{"id":55752,"date":"2018-01-14T05:32:09","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T12:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=55752"},"modified":"2018-01-14T05:42:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T12:42:40","slug":"juvenile-red-tailed-hawk-learnin-the-ropes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/14\/juvenile-red-tailed-hawk-learnin-the-ropes\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk Learnin’ The Ropes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching a clumsy young hawk attempt to\u00a0learn new skills always makes me feel sympathetic for its plight\u00a0but I’ll admit to being more amused than anything.<\/p>\n

I don’t know the sex of\u00a0this youngster but for the sake of convenience I’ll refer to it as a female.<\/em><\/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 past June I spent considerable time with this recently fledged Red-tailed Hawk and\u00a0her sibling as they attempted to learn new life skills. This one repeatedly returned to this\u00a0dead branch and attempted to\u00a0establish\u00a0some degree of stability while perched on it but\u00a0with varying degrees of success. If she got up there and held perfectly still\u00a0she was OK but\u00a0whenever she tried to move\u00a0her feet on the branch\u00a0the\u00a0poor bird invariably lost\u00a0her balance.<\/p>\n

Even though I’ve posted this photo before I’m including it again to show\u00a0her position a few moments before the following two images were taken\u00a0(both of which are new to my blog). I love her concentration on her foot placement as she tries to figure out how all this works while simultaneously maintaining her dignity.<\/p>\n

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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

But as soon as she tried to move her feet further down on the branch she began to seriously\u00a0lose her balance…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/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

and was barely able to recover without falling off completely. She did this time and again, sometimes leaving the perch completely and walking a short distance away from it before returning to the branch and trying again. She was determined<\/em> to get it right! I had to admire her perseverance but I have to admit that some of my shots were soft because I couldn’t help but laugh at her predicament. Laughing\u00a0while attempting to\u00a0use good long lens technique is definitely a counterproductive combination.<\/p>\n

I purposely chose amusing images to post this morning because I needed the entertainment as a temporary diversion from my troubles. Ongoing and worsening computer problems mean that I may not be able to post for the next few days and even if I can post my access to my images will be limited so\u00a0the photos may (or may not)\u00a0be several years old.<\/p>\n

Please bear with me. This too shall pass, theoretically…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Watching a clumsy young hawk attempt to learn new skills always makes me feel sympathetic for its plight but I’ll admit to being more amused than anything.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55753,"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":[334,395,450],"tags":[452,145,1210,190,3484,451],"class_list":["post-55752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-fledgling","tag-funny","tag-juvenile","tag-practicing-skills","tag-red-tailed-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/red-tailed-hawk-1205-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eve","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55752","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=55752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}