Learning to Fly

D4
600mm +TC = 850
1/1600
manual Exposure
F/stop 7.1
ISO 800
Metering Center Weighted
White Balance Manual/cloudy
Tripod with Wimberly head
Cropped 76.5% (from 16.163 million pixels down to 3.807 million pixels)
Taken May 28

This image is of a juvi white tail kite that had just fledged the nest the day this image was taken. This was not his first flight but his second. His first flight was from the nest to another tree less than 10 feet away. I've noticed over the past 3 years that when white tail kites leave the nest they do so with maximum intrepidation and fear. They typically fly from one tree to the next occasionally taking a little bit longer flight but with the same intense pose. They are screaming as loud as they can with mouths wide open, their talons are always down and they almost always crash into what ever they are attempting to land on. Generally it takes them a while to right them selves, climb up to a limb that can support them, and get up the nerve to take off again. This goes on for only a couple of days before they are really getting their nerve and their moves down. Within 5-10 days they are acrobatic enough to be doing in air food exchanges with dad. They are also acrobatic enough to do the exchanges where ever you are not so it makes getting images of these guys really tough.
This image is of the kite coming back to the nest where it's 3 other siblings still are. This is just before he hit the tree branches, went upside down hanging by one talon and his beak, deciding it was better to just let go, and crash into the branches beneath him. This flight pose is very typical of the juvis first flight attempts.
As you can see, the feathers are not fully developed yet making flight all the more difficult for them.
This was taken on a cloudy day with foggy conditions making for difficult light but the kites are sooo white that cloud cover is preferred when shooting them so the whites don't get blown out. On a sunny day you can shoot these guys at 5-8000 of a second.
Thanks for looking and please let me know what you think. Larger version available. This is not super defined because of the huge crop that is typical when trying to catch an image of these guys plus I didn't want to get too close to the nest.