Bird Watching: An Update and some Camera Setting Questions, 0 by pelletory

pelletory wrote:
After a long time of not seeing this lonely juvenile Red-tailed Hawk, he finally made an appearance for a few minutes in the air space over my home. Here is the previous thread about him.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1019031/

He looks great and I was so happy to see him! The skies were completely overcast with thick whitish clouds and a lot of dark clouds too. Since there were the dark clouds around I decided to pull the shutter speed down to 1/800 just in case he flew in front of the dark clouds. The focal length was 450-500mm with the ISO at 400 and the AV at f 9.

Here is my question: This season we have had a LOT of these thick white clouds around and normally I would think to go with a higher shutter speed like 1250. Am I correct in assuming the shutter speed should be higher with these white clouds as the background? Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Now back to the hawk.