{"id":138635,"date":"2023-06-30T05:36:38","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T11:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=138635"},"modified":"2023-06-30T07:27:48","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T13:27:48","slug":"swainsons-hawk-takeoff-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/30\/swainsons-hawk-takeoff-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Swainson’s Hawk Takeoff Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finally, a bird in good light after several days of fog, overcast skies and wind.<\/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

Eight days ago, in Montana’s Centennial Valley, this female (I believe) Swainson’s Hawk was the first bird I photographed during a long and successful day in the field. The sun had come up only minutes before and skies were clear so the light was warm and wonderful and the hawk was cooperative.<\/p>\n

These five photos are consecutive without any skips. Here she’s looking at me, almost certainly with a jaundiced eye (some would call it stink-eye), just prior to takeoff.<\/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

When I’ve posted raptor takeoff series in the past I’ve usually left out photos like this one, with the bird squatting on its perch just before pushing off. I shouldn’t have. It’s part of the process of taking off.<\/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

When I capture photos similar to this one, with the bird’s legs bent at perfectly right angles and most of the bird’s weight hanging over the perch, it often looks to me like the hawk is stationary and about to topple over and do a face plant. It makes no sense but that’s what comes to mind.<\/p>\n

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1\/2700, 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

My favorite photo of the series.<\/p>\n

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1\/2700, 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

And she’s on her way.<\/p>\n

I got quite a few more nice photos of her in flight but after this one I wasn’t following her quite fast enough to my left with my lens, so in many of them she was too close to the left frame edge. If I post more flight shots of her in the future I may have to add canvas on the left side of the frame to get a composition I like.<\/p>\n

That’s something I prefer to avoid doing but if I like a photo well enough I’ve been known to do it anyway. We’ll see.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Finally, a bird in good light after several days of fog, overcast skies and wind. (5 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138639,"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":[334,1493,645],"tags":[647,555,137,146,220,646,851,317],"class_list":["post-138635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-centennial-valley","tag-female","tag-flight","tag-montana-2","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-taking-off","tag-warm-light"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/swainsons-hawk-4527-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-A43","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138635","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=138635"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138677,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138635\/revisions\/138677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}