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Hawk Owls Encounters

by Benny Rytter

I have now been a full-time photographer for four years, doing portrait, weddings, babies and business photography. However, in my spare time or between paid jobs I'm a frequent nature and wildlife photographer.

Photographing nature was my first experience with DSLRs, also my first paid images were garden birds, sold on Istock - I do remember this with great joy.

So during the years I have made some fine shots in the wild - however, I have for a long time felt I needed something new. And I got it - a hawk owl, a rare owl in Denmark, was spotted near my home by keen birdwatchers - this was a opportunity I could not miss.

I went to the site where the hawk owl was spotted and after 10 minutes I saw this beautiful bird - I started to get my gear ready; unfortunately approaching from the opposite direction were five other photographers, they were very enthusiastic to put it mildly. They almost ran to the scene, throwing their bags to the ground, and grabbing their cameras with huge body movements, which of course scared the poor creature and it disappeared into the woods without me having any frames in the camera - end that day!

The next day I went there again with some friends; after some time we spotted the hawk owl and got some images in the distance. Even though I used the Nikon D800 I felt it was a long distance; this turned out to be right - I took around 200 frames with only two being acceptable. I was happy having at least two nice images - or so I thought - when I got home, 'pixelpeeping' the images, I could see they were good but not excellent. But I had already spent around one and a half days chasing a photo of a hawk owl - and that had to be enough time for one bird.

On day three I got a call from a keen wildlife photographer, he wanted help to locate the hawk owl - and, of course, I guided him over the phone.

Later that day I saw his images, they were much better than mine and I decided that I needed one more go at this bird - we're talking about competition here!!

So next morning I arrived at 7am, just before the sun had power to warm up the nature. This time I had come equipped for performance; small footprint and reliability with a Nikon D4, 500mm lens+ 1.4x teleconverter - all handheld - not to say a Nikon D800 won't work but it is quite another beast to handle.

After 30 minutes I spotted the hawk owl, approached him (or her) but he went off - but this time into the open terrain with low trees, making the distant woods and terrain a fantastic coloured background for the owl but also allowing for other images with blue-sky background or old trees.

I took one hour to get out there and approach the owl, taking photos for every 10 feet or so, until I surprisingly was only 10 feet away from the owl and could not focus anymore - I had reached the near focus distance of my 500mm lens.

I was all alone, no other human beings - only the owl and me, slow movements, shooting three frames, repositioning, shooting another three frames, recomposing, shooting another three frames - it went on this way for more than an hour - I was in wildlife heaven, I had some great hawk owl portraits.

However, at one point I ran out of ideas so I decided to see if it was possible to get some action shots, or at least some shots where the owl flew away, of course without scaring it, that would be cheating. After 30 minutes or so - it felt like hours - the owl spotted prey in the grass; I readied myself, waiting for lift off - BAM! The bird was gone without me having taken one single frame. Luckily it missed the target and went back to the branch and continued the 'radar surveillance' for prey - now I knew a little more of the owl's behaviour and was able to predict the lift off; next time I got two very good frames - but the owl had missed the target again so I got yet another go at it.

The last time it went for prey it used a new strategy which caught me off guard, so I didn't get any acceptable frames from the attack - but then I was blessed with one shot with the owl sitting with the prey - a lizard and

I had two shots when it went away to eat.

Again I was in luck, the owl took off in my direction before it took a left turn away, and I had the sun on my back so I got two great, yet very different shots, with the owl airborne flying away with the prey.

Truly some wonderful days with a great outcome. Hope you have enjoyed the story and the images, and I strongly encourage others to experience the wildlife.



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026