The Hawk, the Lizard, and the Heron I Almost Missed
By Ceci Ellis
Mother Cooper’s Hawk keeping watch over her baby.
These four photos came out of three completely different outings: a park visit that turned into a hawk-rescue misunderstanding, a hike at Pinnacle Peak, and an afternoon at the pond that started with one bird and ended with two. None of them were the shot I actually planned on getting.
At a local park a few weeks back, a small crowd had gathered around a fledgling Cooper's hawk sitting on the ground, several people already on their phones searching for a wildlife rescue number, worried it had fallen from the nest and been abandoned. Nobody was looking up. The mother was perched in a nearby tree the entire time, watching the situation as closely as any parent would; she just wasn't going to swoop down and confirm it for a crowd of concerned strangers. I switched to my longest lens, backed off enough to leave both birds alone, and waited. It took a few minutes before she settled enough to hold still for the shot: her sharp eyes locked on the ground below her, dead still, waiting everyone out same as I was. Fledgling hawks spend time on the ground while they figure out flying, and a parent keeping watch nearby is normal, not abandonment. Most of the ‘rescue’, a situation like that needs is for people to back off.
The desert spiny lizard was a much quieter encounter, on a hike at Pinnacle Peak Park. These lizards are usually gone before you've even lifted the camera, quick to bolt off a rock the second they clock you moving; they spend a good part of the day basking on sun-warmed rock to regulate their body temperature, which is usually the only reason they hold still at all. This one held its head up and let me get close enough for the shot, sunlit against a flat blue sky, before it decided I'd overstayed my welcome and vanished into the brush. No trick to it beyond moving slow and getting lucky with one lizard that hadn't decided to flee yet.
The heron wasn't even the bird I went out for that day. I was set up watching a cormorant at a local park pond, camera on a slower, more deliberate setting since it wasn't going anywhere fast, when the heron came in low and fast across the water, wings fully extended. There was no time to rethink settings or plan the shot, just switch to burst mode and hope the shutter speed I already had would freeze the wings instead of blurring them. I burned through about twenty frames trying to catch it mid-flight before I got the one where the wings, the angle, and the light all lined up. Nineteen of those twenty are trash.
Desert Spiny Lizard judging my hiking abilities
Great Blue Heron in Flight
The cormorant, it turns out, wasn't such a bust after all. Earlier in that same session, before the heron ever showed up, I'd caught it mid-launch off the water, wings up, spray still hanging in the air; a genuinely good shot in its own right, the kind I'd have been happy to call the best of the day. The heron just happened to fly in and top it before I'd even lowered the camera.
Cormorant landing on the water
