{"id":49328,"date":"2017-06-24T05:13:29","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T11:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=49328"},"modified":"2017-06-24T06:52:30","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T12:52:30","slug":"northern-harrier-at-an-unconventional-angle-at-takeoff-plus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/24\/northern-harrier-at-an-unconventional-angle-at-takeoff-plus\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harrier At An Unconventional Angle At Takeoff – plus…"},"content":{"rendered":"

some exceptionally good news on the Red-tailed Hawk front!<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

Yesterday morning in northern Utah I found this “Gray Ghost” perched in unappealing sidelight so I almost didn’t even stop my pickup for him (besides, don’t harriers always<\/em> fly off before you can\u00a0get\u00a0your lens on them…?). But I often just like to look at birds through my lens so I stopped anyway and when he took off unexpectedly I fired off a burst by reflex. Chances of getting anything useable in this situation\u00a0were almost nil.<\/p>\n

But it turned out that I thought this first liftoff photo was interesting. It isn’t a classic takeoff shot but\u00a0I like the contrast of the shaded flight feathers compared to the good light on the rest of the body and I was pleasantly surprised to have a good look at his face and eye under his shaded wing. And\u00a0of course\u00a0I\u00a0nearly always find the dynamics of takeoffs appealing.<\/p>\n

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I do like that harrier shot but the happiest (by far) event of the morning occurred 20 minutes later.<\/p>\n

Regular readers will remember the three\u00a0Red-tailed\u00a0Hawk chicks whose nest was blown off a power pole (with them in it)\u00a0in a horrific 80+ mph\u00a0wind storm several weeks ago. Days later I photographed two of them and saw all three on or near the ground and I posted some photos on\u00a0my blog\u00a0of the two I photographed. But since then\u00a0I’ve only been able\u00a0to find one of the chicks on the other side of the road and many of us feared the worst for the\u00a0other two. It’s an extremely perilous existence for chicks on the ground\u00a0at that tender age and it was me who made the decision not to “rescue” them (with the advice of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah – WRCNU) so I felt the\u00a0weight of responsibility for\u00a0that decision.<\/p>\n

Since then every time I’ve rounded that last curve in the road before I get to the original nest site my heart has been in my throat for fear I’d find one or more road killed\u00a0hawk chicks or not find any of them at all.<\/p>\n

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But this is the sight that greeted me as I approached the bramble pile the single youngster had been on a few days before – three apparently\u00a0healthy and thriving chicks! They were horribly backlit but\u00a0of course I don’t care\u00a0about that –\u00a0all three of them are\u00a0ok! And one of their parents was keeping a very close eye on them from a nearby power pole.<\/p>\n

Yes, there’s some potentially dangerous\u00a0barbed wire back there and these birds aren’t out of the woods yet for a variety of reasons\u00a0but then\u00a0raptors never are, even after they fledge. They’ve now survived for a couple of weeks on the ground and it won’t be long until they fledge so I have high hopes that they’ll make it.<\/p>\n

Those odds beat\u00a0the hell out of the alternatives for chicks blown out of their nest.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – The next time I passed this bramble\u00a0pile about an hour later\u00a0the chicks were nowhere to be seen. That gives me comfort because I know they’re there but just hiding away in the thicket or somewhere in the expanse of very tall grasses.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

some exceptionally good news on the Red-tailed Hawk front!<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49329,"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":[334,391,341,450],"tags":[452,740,86,146,746,3409,234,451,605,311,2209],"class_list":["post-49328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-northern-harriers","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-chicks","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-flight","tag-gray-ghost","tag-nest-blown-down","tag-northern-harrier","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-take-off","tag-utah-2","tag-wildlife-rehabilitation-center-of-northern-utah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/northern-harrier-8860-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cPC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49328","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=49328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}