{"id":15689,"date":"2013-05-29T04:17:40","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T10:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=15689"},"modified":"2013-05-29T04:17:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T10:17:40","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-a-twisting-take-off-after-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/29\/red-tailed-hawk-a-twisting-take-off-after-prey\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk – A Twisting Take-off After Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sturdy, broad-winged buteos tend to be large\u00a0raptors with correspondingly slower movements than most smaller birds.\u00a0 Most of the time when I’m watching them they’re\u00a0hunting from an elevated perch or soaring overhead and in neither situation do they typically\u00a0demonstrate much\u00a0quickness or agility.<\/p>\n

But they can put on quite\u00a0the show when they need to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Last fall this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk had already made an attempt at prey (a vole) while hunting from an old metal gate and\u00a0after\u00a0it came up empty-taloned\u00a0it landed on this sign very close to the original perch.\u00a0 Most of the time it was concentrating on the hillside rising in front of the bird so it had its back to me and I assumed that it would take off away from me and give me more butt shots that would end up in my delete bin.\u00a0 I was wrong.<\/p>\n

The bird turned its head to scan the slope directly\u00a0behind it, spotted a vole in the grass…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and instantly twisted and crouched to give it some spring at take-off…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and then\u00a0launched in the exact opposite direction than it had been facing on the perch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Since at this point\u00a0the hawk\u00a0had virtually no air speed it had to flare every available flight feather to keep from stalling as it gained momentum.\u00a0 You can see how quickly this turn was made by noting that the sign post is still sharp.\u00a0 At this distance from the bird (46 meters) with my camera (Canon 7D) and my lens (500mm without teleconverter) at this aperture (7.1), my depth of field for sharpness is about 7 ft. so the hawk had to be within that distance from the post when I snapped the photo.\u00a0 I suspect it was actually\u00a0significantly closer to the post\u00a0than that.<\/p>\n

Note: here’s a link to a\u00a0very good DOF calculator <\/a>for any photography geeks out there…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the next image the\u00a0hawk is already gaining speed, even this close to the perch (seen at lower right of frame and it’s still sharp).<\/p>\n

Since this blog post is more about the athleticism of the hawk than the aesthetics of the images I’ve left the sign\u00a0post in the last two photos.\u00a0 If I were to actually print these shots I’d have to consider whether or not to clone it out – always a difficult decision for me.<\/p>\n

The agility and quickness of these large birds is impressive and I thought this series demonstrated that fairly well (and no, I don’t remember if the hawk caught\u00a0a vole this time – I know, “take notes,\u00a0 take notes!).<\/p>\n

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

The sturdy, broad-winged buteos tend to be large raptors with correspondingly slower movements than most smaller birds. Most of the time when I’m watching them they’re hunting from an elevated perch or soaring overhead and in neither situation do they typically demonstrate much quickness or agility.<\/p>\n

But they can put on quite the show when they need to.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[577,452,67,68,105,1481,178,260,451,315],"class_list":["post-15689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-canon-500mm-f4","tag-canon-7d","tag-depth-of-field","tag-depth-of-field-calculator","tag-hunting","tag-raptor","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-453","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15689","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=15689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}