{"id":109454,"date":"2022-04-02T05:41:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-02T11:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=109454"},"modified":"2022-04-02T05:55:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-02T11:55:00","slug":"turkey-vulture-takeoff-and-flight-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/02\/turkey-vulture-takeoff-and-flight-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Vulture Takeoff And Flight Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a good day for Turkey Vultures. I saw quite a few and photographed several up close, perched and in flight.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Early in the morning temps were in the low 30’s when I got this one in my viewfinder as ‘he’ was warming up with his back to the rising sun. He looked so lethargic I thought he was just going to go back to sleep so I was a little surprised when…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

he took off. There was sagebrush blocking the first downbeat of his left wing so…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

he rotated his body a little to his right which allowed a good look at his entire dorsal surface in the warm light. He even gave me a head turn which put good light on his face and provided eye contact in what turned out to be my favorite photo of the series.<\/p>\n

When he took off he gained elevation more quickly than I expected (probably to avoid the sagebrush) so I clipped his wings several times.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Seven frames later I caught him in another flight posture I like.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

After this peekaboo shot he was gone. In this photo my active focus point went astray so his head is a little soft but I decided to include it to show the blood on his right leg. I often photograph raptors with blood from prey on their legs, feet and\/or faces but it’s unusual for me to photograph a scavenging vulture with what appears to be fresh blood anywhere on its body.<\/p>\n

Photographing black or nearly black birds in very warm morning light typically makes the colors of their very dark feathers look a little funky and these photos are no exception. But these colors are produced by natural conditions and I like the takeoff and flight postures so I decided to be more flexible about it than usual.<\/p>\n

Besides, it’s my way of welcoming the vultures back. I’ve missed having them around this past winter.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Yesterday was a good day for Turkey Vultures. (5 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109457,"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":[334,910],"tags":[689,912,146,6282,644,2738,911,311,317],"class_list":["post-109454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-turkey-vultures","tag-box-elder-county","tag-cathartes-aura","tag-flight","tag-fresh-blood","tag-sagebrush","tag-takeoff","tag-turkey-vulture","tag-utah-2","tag-warm-light"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/turkey-vulture-7026-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sto","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109454","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=109454"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109496,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109454\/revisions\/109496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}