![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-3376c-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0I was disappointed that I seriously clipped a wing when it banked just after take-off.<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-3377-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400 mm, canvas added for composition, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0One more shot as the bird sped away.<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-3371-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nI have a working theory as to why the hawk chose to carry the prey in its beak rather than its talons.\u00a0 This image was taken as the bird crouched to take off.\u00a0 I was shooting from the side of a busy road and I believe the bird wanted to take off away from the road and traffic but as you can see there\u00a0was a wire in the way.\u00a0 To leave in that direction meant the wire had to be cleared – there was the danger of the left wing hitting the wire on the first flap.<\/p>\n
So just before take-off the hawk picked up the prey it its beak and backed up on the post so that\u00a0only its front toes were on top of the perch and its rear toes hung down below.\u00a0 I’m thinking that this toe configuration, sans prey,\u00a0might\u00a0give the bird more “spring” to clear the wire than if it took off flat-footed (think of the inefficiency of humans jumping flat-footed).\u00a0 It could have gone low to avoid the wire but it didn’t.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I tend to over-analyze this kind of\u00a0thing but it interests me so I let myself go with the flow.\u00a0 I’m certainly\u00a0no raptor expert\u00a0so I’m wondering if any of my readers\u00a0(falconers or rehabbers, perhaps) know how unusual it might be (if at all) for these birds to carry prey in their beaks and if my theory as to why this hawk chose to do so sounds reasonable.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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In my experience Red-tailed Hawks in flight most often carry prey in their talons but this molting adult surprised me a little.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25857,"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":[334,392,450],"tags":[452,701,256,451,311,315,533],"class_list":["post-25855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-carry-prey-in-beak","tag-prey","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2","tag-vole","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-3373-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6J1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25855","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=25855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-3373-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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