{"id":20234,"date":"2013-11-27T04:07:35","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T11:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20234"},"modified":"2013-11-27T04:07:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T11:07:35","slug":"female-kestrel-a-twisting-turning-take-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/27\/female-kestrel-a-twisting-turning-take-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Kestrel – A Twisting, Turning Take-off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally during take-off\u00a0an American Kestrel will put on a show of its considerable\u00a0acrobatic skills but it happens so fast with these little falcons\u00a0that many of us don’t really appreciate the\u00a0coordination and skill involved.\u00a0 Yesterday morning I got one shot that I think demonstrates it pretty well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This female was perched far enough above me that I almost didn’t even point my lens her way (I don’t like steep angles in my bird photography) but I thought I might get something interesting at take-off so I took a chance.\u00a0 It was still so early in the morning that light was low and the highest shutter speed I could manage was 1\/2500 at ISO 800 for those incredibly fast wings.<\/p>\n

She was facing to my right and I assumed that would be her direction of take-off but she fooled me.\u00a0 At the last minute she looked over her shoulder and in the very next frame…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in, 2 twigs poking into frame removed<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

she twisted and turned as she launched to my left.\u00a0 I was very lucky to keep her in frame since in anticipation I had allowed room for her in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

I find myself slightly mesmerized by this frozen moment in time\u00a0and the\u00a0athletic ability\u00a0required for such a dynamic\u00a0take-off.\u00a0 I notice the angle of her tail, the curving sweep of her wings and her twisted legs as her body rotated before her perched feet could\u00a0do the same.\u00a0 My eye also picks up the slightly extended position of the alulae and the cupped (concave) shape of the underside of both wings, front to back.<\/p>\n

Shots like this are one of the reasons I tend to use higher shutter speeds than many other bird photographers.\u00a0 At 1\/2500 I barely had enough SS to almost<\/em> freeze the wings (I’d have preferred 1\/3200 for this small raptor) and I was lucky that the plane of the wings was parallel to me with the narrow depth of field at f\/5.6.<\/p>\n

It may not be a great shot aesthetically but I enjoy seeing this kind of action frozen in time.<\/p>\n

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

Occasionally during take-off an American Kestrel will put on a show of its considerable acrobatic skills but it happens so fast with these little falcons that many of us don’t really appreciate the coordination and skill involved. Yesterday morning I got one shot that I think demonstrates it pretty well.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20236,"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":[340,6,334],"tags":[28,131,137,146,187,282,605],"class_list":["post-20234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","tag-american-kestrel","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-female","tag-flight","tag-iso","tag-shutter-speed","tag-take-off"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/american-kestrel-4960-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5gm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20234","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=20234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}