{"id":50580,"date":"2017-08-10T04:35:36","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T10:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=50580"},"modified":"2017-08-10T04:49:08","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T10:49:08","slug":"fledgling-red-tailed-hawk-practicing-more-skills-clumsily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/10\/fledgling-red-tailed-hawk-practicing-more-skills-clumsily\/","title":{"rendered":"Fledgling Red-tailed Hawk Practicing More Skills – Clumsily"},"content":{"rendered":"

Landing must be one of the more difficult skills very young raptors need to learn because they spend considerable time practicing it.<\/p>\n

This is one of the three\u00a0youngsters successfully fledged at what I’ve been calling the “cliff nest” to distinguish them from the\u00a0birds raised in the other\u00a0two nests I monitored for much of the summer. It’s even possible that this is the same bird as in my recent post of a fledgling\u00a0doing the “pipe dance”<\/a> but\u00a0it could have\u00a0been any of the three siblings.\u00a0In these photos, taken on 6\/30\/17, the bird was six days younger than the one doing the pipe dance. In fact this was the first day I saw the siblings any\u00a0distance away from the nest so they had only very recently learned to fly at\u00a0all.<\/p>\n

This time I’m going to refer to the bird as a male though I don’t know its sex.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

This youngster had previously been perched on the branch we see at left but\u00a0he jumped down into the grass and then very soon decided to go back to it. I strongly suspect\u00a0he was deliberately\u00a0practicing\u00a0his landing skills and as we’re about to see they definitely needed some fine-tuning.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

All that deep\u00a0grass had to complicate matters because first\u00a0he had to jump up to clear\u00a0it as best\u00a0he could…<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

before raising\u00a0his legs and\u00a0flying forward toward the perch.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

How’s that for concentration and a “big reach”?<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

Touchdown – first major goal accomplished. Now all\u00a0he had to do was…<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

get\u00a0his center of gravity over the perch and then fold\u00a0his wings and\u00a0savor the accomplishment (I love this look at all those beautiful fresh feathers).<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

At first I thought he’d nailed the landing…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

but I was wrong. Almost immediately he tipped forward…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/6.3, 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 to his left.\u00a0He had to struggle for some time before he…<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, 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

began to stabilize so he could eventually fold his wings and relax. When he did so he faced away from me so I didn’t keep any of those images.<\/p>\n

I’ve been photographing raptors for years but until this summer with these young hawks and others I didn’t fully appreciate how much time and effort they devote to honing their skills as very young birds. But taking off, flying, landing and hunting are extremely complex and athletic activities that by definition would require immense amounts of practice to become proficient.<\/p>\n

I should have known…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Landing must be one of the more difficult skills very young raptors need to learn because they spend considerable time practicing it.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50588,"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":[334,395,391,450],"tags":[452,145,190,3484,451,311],"class_list":["post-50580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-fledgling","tag-juvenile","tag-practicing-skills","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-1334-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-d9O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50580","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=50580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}