![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/ferruginous-hawk-2715b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"ferruginous-hawk-2715b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nYesterday morning a wish I stated out loud actually came true.<\/p>\n
I seldom see Ferruginous Hawks anymore and it’s become rare for me to get decent photos of them. I believe the last time I posted any new Ferrug photos to my blog was about eight months ago. Very early yesterday morning while we were on our way to our shooting destination in western Utah, an area where I used to see Ferrugs fairly regularly, I said out loud “I hope we get lucky this morning and find a Ferrug up close”, or words to that effect.<\/p>\n
Less than half an hour later that’s exactly what happened. In fact we found two of them and one of them let us get close enough for what I think are some really nice flight shots. This is one of my favorite photos of that bird.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This shot was taken not long after ‘he’ took off from a fence post and headed south. I caught him in a flight posture I like very much, including an unexpected bonus – he rotated his fanned tail to give me a good look at its ventral surface. The downside to that rotated tail is that he did it so he could bank a little to his right which meant that in the shots that followed he was flying slightly away from me. But the rotated tail certainly paid off for this photo.<\/p>\n For this shot I had just about a perfect shooting angle on the bird in excellent morning light. And miracle of miracles, there was no smoke in the air – none at all. I’d almost forgotten what crystal clear air looks like. And for me the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance is the variegated dark background provided by the desert mountains to the west. For my sensibilities backgrounds similar to this one are infinitely more interesting and appealing than plain blue sky.<\/p>\n With everything going on for the rest of the day yesterday I didn’t have time or opportunity to go through all of my photos and process more of these Ferrug shots for today’s post. Expect to see more of them soon.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday morning a wish I stated out loud actually came true.<\/p>\n