1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 320, 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>\nI photographed the bird three days ago as it took off from a rocky hilltop in northern Utah.\u00a0Even when I looked at the photos on my camera screen I could see that its plumage was in very poor shape, presumably from normal wear and tear and\u00a0molting. The wing secondaries and the tail in particular are missing many\u00a0feathers but even its body plumage looks pretty rough.<\/p>\n
I’m not disparaging the hawk for its looks – after all, birds have to molt and besides I’m no “pretty boy” myself but I still had to smile when I saw the photo.<\/p>\n
And I think the flying insects add to the overall flavor of the image. I’m pretty sure they’re deer flies –\u00a0those buggers\u00a0seemed to be everywhere<\/em> at that location. They weren’t visible until the bird took off so they must have been on the rocks and\u00a0then were disturbed by the commotion of takeoff. It doesn’t take deer flies long to fly anywhere – entomologists have clocked their flight speed at 90 mph.\u00a0No wonder they can be hard to swat!<\/p>\nI probably would never have posted this image without the deer flies. For me the combination of the ratty plumage and the flying insects complemented each other. Others may not share my enthusiasm for it and that’s ok.<\/p>\n
As a kid my mother always told me\u00a0that I had a warped sense of humor…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most birds I post on my blog are attractive and well coiffed. I’m posting this one for exactly the opposite reason.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49127,"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":[334,450],"tags":[452,3416,3417,1579,3415,451,311],"class_list":["post-49124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-deer-flies","tag-flight-speed","tag-molting","tag-ratty-plumage","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-7663b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cMk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49124","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=49124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/p>\n