{"id":21587,"date":"2014-01-22T06:20:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T13:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=21587"},"modified":"2014-01-22T06:20:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T13:20:13","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-pole-dancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/22\/red-tailed-hawk-pole-dancing\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk “Pole Dancing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I had a great time photographing an adult Red-tailed Hawk in northern Utah County as it hunted rodents from power poles.\u00a0 The experience was both rewarding and frustrating as I’ll explain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in, canvas added for composition<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This bird was very methodical in its hunting technique.\u00a0 It would hunt from the top of a pole for about 5 minutes (or less) and then “hopscotch” a pole or two to the east and do it again.\u00a0 It must have repeated the technique\u00a0almost a dozen times – to the point that I started to think of it as “pole dancing”.\u00a0\u00a0 There was regular traffic along the road from which I was shooting but the hawk paid it no attention, even when big trucks came along making an incredible racket as they pulled the moderate hill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D,\u00a0100-400 @ 390mm.\u00a0not baited, set up or called in, wire and pole edge removed<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The “frustrations” I mentioned above were caused by\u00a0the blasted power lines!\u00a0 When the hawk would take off it would usually\u00a0give an initial wing-flap or two and then glide down after prey.\u00a0 The wires were in such a position that I nearly always\u00a0got the best wing position early on\u00a0when there was a wire in the frame.\u00a0 That’s exactly what happened with this image and I succumbed to the temptation to remove the wire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D,\u00a0500 f\/,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in, canvas added for composition<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This hawk was a good hunter.\u00a0 During the time I was with it I saw it catch and eat four rodents.\u00a0 I believe that three of them were voles but one may have been a pocket gopher because it was somewhat\u00a0larger.\u00a0\u00a0 Here the bird is returning to a pole with one of the voles (along with some grassy debris).<\/p>\n

I always worry about raptors when they have become habituated to hunting from poles next to a busy road and\u00a0I’m especially concerned about this one because the road is\u00a0out in the middle of nowhere where traffic speeds are high.\u00a0 Hopefully this young adult has been around long enough to know the dangers and avoid them as best it can.<\/p>\n

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

Yesterday morning I had a great time photographing an adult Red-tailed Hawk in northern Utah County as it hunted rodents from power poles. The experience was both rewarding and frustrating as I’ll explain.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21590,"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":[452,146,178,451,1841,315],"class_list":["post-21587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-flight","tag-hunting","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-county","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/red-tailed-hawk-8613-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Cb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21587","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=21587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}