{"id":35302,"date":"2015-11-23T05:49:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T12:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35302"},"modified":"2015-11-23T05:57:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T12:57:46","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-take-off-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/23\/rough-legged-hawk-take-off-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk Take-off Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a good day for raptors in western Utah County. I saw Red-tailed Hawks, Ferruginous Hawks, Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers,\u00a0Prairie Falcons, American Kestrels and a single Golden Eagle and subadult Bald Eagle.<\/p>\n

But my best photos were of\u00a0a beautiful male\u00a0Rough-legged Hawk as it took off from a power pole. The sky was kind of a weird shade of blue but I was able to get 10 unclipped images of the bird in flight and I present 7 of them here, in sequence and\u00a0with no “skips”.<\/p>\n

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\"rough-legged1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

It launched almost straight up, apparently to avoid the transmission line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I cropped the next image as I did to include the\u00a0top of the pole so that viewers could see that the hawk actually jumped up and slightly backward as it first took off. I thought that was at least slightly unusual. I actually anticipated that the bird\u00a0might go over the top of the wire and it’s a good thing I did or I’m sure I’d have clipped wings or other body parts in\u00a0many of these first shots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe this flight posture to be due to the fact that because of its vertical jump it had no forward momentum at this point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But he was able to quickly build up speed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The power line was just below him in these images but I was able to crop them out without doing any cloning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here we see the “rough legs” and proportionately small bill and feet the species is known for – all adaptations to cold arctic life (heat conservation).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this final image the hawk has finally built up enough momentum that its wings are extended rather than pumping for air speed. This might be my favorite shot of the bunch but there are things I like about some of the other images too.<\/p>\n

Rough-legged Hawk populations\u00a0are known to be nomadic as they move around in response to the availability of their rodent (largely voles in winter) prey. Last year was a relatively slow winter for them around here and I believe that was a result of a decline in the naturally cyclic\u00a0population of voles.\u00a0This winter looks promising for Roughies so far\u00a0and I couldn’t be happier about that.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Yesterday was a good day for raptors in western Utah County as I was able to chalk up eight species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35305,"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":[334,358],"tags":[534,146,211,2740,269,2739,2738,1841,316],"class_list":["post-35302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-flight","tag-male","tag-rodent-prey","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-small-bill-and-feet","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-county","tag-voles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/rough-legged-hawk-4950-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9bo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35302","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=35302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}