![\"red-tailed-hawk-0806\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0806.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0806")
<\/a><\/p>\nSince the nest isn’t close and it’s always sidelit in the mornings and backlit later in the day photographing the hawks while they’re even close to it is\u00a0extremely difficult and usually not\u00a0worth the effort\u00a0but in years past I’ve occasionally been lucky with one of them. I photographed this\u00a0juvenile\u00a0in the general vicinity of the nest about 6\u00a0years ago. As usual the bird was sidelit but\u00a0in this case I think that kind of light was pretty dramatic, especially on this old snag of a perch.<\/p>\n
Usually my efforts at photographing hawks near the nest are stymied by the difficult conditions but I still\u00a0monitor it carefully each year just to watch for nesting success and to\u00a0cheer them on.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-8601-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-8601-ron-dudley\\"")
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But yesterday morning I finally found an obviously mated pair of Red-tails in the vicinity of the nest on my second pass through the area and of course I\u00a0was delighted, despite the fact that I never did get any great\u00a0photos of either of them.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-8608-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-8608-ron-dudley\\"")
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A few minutes later I did get a\u00a0series of\u00a0shots of one of them lifting off from a different perch in\u00a0less than ideal light.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-8614-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-8614-ron-dudley\\"")
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As the hawk cleared the horizon it turned to my left so the light angle\u00a0improved a little\u00a0and I was able to get a few photos…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-8619-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-8619-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
that weren’t too bad.<\/p>\n
But mostly I was just happy to see them near the nest. I’m fairly confident that their intention is to raise a brood there this spring and I’m much relieved by\u00a0that fact since it was beginning to look like it would go unused this year.<\/p>\n
In-between my first and second pass by the nest I encountered another species in the mountains – Wild Turkeys. Once again I didn’t get any outstanding photos of them but they were in their breeding colors and boy did they look snazzy!<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/wild-turkey-8512-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"wild-turkey-8512-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
During the breeding season even the hens can show quite a bit of color. In Utah we have two subspecies of Wild Turkey – Merriam’s and Rio Grande. Merriam’s prefer mountain habitats and the Rio Grande subspecies prefers cottonwood bottoms so I’m fairly\u00a0confident these were Merriam’s. But I could be wrong about that so if I am please let me know.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/wild-turkey-8489-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"wild-turkey-8489-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But the tom’s in their breeding colors\u00a0are just spectacular this time of year. This one never did give me a full display from a good angle but this partial display really shows off his colors.<\/p>\n
Wild Turkeys can be common in certain rural and agricultural areas and even some small towns\u00a0in Utah but usually when I see those birds they’re in unnatural habitats and not in breeding colors so I was happy to catch these\u00a0turkeys in a more natural juniper, pinyon and sagebrush\u00a0setting and showing off their fine spring duds.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
PS – I apologize for not including image techs this morning but I simply ran out of time.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been monitoring a Red-tailed Hawk nest in the mountains of Tooele County for at least 7 years now. It isn’t close to the road and I never approach it on foot to avoid disturbing the hawks but I have a good view of it through my long lens.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57834,"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":[334,391,450,3664],"tags":[3922,452,146,3923,3925,228,451,3926,3924,1357,311,2743],"class_list":["post-57829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","category-wild-turkeys","tag-breeding-colors","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-flight","tag-hen","tag-merriams-wild-turkey","tag-nest","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rio-grande-wild-turkey","tag-tom","tag-tooele-county","tag-utah-2","tag-wild-turkey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/wild-turkey-8489-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-f2J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57829","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=57829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-nest-8395-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-nest-8395-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n