{"id":48404,"date":"2017-05-21T05:46:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T11:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=48404"},"modified":"2017-05-21T07:49:40","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T13:49:40","slug":"mating-red-tailed-hawks-and-a-first-look-at-the-resulting-chicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/21\/mating-red-tailed-hawks-and-a-first-look-at-the-resulting-chicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Mating Red-tailed Hawks And A First Look At The Resulting Chicks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I\u00a0was able to\u00a0get\u00a0my first glimpse of the\u00a0chicks of the nesting Red-tailed Hawks I’ve been watching since early spring.<\/p>\n

Many readers have been\u00a0asking to see photos of them so I decided to comply with those requests. These\u00a0images were taken from far away with a super-telephoto lens (effectively at 1120mm)\u00a0and have been cropped significantly (I never<\/em> closely approach nests) so the image quality isn’t\u00a0particularly good but I think they’ll satisfy some of the curiosity and interest expressed by many blog followers.<\/p>\n

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This photo of the apparently incubating female was taken on April 15. I’ve included it here for a reason.<\/p>\n

Notice how clean the rocks below the nest are. Newly hatched chicks are tiny and helpless (altricial<\/a>) so especially at this fairly steep angle I could never see them in the bowl of the\u00a0nest at that age but when they’re a little older they instinctively begin to\u00a0move to the periphery of the nest and defecate over the edge for sanitary reasons.<\/p>\n

This is what the rocks below the nest have looked like for many weeks but lately I’ve been watching carefully for the telltale signs of active chicks that I might be able to actually see.<\/p>\n

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And this is what those rocks looked like yesterday. Notice the spots of white uric acid indicating that chicks have recently\u00a0begun to poop over the nest edge. It appears to me that in their early attempts to do so they defecated from a safer spot at the left edge of the nest which caused the uric acid to splatter against the rocks behind them.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning when I spotted this evidence of more active chicks I decided to hang around for a short time and see if I could eventually see any little white heads poking up.<\/p>\n

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It didn’t take long. This was my first view of one of the young chicks.<\/p>\n

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And eventually there were two. Two was all I saw though it’s possible there were more – clutch size for Red-tailed Hawks is usually 2-3 eggs and\u00a0sometimes 4.\u00a0While I was there neither chick came\u00a0to the edge of the nest to poop so this is the best look\u00a0at both of them I was able to capture.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And this is how it all began way back on March 29 when I photographed the two adults mating on a rocky point near the almost completed nest.<\/p>\n

For me it was a special experience to\u00a0see the mating behaviors that eventually resulted in chicks that I’ve also been able to observe and document. Being witness to this much of the entire life cycle of such a magnificent raptor means a lot to this old\u00a0zoologist and bird photographer.<\/p>\n

The photos were a huge bonus of course\u00a0but even without them it would have been an extremely fulfilling experience. I suspect most of my readers will understand why.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: I want to make it clear that whenever I’m in the general vicinity of the nest I watch very carefully to make sure my presence doesn’t disturb the hawks or alter\u00a0their behavior. If it\u00a0did I’d leave the area\u00a0immediately. But the nest is near a road, the hawks have become acclimated to traffic and I never get out of my\u00a0vehicle. At this point I almost think the hawks see my\u00a0silver pickup as part of the landscape…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Yesterday morning I was able to get my first glimpse of the chicks of the nesting Red-tailed Hawks I’ve been watching since early spring. <\/p>\n

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