{"id":33061,"date":"2015-08-01T05:38:13","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T11:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=33061"},"modified":"2015-08-01T05:51:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T11:51:06","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-a-rousing-take-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/01\/red-tailed-hawk-a-rousing-take-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk – A “Rousing” Take-off"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a take-off like I’ve never seen from a raptor.<\/p>\n

But before we go further a brief discussion of rousing is in order. Rousing is the action of a bird that raises its feathers before vigorously shaking them. The process helps to rearrange the birds plumage and is often a sign of a relaxed and content bird. It’s usually done while the bird is at rest and often after preening.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning in Box Elder County I had my lens trained on this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk as I waited for it to take off. The bird had just finished off a vole for breakfast and you can still see blood and debris on its beak. It did some minor preening…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

before it turned on its perch into the direction of the\u00a0breeze and at this point my shutter finger was ready.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the hawk began to rouse I fired off a burst because I sometimes get interesting poses that way. But this bird surprised the dickens out of me. In mid-rouse it…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

leaped from its power pole perch with its wings still at its side…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and continued to rouse in mid-air.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the next frame it was still shaking its feathers as partly evidenced by its tail twisted to the birds left and the wings still unextended. This action was very quick – the last four frames presented here only took .4 second and since I wasn’t prepared for the take-off during the rouse I clipped body parts after this shot.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall having ever seen a combined rouse and take-off from a raptor before. If I have I’ve never photographed it. Maybe this young bird is still learning the raptor-ropes…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – All of us have seen birds\u00a0rouse. Even so, there’s an interesting clip here<\/a> of a hawk rousing (scroll down to “rouse” and click the link). The rousing of the hawk in my images was just as vigorous as it is in the clip but my bird did it in flight.<\/em><\/p>\n

A personal note: The posture of the bird (with its wings held to the sides of its body\u00a0as it jumps from the perch) in the 4th image reminds me of myself. When I was 10 years old we stayed at a motel in Las Vegas with a swimming pool. I dived off the board with my arms held tightly\u00a0to my sides and entered the water head first.\u00a0 I scraped the rough bottom of the pool with my nose and deeply split my upper lip below my nose. I carried that curved scar for many years. When I smiled it looked like I had two of them…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a take-off like I’ve never seen from a raptor.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33064,"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":[5,334,450],"tags":[689,452,255,451,994,605,311],"class_list":["post-33061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-box-elder-county","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-preening","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rouse","tag-take-off","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/red-tailed-hawk-1412-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8Bf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33061","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=33061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}