![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-0020-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0020-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nSometimes history repeats itself, even when birds are involved.<\/p>\n
I could just show my readers a couple of sexy photos of these Red-tailed Hawks as they mated yesterday and let it go at that but I like to tell stories\u00a0(especially when it involves natural history of birds) so I decided to\u00a0use quite a few images to illustrate the events that led up to and followed the mating.<\/p>\n
So sit back and enjoy, folks – it’s story time.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 we finally had good light for shooting and I even found a few interesting subjects.\u00a0As I drove past a known Red-tailed Hawk nesting site from previous years I could barely see a hawk on the cliff and near where\u00a0an old nest was so I continued down the road. Perhaps a quarter-mile past the nest I spotted this adult Red-tail perched on some rocks some distance from me so I stopped to have a look through my lens.<\/p>\n It turns out that this bird was the female of a mated pair and it was her mate near the nest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 When she eventually took off she headed in the general direction of the nest…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 landed on some more rocks some distance short of her mate near the nest. Immediately after this photo was taken I took several\u00a0shots of her looking directly ahead and toward her mate\u00a0a hundred yards or so in front of her. An invitation?<\/p>\n I wondered if she would fly to her mate or the male would leave the nest and\u00a0fly in\u00a0her direction so I had to make a choice as to where I aimed my lens. This time I chose correctly because very soon after she started\u00a0looking at him from\u00a0her new and closer vantage point the male…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 launched from the side of the cliff, circled around behind her and…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 landed on the rocks next to and just below her. She immediately assumed a submissive, inviting posture so I anticipated what happened next.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 male accepted her invitation and\u00a0proceeded to mount her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 Her back is a precarious perch during the frenzy of\u00a0mating so even though she did her best to hold still and provide him\u00a0a stable platform…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 he struggled to maintain his balance and get into an appropriate position to complete the act.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 two cumbersome tails in the way and the ever-present\u00a0danger of the male\u00a0falling off the “cloacal kiss” is indeed a difficult task to accomplish and in this case it took some time. I took 58 shots during the mating process and even then I laid off my shutter button during part of the process to avoid filling up my buffer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 To actually make contact with their cloacal openings the female had to get her tail out of the way and the male leaned far to his left just\u00a0before the act was completed. It appears that the talons of his right foot are holding on for dear life so in the end I’ll bet she had some scratches up there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 When the act was completed the male hopped off…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 landed in the rocks\u00a0in front of her for a few moments before he…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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 flew off to contribute even more efforts to their nesting activities as she looked away. But “the rest of the story” will have to wait until another time. With 13 photos this post is already a very long one and I still have to add one more image.<\/p>\n At this point some readers may be wondering why I\u00a0borrowed Yogi Berra’s famous “Yogi-ism” for my title – what does “d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again”\u00a0have to do with these mating hawks? The answer\u00a0might surprise you as much as it did me when I finally connected the dots.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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 photo was taken from a slightly different vantage point\u00a0one year and 12 days ago, on March 29, 2017. These are also Red-tailed Hawks, they’re also mating and\u00a0they’re doing so on the same rocky\u00a0outcrop as the hawks I photographed yesterday morning. In fact there’s a very good chance that they’re the same two\u00a0birds! I suspect this is their favorite trysting spot and they’ve been using it for that purpose for\u00a0over two years now. Maybe longer.<\/p>\n In the heat of the moment I’ll confess I didn’t even realize the many similarities between the two events until I left these birds yesterday and was on my way home. Hawks mate many times prior to laying eggs so maybe I’ll get lucky and be able to photograph these birds going at it again in the next week or so.<\/p>\n After all, as Yogi also famously said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”….<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes history repeats itself, even when birds are involved.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-0022-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0022-ron-dudley\\"")
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