{"id":38921,"date":"2016-04-19T05:20:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T11:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=38921"},"modified":"2016-04-19T05:38:05","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T11:38:05","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-a-two-stage-delivery-to-the-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/19\/red-tailed-hawk-a-two-stage-delivery-to-the-nest\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk – A Two Stage Delivery To The Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Red-tailed Hawk\u00a0took a breather while carrying a stick to the nest.<\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 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

I photographed this mated pair of red-tails yesterday morning in northern Utah. They’re still constructing their nest and copulating so apparently eggs haven’t yet been laid. The female was particularly industrious in carrying twigs to the nest and here she’s landing next to her mate\u00a0on a tall cliff that overlooks the nest. She has a twig in her talons but only a portion of it can be seen in the notch in the rocks in front of her. I wish the male hadn’t been looking away when I took this shot.<\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 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 she landed she rested for a few moments and then transferred the twig to her beak for the final leg of her journey to the nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 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 her wings…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 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

lifted off…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 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

and seemed to play in the updraft of the wind coming off the face of the cliff. Here the male and the top of the cliff are just out of frame at the bottom.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 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

This last shot kind of broke my heart. She banked beautifully giving me a great look at her underside with her tail flared. There’s also\u00a0good light on her face, grasses at the bottom of the frame to “ground” the image and the out of focus male watching her\u00a0in the background helps to tell the story.<\/p>\n

But dammit, her nictitating membrane is half closed and I cut off the rear end of the male!<\/p>\n

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

A very large crop of the previous images gives us a better look at the culprit – that partially closed membrane. I’ve noticed that when she’s carrying nesting material in her beak\u00a0the membrane is often closed to protect the eye.\u00a0With the stick so close to her eye that makes sense but it sure\u00a0detracts from\u00a0a lot of potentially interesting photographs.<\/p>\n

Oh well, I’m still glad I captured the shot and after all it does demonstrate an interesting feature of birds – the nictitating membrane.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

This Red-tailed Hawk took a breather while carrying a stick to the nest.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38925,"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":[334,391,450],"tags":[452,146,231,515,451,311],"class_list":["post-38921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-flight","tag-nesting-material","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-0653-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-a7L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38921","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=38921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}