I am pretty sure this is a Cooper Hawk with the color of its eyes. I was debating if this was possibly a Red-Tail Hawk, as those are pretty common in New Jersey. The texture does not seem to fit a Red Shoulder or Red Tail, so I will go with the Cooper Hawk id. This is why birding is so much fun.

This is a Blue Magpie that I was able to capture in a mountain area of Taiwan. These shots were really tough as it was pretty early in the morning; lighting was not great; I was at a pretty far distance from my subjects; had no tripod available. I shot in manual mode with f-stop 5.6, shutter speed 1/500, and ISO 8000. F-stop does not go any lower at 400mm max and I really couldn’t set my shutter speed any slower. DIdn’t want to go any higher than ISO 8000 so not too much noise would be introduced into my shots. In the end, I really liked the 2nd image of the magpie flying through the opening in the trees. I had no choice but to shoot that at 1/400, which is really not a good shutter speed for a bird in flight. My thoughts are always do the best with what you got.

These are just shots that I really enjoy. Some of the pics are from Taiwan and the rest are from America including New Jersey and the White Ibis from Florida. From Left to Right: Image 1- Juv. Blue Heron (white color) with Night Heron; Image 2- Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher; Image 3- Pacific Rim Heron with crabs; Image 4- Taiwan Green Beret; Image 5- Ibis; Image 6- Blue Heron (typical in NJ); Image 7- Yellow Belly Gnatcatcher; Image 8- Taiwan Mountain Thrush