{"id":102801,"date":"2021-09-28T05:29:35","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T11:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=102801"},"modified":"2021-09-28T07:16:30","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T13:16:30","slug":"three-recent-and-very-different-red-tailed-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/28\/three-recent-and-very-different-red-tailed-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Recent And Very Different Red-tailed Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

A juvenile, an adult and a rufous morph.<\/p>\n

The Red-tailed Hawk is the most variably plumaged raptor in North America with up to 16 subspecies recognized by various authorities, in addition to age related variations. Here’s a small, very small, sampling. Each of these three photos was taken in northern Utah in the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, 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

As I mentioned, some of the variations in red-tails are age related. This is an immature light morph, photo taken soon after takeoff. The composition of this version of the photo is a little atypical for me because I wanted to include the sagebrush at the bottom of the frame to ground the bird.<\/span><\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 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 is an adult taking off from a juniper and showing off the namesake red tail of mature individuals of the species. Also note the dark eye.<\/p>\n

Occasionally some of my readers accuse me of being too nitpicky about my images because I often point out and complain about their flaws. Well, I like this one despite its flaws. The image quality isn’t great, the hawk’s head and eye could be a little sharper and the sidelight is strong – to the point that I had to do more processing of the image than I like to in order to tone down the extreme lighting contrasts in the photo.<\/p>\n

But there’s something about this shot that draws me in. It’s probably a combination of things, including the spotlight on the hawk’s face and eye with enough light there to even get a catch light in the eye. I also like the dark, foreboding background.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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 is an adult rufous morph red-tail taking off from some rocks above me.<\/p>\n

This photo and photo #1 were taken within 30 minutes of each other on the same morning and in the same area so it’s very possible that this rufous adult is one of the parents of the immature light morph in the first photo.<\/p>\n

Rufous morphs producing light morph offspring and vice versa. The biologist in me wishes I knew how the genetics of all that works.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A juvenile, an adult and a rufous morph.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,450],"tags":[452,146,768,5950,1472,451,4480,311],"class_list":["post-102801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-flight","tag-immature","tag-juvenile-and-adult","tag-light-morph","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rufous-morph","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/red-tailed-hawk-9482-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qK5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102801"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102834,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102801\/revisions\/102834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}