{"id":122803,"date":"2022-10-31T06:05:16","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T12:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=122803"},"modified":"2022-10-31T06:55:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T12:55:56","slug":"immature-red-tailed-hawk-in-the-crosshairs-of-an-american-kestrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/31\/immature-red-tailed-hawk-in-the-crosshairs-of-an-american-kestrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Immature Red-tailed Hawk In The Crosshairs Of An American Kestrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Except for one quick trip to Farmington Bay WMA, yesterday was my first time out photographing birds in 41 days while I’ve been recovering from major back surgery. If felt good. Very good.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When I found this immature Red-tailed Hawk I could tell something had ‘her’ interest even before I got my lens on her. By the time I got my pickup stopped (this is my second photo of her) she was obviously intensely interested in something over my left shoulder. I assumed she’d spotted prey and was about to take off after it so I fired off two quick bursts in hopes of getting takeoff and flight shots.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t potential prey that had caught her eye.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It was an incoming and pissed off male American Kestrel.<\/p>\n

I got six shots with both birds in the frame but this is the only one where both of them were sharp. The kestrel made two runs on the hawk before going on his way. I guess he figured he’d made his point and at that stage of the game, retreat was the better part of valor. After all, red-tails weigh more than nine times as much as kestrels (1080 grams vs 117 according to Sibley).<\/p>\n

Even though birds were slow yesterday morning, being out there felt like a rebirth of sorts. And after 41 days I even remembered where most of the buttons and dials are on my fairly new camera. At my age that’s something else to celebrate.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Except for one quick trip to Farmington Bay WMA, yesterday was my first time out photographing birds in 41 days while I’ve been recovering from back surgery. If felt good. Very good. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122805,"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":[340,334,394,450],"tags":[6596,131,6593,6594,5626,6595],"class_list":["post-122803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-american-kestrel-weight","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-immature-red-tailed-hawk","tag-kestrel-attacking-a-red-tailed-hawk","tag-male-american-kestrel","tag-red-tailed-hawk-weight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-1260-square-comp-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-vWH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122803","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=122803"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122839,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122803\/revisions\/122839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}