{"id":19017,"date":"2013-10-05T06:08:09","date_gmt":"2013-10-05T12:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19017"},"modified":"2013-10-05T06:08:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-05T12:08:09","slug":"perch-hunting-red-tailed-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/05\/perch-hunting-red-tailed-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"Perch-hunting Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red-tailed Hawks in North America are “sit and wait predators” who\u00a0do most of their hunting (60 – 80%)\u00a0from elevated perches.\u00a0 Though they do hunt from the air, that is not their primary hunting style.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, availability of elevated perches is a key factor in determining their foraging distribution.<\/p>\n

Antelope Island is largely treeless and without power poles so Red-tails tend to be found in specific locations on the island\u00a0where elevated natural perches are available.\u00a0\u00a0 One of their favorite foraging spots is an area where there are large outcroppings of Farmington Canyon Complex rocks jutting out from the side of a small mountain, which is where I found this bird hunting voles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is one of two juvenile Red-tails that frequently hunted from those rocks but most of my shots were of this particular bird, apparently because it was more acclimated to the occasional traffic on the nearby road (from where I was shooting from my pickup).<\/p>\n

Here the\u00a0hawk is intensely watching for voles in\u00a0one of the grassy areas below the rock.\u00a0 I’ve cropped and composed this image as I have to emphasize the steeply sloping\u00a0rock and the direction of gaze of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The bird would\u00a0usually take off in my general direction when it spotted a vole in the grass – a nice change of pace from their more common practice of taking off away from me which simply adds to my collection of butt shots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The initial flight was typically powered for a few wing strokes during take-off but since the prey was downhill from the perch…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0the hawk would usually glide in for the potential kill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here the bird is getting closer to a vole and is quite close to the ground, as evidenced by the change in flight posture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Typically this particular hawk returned to one of the rock perches with empty talons.\u00a0 I suspect that the young birds hunting skills weren’t yet well honed but I’ll sure give it credit for trying\u00a0because it repeatedly made attempts at prey in the grass.\u00a0 I found myself\u00a0 internally cheering “him” on\u00a0every time he came up empty.<\/p>\n

Something about this image puzzles me a bit.\u00a0 I can’t figure out why the tail isn’t sharper than it is.\u00a0 It appears to be in almost\u00a0the same plane as the head and I certainly had enough shutter speed.<\/p>\n

Oh well, just another photography quandary, I guess.\u00a0\u00a0After all, I’ve got\u00a0to remember that\u00a0photography isn’t an exact science…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: a few of these images are out of sequence.\u00a0 My intent was to show hunting style and I didn’t capture everything I wanted to demonstrate in a single hunting flight.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Red-tailed Hawks in North America are “sit and wait predators” who do most of their hunting (60 – 80%) from elevated perches. Though they do hunt from the air, that is not their primary hunting style. In fact, availability of elevated perches is a key factor in determining their foraging distribution.<\/p>\n

Antelope Island is largely treeless and without power poles so Red-tails tend to be found in specific locations on the island where elevated natural perches are available. One of their favorite foraging spots is an area where there are large outcroppings of Farmington Canyon Complex rocks jutting out from the side of a small mountain, which is where I found this bird hunting voles<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19022,"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":[3,334,450],"tags":[31,452,178,190,451,1684,315],"class_list":["post-19017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-hunting","tag-juvenile","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-sit-and-wait-predator","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-5792-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4WJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19017","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=19017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}