{"id":20408,"date":"2013-12-04T06:15:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T13:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20408"},"modified":"2013-12-04T06:15:23","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T13:15:23","slug":"juvenile-red-tail-scratching-an-itch-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/04\/juvenile-red-tail-scratching-an-itch-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Red-tail Scratching An Itch In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like young humans, juvenile hawks still have a few lessons to learn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f.6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This young Red-tailed Hawk was\u00a0hunting voles from a craggy perch on Antelope Island when…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f.6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

it took off and headed downhill, staying very close to the rocky slope as it descended.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f.6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But within a couple of wing beats the bird reached up with its\u00a0right foot and scratched its head several times.\u00a0 As it did so the\u00a0non-aerodynamic flight posture so soon after take-off\u00a0caused the hawk to lose airspeed and it had to struggle to avoid crashing into the rocks.\u00a0 I remember thinking at the time that planning ahead and scratching before take-off or waiting until after it cleared the rocks would have been a more prudent course of action.\u00a0 But juveniles of every stripe are prone to impulsiveness I guess.<\/p>\n

I’ve photographed raptors scratching in flight before but usually the eyes (or nictitating\u00a0membranes) are closed when they do it which often detracts from the shot.\u00a0 This time I caught the bird just before that happened.<\/p>\n

I enjoy the foot\/leg positions here – it almost looks as if the hawk is attempting to run downhill as it takes off.\u00a0 And yes, that’s a flying insect in front of the bird.<\/p>\n

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

Like young humans, juvenile hawks still have a few lessons to learn.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20411,"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":[31,452,146,190,451,605],"class_list":["post-20408","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-flight","tag-juvenile","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-take-off"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/red-tailed-hawk-8933-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5ja","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20408","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=20408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}