{"id":37442,"date":"2016-02-15T07:00:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=37442"},"modified":"2016-02-15T09:39:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T16:39:24","slug":"mating-golden-eagles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/15\/mating-golden-eagles\/","title":{"rendered":"Mating Golden Eagles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago in an effort to get out of the smog and fog caused by our recent inversion I headed for higher ground. I was rewarded\u00a0with\u00a0sunshine, clean air and I even stumbled upon a pair of mating Golden\u00a0Eagles.<\/p>\n

My photos of the behavior are mediocre (these images are\u00a0highly cropped)\u00a0because the birds were far away\u00a0so even shooting at an effective 1120mm couldn’t compensate for that but I thought they were good enough for documentation and that my readers\u00a0might enjoy seeing them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At first I only noticed this single bird as it flew against the high cliffs as I was on my way up\u00a0a canyon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

45 minutes later on my way back down the canyon this eagle, which I assumed (perhaps incorrectly)\u00a0to be the same bird I photographed previously, was perched high on the cliffs. I now know this one to be a female because…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

soon another slightly smaller\u00a0eagle that I hadn’t seen previously flew in and landed next to her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/640, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Almost immediately after he landed the female assumed a head-down posture that invited her mate to mount her and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/800, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

he obliged.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the mating process the male had difficulty gaining and maintaining his balance and I noticed that he avoided using his talons to hold on – instead he put his weight on his tarsi with talons closed and feet extended forward. My assumption is that this is done to avoid discomfort to the female and to give him better anterior-posterior\u00a0support once he becomes relatively stable on her back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

She raised and deflected\u00a0her tail to accommodate him and the “cloacal kiss” was completed. This took some time but for most of it both birds were facing away from me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

After he dismounted both\u00a0eagles stayed together for some time and the larger female spent part of that time preening which is typical after mating.<\/p>\n

It is thought that Golden Eagles mate for life and mated pairs are known to copulate year-round which may function in pair-bond maintenance outside the breeding season.\u00a0 Golden Eagles are very\u00a0sensitive to human intrusion and with wild, natural habitat being reduced every year I was encouraged that these birds were obviously acclimated to the hubbub of man – there’s a very busy highway and other obtrusive human activity\u00a0directly below these cliffs, all of\u00a0which the eagles took in stride. I photographed them from inside my pickup alongside the road\u00a0and never got out of my vehicle.<\/p>\n

I almost never utter the overused word “awesome” but for me witnessing these two eagles mating was just that – awesome. I said here recently that Golden Eagles were one of my two primary nemesis species and they remain a nemesis because I still don’t have high quality images of them.<\/p>\n

But witnessing this behavior through my lens was infinitely better than great images of them,\u00a0any day of the week.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I headed for higher ground to get out of our inversion. I was rewarded with sunshine, clean air and a pair of mating Golden Eagles.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37447,"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":[334,642,391],"tags":[643,477,2852,153,1016],"class_list":["post-37442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-golden-eagles","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-aquila-chrysaetos","tag-cloacal-kiss","tag-copulating","tag-golden-eagle","tag-mating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/golden-eagle-3387-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9JU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37442","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=37442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141659,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37442\/revisions\/141659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}