Hawk on the hunt in my back yard

horseflesh

Getting the hang of it
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Yesterday I learned that my bird feeder was also feeding the neighborhood Cooper's Hawk. I saw him pluck a dark-eyed junco out of the air right in front of my window, all the way under my patio cover! I checked the cameras and saw that he had been chasing that little bird for a minute. The mid-air intercept itself was not in view, though. (This is the 3rd time I have seen this hawk around this spring, I think he deserves a nickname.)

The first angle is an LTS (Hikvision) 4 MP turret. The second angle is a Huisun 10x PTZ v2. The PTZ is usually zoomed in more on the bird feeders but I happened to leave it parked in this wider view which paid off.

This Vimeo link has some heavy compression, the files look better at home.


And, in case it helps some future Googler, here is a little about how I made the video. I downloaded MP4 files from my LTS NVR and tried adding them directly to Magix Vegas Movie Studio 14... they were unreadable, though. I found the Hik "Format Converter" on their tools page and that let me convert the NVR's MP4 to an MP4 that Vegas could read. I created the project as 1080p/24 AVC and I guess Vegas did some interpolating between frames, which is why the 4 fps camera footage looks a little smoothed out in the above video.
 
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