{"id":54636,"date":"2017-12-16T06:13:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T13:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=54636"},"modified":"2017-12-16T08:25:37","modified_gmt":"2017-12-16T15:25:37","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-leaving-and-returning-from-a-hunting-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/16\/rough-legged-hawk-leaving-and-returning-from-a-hunting-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk Leaving And Returning From A Hunting Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of my posts are heavy on words and light on photos. This one is just the opposite (despite all the introductory verbiage under the first image).<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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

Yesterday morning I photographed this\u00a0immature Rough-legged Hawk hunting from one of the kestrel nest boxes at Farmington Bay WMA. I don’t know its sex but for the sake of convenience I’ll refer to it as a male in this post.<\/p>\n

During some of his hunting forays from the box he would hover in the north breeze but whenever he did so he was far away and had his back to me. But\u00a0for this\u00a0series he had spotted an apparent vole in the grasses about 50′ below\u00a0and in front of the box and I was able to photograph his reaction to the opportunity for a meal.<\/p>\n

Soon after this\u00a0photo was taken I removed my teleconverter to give me a better chance to avoid clipping wings or other body parts when (and if)\u00a0he took off. As is often the case for me with series of flight shots some of the following images aren’t quite as sharp as the others but I still like all of them.<\/p>\n

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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

This was the moment he spotted the vole. His attention is riveted on the potential meal\u00a0and his wings are just beginning to open in the process of…<\/p>\n

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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

lifting off in pursuit.<\/p>\n

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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

Here the whites of the left wing are facing the sun directly so\u00a0some of them are\u00a0just a little bright but I really like the takeoff posture.<\/p>\n

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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

You can imagine my reaction to barely clipping his right wing.<\/p>\n

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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

Four frames later he had descended far enough to begin having grasses in the background (I’m not happy with the out of focus\u00a0wide vertical white line above the hawk).<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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

His legs are coming down in anticipation of…<\/p>\n

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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

grasping the vole in the grasses.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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 then at the last\u00a0second the vole apparently made its escape into its tunnel and\/or disappeared in the vegetation\u00a0so the hawk began to veer off and abandon its pursuit. In this shot the nictitating membrane is partly closed, covering the back half of his eye. I also notice that he has temporarily\u00a0deployed both alulae.<\/p>\n

At this point I figured\u00a0the hawk would continue its wide curving flight away from me\u00a0and either land somewhere else or hunt from the air far away but he made a serendipitous decision for me and…<\/p>\n

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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

returned to the nest box to hunt some more. As I saw him approaching I pre-focused on the box and caught him during the landing process.<\/p>\n

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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

Touch-down.<\/p>\n

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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

Despite being a young and relatively inexperienced bird he nailed the landing…<\/p>\n

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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

with the help of his flared tail and arced wings.<\/p>\n

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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

Here the wingtip almost blocked the eye but we can still\u00a0see it so the\u00a0photo works for me. In fact I think that peekaboo\u00a0effect might actually enhance the image.<\/p>\n

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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

As he began to fold his wings I thought it was interesting to see in freeze-frame how he does it.<\/p>\n

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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

The longer primaries are retracted and compacted\u00a0first and then\u00a0folded under the curved arc of the secondaries…<\/p>\n

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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

before the bird begins to lower the entire curved and\u00a0compact package onto his back.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, 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

In this view we see the neat layering of primaries, secondaries and\u00a0coverts ready for instant deployment in the next flight. In a later hunting trip from the box this bird successfully captured a vole and returned to the next box with it. I’ll likely post that series at another time.<\/p>\n

Gawd, I think Roughies are beautiful raptors!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS –\u00a0Eighteen images in a single post is a new record for me. I hope so many images doesn’t bog down viewing\u00a0devices but if it does I’d like to know about it for future consideration.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Some of my posts are heavy on words and light on photos. This one is just the opposite.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54646,"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":[6,334,2782,358],"tags":[534,1008,146,178,768,190,3744,515,269,2738],"class_list":["post-54636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-hunting","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-kestrel-box","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/rough-legged-hawk-7136-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ede","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54636","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=54636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}