{"id":111053,"date":"2022-05-13T05:11:55","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T11:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=111053"},"modified":"2022-05-13T06:52:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T12:52:14","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-perched-stretching-and-soaring-overhead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/13\/red-tailed-hawk-perched-stretching-and-soaring-overhead\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk – Perched, Stretching And Soaring Overhead"},"content":{"rendered":"

More evidence that immature buteos tend to be less wary than adults.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 400. Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Two days ago in a remote area of northern Utah this presumed female immature Red-tailed Hawk was hunting the rabbit brush directly below her so intently that I had a very hard time getting eye contact from her. I was so close I had to remove my teleconverter but even so she wouldn’t look at me or even show me her eye – she was nearly always looking almost straight down for potential prey. This is one of the relatively few times she wasn’t.<\/p>\n

There’s very little color in this setting but except for the fairly inconspicuous old wooden fence post she’s perched on it’s entirely natural so I’m fine with it.<\/p>\n

I’m referring to her as female because of the thickness of her tarsi<\/a><\/span><\/span>, which becomes more evident in the photos below.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 250. Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

After quite a while she started stretching so I figured she was about to give up on this hunting spot and go elsewhere. In this shot, the best one I got to show the extension of her wing and tail, her nictitating membrane is covering most of her right eye.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 250. Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s one where her membrane can’t be seen. This was a very long stretch, so long that I got more than two dozen shots of it but in most of those photos she was looking almost straight ahead so neither eye could be seen very well.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 250. Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, when she began to stretch her right leg, she looked to her right so I had a look at her face in good light again. .<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 250. Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It took her a while but I was right, her stretching was preliminary to taking off. Here she’s beginning to turn on her perch in order to launch into the north breeze. As she was turning she had some difficulty keeping both feet on the small perch and maintaining her balance.<\/p>\n

I didn’t like the takeoff and initial flight shots I got but after she lifted off she…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 250. Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

soared in circles overhead for long enough for me to get a few shots I like with a nearby high mountain in the background. Most of my photos of her up there had plain blue sky in the background, a background I’m not particularly fond of because it’s homogenous and I think, kind of boring.<\/p>\n

I know, that’s an opinion I tend to be in the minority about.<\/p>\n

.Ron<\/p>\n

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

More evidence that immature buteos tend to be less wary than adults.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111059,"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":[689,452,137,515,451,1098,511,6335,311],"class_list":["post-111053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-box-elder-county","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-female","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-soaring","tag-stretching","tag-tarsi-thickness","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/red-tailed-hawk-1259-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sTb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111053","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=111053"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111103,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111053\/revisions\/111103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}