A nankeen kestrel can hover!

The nankeen kestrel is one of Australia’s smallest raptors, but it has an ability which is uncommon: it can hover! I managed to capture a hovering sequence, but it will take me a while to process. For now, I thought I’d post a single image, because it is such an interesting ability.

This is a small bird, and he chose to hover far enough away that I needed to crop the image heavily. Shot with the Sony 135mm GM lens on a Sony A1, at ISO 100 f/1.8 1/4000, but pushed half a stop in processing. The 2500 x 1667 pixels you see here was cropped pixel-for-pixel from the 8640 x 5760 of the full frame.