The other night I decided I would go out to my favorite regional park Lake Chabot and do some work with my new wildlife lens. Photography has changed in that the sensors in today's camera's are outstanding. In the Nikon D4 that I shoot, the ISO can be run up to a very high number to compensate for the low light of the evening sunset. This coupled with a very fast lens, 600mm f/4 -the wildlife opportunities are boundless.

I had been watching a couple of young Red Tail Hawk hunt the surrounding hillsides. Since I wasn't going to try to disguise myself as a bush, I set the lens down where I knew the light would be nice on my subject. I had hoped that one of the hawks would start working the hill in the sunlight and I got lucky.

This youngster landed on a bush to see what was on the menu this evening - so it enabled me to get into position to photograph him when he would take off.

He didn't stay too long, maybe about 20 seconds, but that was enough time for me to frame up the shot, check my exposure and lock in a good focus.

I was able to buzz through about 10 frames before he was lost in the shadows - but I'll be back and I'm fairly certain the hawk will be there as well.