{"id":27256,"date":"2014-10-15T06:22:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T12:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=27256"},"modified":"2014-10-15T08:17:07","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T14:17:07","slug":"an-acrobatic-red-tailed-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/15\/an-acrobatic-red-tailed-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"An Acrobatic Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raptors sometimes pull some pretty crazy maneuvers during take-off (the last 9 images in this post are sequential with no images in the sequence left out).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two weeks ago I found this adult Red-tailed Hawk perched in an old snag in Utah’s west desert.\u00a0 This bird may be one of the two adults I photographed this past spring as they were mating in\u00a0this same area (see link<\/a> if you’re interested).\u00a0 The\u00a0hawk had its back to me and\u00a0the light was harsh and from the side so I was more interested in watching it through my lens than I was in taking\u00a0photos.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0But when the bird unexpectedly took off my photographer’s instincts took over and I\u00a0fired off a quick burst of nine shots, even though I fully expected the bird to take off away from me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Instead, it raised its wings…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

twisted to its left…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0and jumped up to this higher branch which had the bird mostly facing me for an instant.\u00a0 Notice that here the right foot is grasping the branch but…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0in a nanosecond the hawk switched feet as it once again turned to its right…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and began to push off of the branch.<\/p>\n

At this point I can’t resist asking you if you can predict which direction the hawk will actually travel as it leaves the tree.\u00a0 Please look at this image and take a wild guess.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This is the same image as the previous one.\u00a0\u00a0Believe it or not the\u00a0bird will go “through” the triangular-shaped space marked by the red “x”.\u00a0\u00a0 But\u00a0before it does\u00a0the hawk has another problem – the branch marked with a red arrow is directly on its path to that triangular space.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0So as it leaned to its right to avoid the perch\u00a0the bird\u00a0reached for the branch with its\u00a0right foot…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0grasped it…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and broke it off to get it out of the way.\u00a0 And yes, the bird passed through that triangular space as it\u00a0did so.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that all this happened almost in the blink of an eye.\u00a0 The burst rate of my Canon 7D is 8 frames per second so this entire process (nine images) would have taken just\u00a01.125 seconds.\u00a0 I have to wonder… Was all of this actually planned?\u00a0 Why did the bird\u00a0choose such an obstructed route out of the tree?\u00a0 Was it after prey which caused it to choose the obstructed but faster and more direct\u00a0route? (I don’t think so).\u00a0 Was the hawk simply instinctively practicing complicated maneuvers for the next time it was chasing prey through an obstructed space?\u00a0 It’s interesting to speculate but I simply have no idea.<\/p>\n

I’m sure I tend to overanalyze stuff like this but I do enjoy it\u00a0so I’ll\u00a0likely continue to do so…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Raptors sometimes pull some pretty crazy maneuvers during take-off (the last 9 images in this post are sequential with no images in the sequence left out).<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27260,"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":[334,395,450],"tags":[490,68,146,451,605,311,533],"class_list":["post-27256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-burst-rate","tag-canon-7d","tag-flight","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-take-off","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-8113-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-75C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27256","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=27256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}