawk ridge so this was a rare treat at the educational area. Hope you enjoy this pretty bird, til Tomorrow MJ
MJ Springett 