{"id":165603,"date":"2024-12-03T06:12:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T13:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165603"},"modified":"2024-12-03T07:56:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T14:56:11","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-going-for-the-long-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-going-for-the-long-shot\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk – Going For The ‘Long Shot’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long shot – a venture or guess that has only the slightest chance of succeeding or being accurate (in this case, not a photo of a faraway subject).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I rarely stop for hawks on utility poles because I’m not fond of poles and\/or wires in my photos or plain blue sky in my backgrounds. But on those rare occasions when there’s a very close mountain to the left of my pickup that might be in the background if the hawk happens to take off in the right direction, I sometimes make an exception.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Two days ago in the west desert I stopped for this adult (see explanation below) Red-tailed Hawk on a pole because there was a close mountain out of frame to my left. However, I knew that if ‘he’ took off I’d only get the mountain in the background if he curled around sharply to his left and flew back in my direction, which would put him between me and the mountain. I estimated that the chances of that happening were significantly less than 1 in 20 – a very long shot.<\/p>\n

But you miss every shot you don’t try for, so I stopped for him and took my chances.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As I figured he would, just before he took off he turned on the pole and faced mostly away from me so I thought I was about to strike out. But immediately after he launched he was already beginning to curl around to his left, as we see here. If he continued to turn to his left and come back my way, I had a reasonably good chance of getting the mountain in the background.<\/p>\n

And that’s exactly what he did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I got two shots I like as he passed between me and the mountain. His fully tucked legs and feet are an indication that he’d already been in flight for some time and was flying at speed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This one’s my favorite because it’s a little sharper.<\/p>\n

There’s something slightly unusual about this bird. He has the red tail of an adult (seen best in photo #2) but his eyes are still light like those of an immature bird. The speed of the change in eye color of this species as they mature can be highly variable so this hawk is an adult whose eyes simply haven’t changed color yet.<\/p>\n

An interesting bird.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

You miss every shot you don’t try for and this time I got lucky. (4 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165606,"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":[5,6,334,450],"tags":[452,451,7693,311],"class_list":["post-165603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-red-tailed-hawk-with-red-tail-and-light-eyes","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/red-tailed-hawk-5269-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-H51","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165603","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=165603"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165635,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165603\/revisions\/165635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}