The swift capture of "D.B." Cooper's Hawk

Friday, March 6, 2015

The swift capture of "D.B." Cooper's Hawk

We caught a juvenile Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) on Wednesday, so I took the opportunity to get a few close ups. They're beautiful lil' hawks with plenty of attitude!
And no, they are not named after the 1971 hijacker who parachuted from Boeing 727 en-route from Portland to Seattle with $200,000. The hawk is actually named after William Cooper who was a 19th century American naturalist, conchologist, and collector.

Earlier while I was out I managed to snap a few shots of some resting Vaux's Swifts (Chaetura vauxi). The swifts and the swallows have been seen around the airport for a few weeks now, but as always -- they are hard to photograph!

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The Airport Environment

Words like, "ecosystem" and "biodiversity" aren't exactly things that one would associate with airports, but the truth is they are very attractive areas for wildlife. Airports tend to have vast open areas of grass, intermittent areas of little to no direct contact with humans, and because of both of those factors they are capable of supporting a good deal of wildlife. My airport alone has over 340 acres of grassland.
My goal here is to open your eyes to the nature, both fauna and flora but mostly fauna, that your plane is taxing past. Some of which is small and relatively insignificant in terms of affecting the safety of your flight, while others are much more serious -- all of them are beautiful. It is my charge and the charge of others at airports all across the country to attempt to mitigate this hazard when it poses a potential threat to your flight. Welcome to the nature I witness everyday. Welcome to The Wild Airport.

The Camera

Nikon D3200, with a AF-S DX Nikkor 18-200mm (as of 28JUL17, I've upgraded to a 18-300mm)

And honestly that's about as technical as I get. I've never taken a photography class; I have a tripod (at home) that I've never used for this stuff; and my photography is really just glorified snap shot shooting. It all boils down to the nature of my work. My job is not to take pictures all day. I do not get to spent hours setting up for the ideal shot. I operate on dumb luck and taking several quick photos that sometime later (sometimes days later) I end up editing in Google Picasa.
The only other thing that I've got going for me is that my camera is pretty much always with me, in the same way a camera was by my dad's side through much of his time in the war in Vietnam. I use it as a tool to analyze, capture, and report with. It also keeps me mentally engaged during long boring assignments by causing me to think of different angles and just how a composure looks through the lens.

TWA | The Wild Airport

Friday, March 6, 2015