It’s easy when photographing or viewing wildlife to want to see “the next species” or “something different.” But many and maybe most great wildlife photographs are the result not just of careful planning and competent execution, but also of repeating the process enough times until everything clicks. Adam Felde and I were in the raptor blind at the Martin’s Javelina Refuge on my Rio Grande Valley Photo Safari last week when exactly that happened for us.

The bait was out for the raptors and Harris’s Hawks from two different hunt groups were both eager to protect the kill. One was clearly dominant but it didn’t stop the other from trying to get in on the action. As you might imagine air to air combat between hawks happens very quickly and of course we missed it the first time. The second time we were more or less ready and got a few pieces of hawks in our frame. By the third or fourth time we had the sequence down pat and were starting to get some good shots. But the birds didn’t always cooperate. Sometimes the smaller one flew off when challenged without any contact and sometimes the dominant one simply sat and squawked.

Lunch time came and it was an easy decision to grab our sandwiches from the truck and eat them in the blind. Finally we got a great sequence of the two hawks flying up at each other and meeting in the air. The key in this case was the repetition and persistence. If we’d headed off to an early lunch after watching the sequence a few times we would have gotten some nice shots but would have missed the peak of action.

This is one of the best things about using private ranches for our photo safaris. We can take the time to have a great setting and watch the action unfold. Of course you can do the same thing anyplace where you watch carefully and can establish a pattern of behavior and then have the patience to let it repeat until you understand it well enough to capture the perfect moment. Nest exchanges, chick feeding, and mammals going to water to drink after a kill are all great examples of this type of repeatable behavior.