Parham Pourahmad (USA) watches as the last rays of the setting sun illuminate a young Cooper’s hawk eating a squirrel.
Parham visited Ed R. Levin Country Park most weekends during the summer when he took this image. He wanted to showcase the variety of wildlife living within a busy metropolitan city, and to show that “nature will always be wild and unpredictable”.
For Editor and Chair of the Jury Kathy Moran, “light and intimacy pull this photograph together. The hawk and the squirrel are beautifully lit. The light feels like a spotlight; they’re so perfectly framed, and the way in which the hawk holds the squirrel feels more like an embrace than predation.”
The Cooper’s hawk is a common species across southern Canada, the USA and central Mexico. It is found in mature and open woodlands.
These adaptable birds also live in urban spaces, where they nest in tall trees and prey on smaller birds attracted by bird feeders.
They hunt by stealth, using dense cover to ambush their prey before a burst of speed takes them by surprise.
USA
Parham is a wildlife photographer from California, USA. He started photographing wildlife during the Covid-19 pandemic when he found lots of hawks in a local park. His favourite subjects are birds of prey, coyotes, sea otters and bobcats. He visits his local parks and reserves once a week and photographs the wildlife he finds in the most creative ways possible.
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