Northern Harrier - male

I know that not everyone appreciates head-on flight shots and there's certainly a lot going on in this background but it's not often that I get a male harrier coming directly at me at this close range.

Besides, there's an interesting story behind this image. Lia and I were photographing this bird (from my pickup, harrier at about the 10 o'clock position to the truck) while it was perched on the indentation you see in the grass pile in the lower right quadrant of the frame (perhaps 60' from us). After a while a junco landed square in the middle of my truck hood and the harrier immediately took interest. He watched the junco for about 10 seconds, apparently trying to decide which instinct to listen to - hunting or "fear of man". Finally he could resist no longer and took off directly toward the junco. If you look carefully at his eyes you can see that he isn't really focused on me but on the junco, three feet to my right.

He made it about halfway to my truck and the junco before he apparently decided that discretion really is the better part of valor, changed his mind and veered to his right in front of us, too close for my lens and too fast for my reflexes. What fun!

7D, 1/3200, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, cropped to 50% of original frame, image was somewhat underexposed so I brought up exposure in RAW, no processing to the background, shot from pickup window on 11-24-2009, not baited

Comments/critique appreciated