{"id":103502,"date":"2021-10-20T05:04:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T11:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=103502"},"modified":"2021-10-20T05:04:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T11:04:00","slug":"recently-i-found-the-male-rufous-red-tailed-hawk-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/20\/recently-i-found-the-male-rufous-red-tailed-hawk-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Recently I Found The Male Rufous Red-tailed Hawk Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

And when he took off he was kind enough to demonstrate a flight posture that some folks misinterpret.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

Three days ago I relocated the male rufous Red-tailed Hawk and his mate that I’ve been keeping track of and photographing for the last six months or so. I think of both of them as old friends so every time I find them again it’s like a happy reunion, at least for me.\u00a0For this shot I wasn’t particularly close to him and I wasn’t using my teleconverter so he was pretty small in the uncropped frame.<\/p>\n

Before we go any further, how would you interpret this photo? What has just happened?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I first began photographing raptors I’d have misinterpreted this photo and I suspect there’s a lot of other folks out there who might do the same thing. His feet hanging down, rather than tucked under his tail, strongly suggests that the hawk has taken off recently. That combined with the portion of the bush in the lower left corner of the frame might cause many viewers to assume that the bush is the perch that he took off from.<\/p>\n

But that just doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a different composition of the same photo. He actually took off from the top of the rock on the far left rather than from the bush.<\/p>\n

To the experienced eye, even in the first photo that doesn’t include the rock, it’s pretty obvious that he didn’t take off from right side of the bush. When birds, particularly large heavy raptors, take off they have to push off with their legs and feet so for the first wing flap or two after takeoff their legs and feet are extended mostly backward, not down. At least not straight down like this.<\/p>\n

In this photo the hawk is still too close to the right side of the bush for him to have taken off from there and not have his legs still extended backward. This flight posture, with the feet hanging down, only comes later in the takeoff process. Soon after this shot was taken, after he’d gained more flight speed, he tucked his feet and legs under his tail for aerodynamic purposes.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that raptors never<\/em> have their feet hanging down immediately after takeoff. Takeoffs are dynamic and fluid and depending on the intention of the bird’s launch it’s possible that their feet could be hanging down so soon after takeoff. But in my experience it’s highly unusual.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OK, I’ve beat that drum to death. Apologies to my readers to whom all this is old hat. But I suspect some folks who read this post will learn something.<\/p>\n

To some it might only be meaningless minutia but birders and bird photographers tend to be interested in this kind of thing.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

And when he took off he was kind enough to demonstrate a flight posture that some folks misinterpret.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103503,"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":[6,334,395,450],"tags":[5985,211,5983,5984,311],"class_list":["post-103502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-how-to-interpret-takeoff-postures","tag-male","tag-rufous-morph-red-tailed-hawk","tag-the-dynamics-of-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-5467-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qVo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103502","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=103502"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103531,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103502\/revisions\/103531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}