The main objective was to capture images of the jaguars of the Pantanal, Brazil’s wetland conservation area, but when a family of Black-collared Hawks came to fish, Todd Gustafson and the ten participants in his photo instructional tour turned their lenses to the activity on the river.

“We were in three boats, and we positioned ourselves to get the best light on them as they came in,” Todd says. “There were three, two adults and a baby, so we had multiple chances.” Which meant plenty of opportunities to try out various focusing methods, including tracking focus and closest subject priority, and a lot of different focus points. “It was like a college level course in bird flight photography,” Todd says.

Still, because of the speed of the hawks, the first couple of passes were frustrating. “But I pointed out that if you miss a shot, it’s not the end—they’ll be back. With repetitive behaviors you can keep doing it until you make the right adjustments to catch the action.”

Todd shot this image with his D3 and an AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G IF-ED (at 400mm), selecting the center sensor, continuous focus and 11 frames per second advance. He hand held the camera (some of the participants had tripods set up in the boats), and his exposure was 1/2000 second, f/4, ISO 800, with aperture priority and Matrix metering chosen.

“The hawks are habituated to humans,” Todd says, “so it was not a big deal for us to be there. We were quiet and just let them go about their daily routine.”

Routine, yes, but with one important variation. “We did toss out some bait fish for them. There are piranha in the water, and our guide would scoop one up with his hat and toss it, and the hawks came flying in. They knew a free meal was coming.” But it came in small portions: “To keep them fishing, he threw small fish. With a big fish, they eat and they’re full.”

And when they’re full, the photography lesson’s over.