posted a photo of that bird,<\/a><\/span><\/span> along with an explanation of how that combination (light eyes of an immature bird and red tail of an adult) occasionally occurs in the same bird.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-1435-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-1435-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nAbout 15 minutes before I photographed that red-tail I found this one on a rocky perch further down the road. At the time I didn’t realize this bird was a light-eyed adult because in those photos I couldn’t tell for sure if it had a red tail.<\/p>\n
But I soon became preoccupied with something other than the color of its tail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-1460-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-1460-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThe boulder it was perched on.<\/p>\n
Over the years I’ve driven past this unusually shaped rock many hundreds of times but I’d never noticed its distinctive, almost cuboidal shape and crystalline-looking structure when seen from this angle – probably because I’d never photographed a bird perched on it from this angle.<\/p>\n
Once I realized how much I liked the shape and size of the boulder I took a chance on missing the takeoff and flight shots by taking some photos vertically that include the entire boulder. I may be alone in this but for me the boulder in this vertical composition is at least as important as the hawk. I like that rock a lot.<\/p>\n
Not to say I wouldn’t do something differently if I had a do-over. The boulder isn’t as sharp as I’d prefer. I wish I’d thought to remove my teleconverter or change my aperture, or both, to give me more depth of field. But I didn’t and with birds we almost never get do-overs.<\/p>\n
For that reason I envy landscape photographers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-1486-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-1486-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nWhen the hawk eventually took off it launched away from me but this shooting angle, combined with its flight posture, confirmed that it was a light-eyed adult, almost certainly the same one I’d be photographing again about 15 minutes later. That red tail is hard to miss.<\/p>\n
But in my mind I keep going back to the boulder perch in the second photo and wishing it were sharper. You can bet your shutter finger that in the future I’ll be watching extra carefully for birds perched on it. And paying more attention to my depth of field.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PS – I hope you’re dealing with the time change better than I am. Based on my track record I’ll be messed up for at least three days.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This time on a perch that steals the show. (3 photos)<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123119,"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":[6,334,450],"tags":[6604,6606,452,105,451,6605,311],"class_list":["post-123118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-adult-with-light-eyes","tag-boulder-perch","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-depth-of-field","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-unusually-shaped-rock","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-1435-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-w1M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123118","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=123118"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123186,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123118\/revisions\/123186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}