{"id":165205,"date":"2024-11-06T06:04:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T13:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165205"},"modified":"2024-11-06T06:54:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T13:54:47","slug":"the-story-of-an-encounter-with-an-immature-red-tailed-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/06\/the-story-of-an-encounter-with-an-immature-red-tailed-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Of An Encounter With An Immature Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

After such a disappointing and traumatic night and early morning for many of us, I seriously considered not posting today. But I needed something to take my mind off it all and many of my readers are probably in the same boat, so I decided to go ahead with my original plans. Besides, life goes on…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Two days ago I had a slow morning for birds in the west desert. In three hours of looking for birds, this Immature Red-tailed Hawk was the only raptor I got in my viewfinder.<\/p>\n

‘He’ had his back to me when I found him so I thought about passing him by but I’m glad I didn’t. I never did get any great takeoff or flight shots of him but I got some photos I like and the encounter turned out to be an interesting one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/5.6, 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 he pooped I anticipated two things – that he’d take off soon and that he’d take off away from me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually I was right on both counts. When I took this shot I figured he was about to be long gone.<\/p>\n

But notice that pointy rock just below the tip of his left wing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

That rock was his destination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This photo was taken a split second after he landed on that rock and turned his head in my direction. His wings aren’t yet completely settled and his tail, with one broken and mostly missing tail feather, is still partially flared.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

On his new perch he was only a few feet further away from me than he’d been before but apparently that was enough to make him more comfortable in my presence because he stayed here for a very long time. In this even light and natural setting I got many photos of him that I like very much.<\/p>\n

However, I was disgusted with myself for missing the takeoff and flight shots when he eventually took off. His takeoff angle had the potential to provide me with some really nice flight shots but I missed them because I was… distracted. All l’ll say about that is that I drank way too much coffee that morning.<\/p>\n

But I wasn’t so distracted that I didn’t notice that he curled around the edge of the cliff directly behind me and when he disappeared around the cliff edge his flight posture indicated that he might be about to land on the same cliff where I couldn’t see him.<\/p>\n

So I backed my pickup up about 100′ and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

there he was, looking almost like he was waiting for me to show up.<\/p>\n

He wasn’t as close as he’d been before and once again he had his back to me but the cliff face was right in front of him, so this time he couldn’t take off directly away from me. So I waited and waited for him to take flight but he never did.<\/p>\n

However, when I looked away from my viewfinder for a moment he did disappear from this perch. I knew he was still there on the cliff face somewhere but I looked and looked for him and couldn’t find him again. He apparently still had his dark back to me and it was so well camouflaged I just couldn’t find him again. My bad ‘shooting eye’ didn’t help with that situation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But eventually he turned around and hopped up onto this rock, which made his nearly white breast stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, so I spotted him again.<\/p>\n

I waited a long time for takeoff and flight shots but he was comfortable here and had no intention of leaving anytime soon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 250, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I decided to creep slowly forward to get different backgrounds while he was on the same perch. But the further forward I drove the more the rock in front of him blocked my view of him.<\/p>\n

So after spending a total of 21 minutes with him I drove on down the road to look for other birds. All I found was Wild Turkeys and I didn’t get any photos of them I like very much. But at least I got lots of photos like #5 and #6 above.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Life goes on. (9 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165210,"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":[7682,6593,579,4771,2738,7546],"class_list":["post-165205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-broken-tail-feather","tag-immature-red-tailed-hawk","tag-landing","tag-pooping","tag-takeoff","tag-utahs-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/redtailed-hawk-2072-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GYB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165205","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=165205"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165248,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165205\/revisions\/165248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}