Photo by Kort Duce
A female Cooper’s hawk captures a female house finch while hunting along the riparian corridor of St. Vrain Creek in Longmont, Colorado. I had been photographing the male when she suddenly flew in, landing within 30 feet of me—where this image was made.
In this horizontal color photograph, the hawk perches with its prey on a substantial branch that angles from the upper right to the lower left of the frame. A smaller branch rises from it and exits the frame. The Cooper’s hawk clutches the house finch in its right talon, the finch’s eye barely open. The hawk is shown in left profile, its head turned slightly farther left. A shadow from a nearby branch crosses its chest and wing, while a shaft of sunlight catches its red eye, making it glow.
The background is a soft blur of riparian forest—tree trunks, layered foliage in varying shades of green, and a faint hint of blue sky.
A powerful reminder that nature is, at its core, about survival. Ok
A female Cooper’s hawk captures a female house finch while hunting along the riparian corridor of St. Vrain Creek in Longmont, Colorado.
I had been photographing the male when she suddenly flew in, landing within 30 feet of me.
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