![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-9470-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThis dark morph Red-tailed Hawk in Montana’s Centennial Valley was the most cooperative raptor of the day yesterday and it truly did have the patience of Job with what must have been a very annoying Black-billed Magpie.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, processed on the road from a laptop,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n When the hawk landed on a large post with a vole with\u00a0the intention of enjoying its meal in peace the magpie had other ideas and harassed the hawk mercilessly during the entire feeding process (I’ll likely post images of that interaction sometime soon)\u00a0.<\/p>\n The hawk ignored the persistent corvid perched\u00a0within inches of its face and then took off when it had finished its meal.\u00a0I was able to get a few shots off\u00a0as it did so and this is one of them. I was fairly close to the bird and f\/6.3 didn’t give me enough depth of field to get the left wing sharp but I think the image still works quite well.<\/p>\n It’s been an interesting and enjoyable camping\/photo trip so far. The weather has been mostly\u00a0great and we’ve had some pretty good luck with birds but interestingly nearly all of it has been in the mornings. Typically I’ve been shooting about a thousand images each morning and mostly getting skunked in the evenings.<\/p>\n I guess (just like me) the birds around here are\u00a0“early birds”.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This dark morph Red-tailed Hawk in Montana’s Centennial Valley was the most cooperative raptor of the day yesterday and it truly did have the patience of Job with what must have been a very annoying Black-billed Magpie.<\/p>\n