{"id":61359,"date":"2018-07-17T05:29:27","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T11:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=61359"},"modified":"2018-07-17T06:19:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T12:19:50","slug":"some-very-good-news-on-the-red-tailed-hawk-nesting-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/17\/some-very-good-news-on-the-red-tailed-hawk-nesting-front\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Very Good News On The Red-tailed Hawk Nesting Front"},"content":{"rendered":"

And some news not so good on the injured finger front. But first the good news.<\/p>\n

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Some readers may remember these sibling and\u00a0recently fledged Red-tailed Hawks I photographed last summer (this shot was taken on 6\/30\/17). They were raised in one of the two nests I refer to as the “cliff nests”. These two youngsters fledged successfully and eventually dispersed to other areas as they always do. Considering high nesting mortalities I was happy to see two of them make it, at least this far.<\/p>\n

Well, guess what?<\/p>\n

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That same nest has produced two more successful fledglings this year and these are those youngsters (this photo and the following 3 were taken two days ago). They’re now capable of full flight but I’m sure they’re still somewhat dependent on their parents for food. But it won’t be long before they also\u00a0disperse\u00a0to see if they can make a living “out there”.\u00a0Given the high\u00a0mortality rate of juveniles their chances aren’t great but at least they both made it this far.<\/p>\n

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They’re still quite affectionate with each other. Here one bird was nibbling the face of its sibling and though the other bird might look a little grumpy it didn’t seem to mind at all.<\/p>\n

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One bird was preening when the other took off and the one that stayed behind was startled\u00a0by the sudden excitement – thus its raised wings. But when it saw what was going on it stayed put as the other flew out into the nearby marshes.<\/p>\n

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And this is their quite striking female parent. I love her unusually red coloration.<\/p>\n

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Ok, on to a less pleasant topic.<\/p>\n

There continues to be significant interest and concern regarding my injured finger here on my blog, on social media and elsewhere. I find it somewhat distasteful when my health issues play a significant role in my blog posts but I thought I should bring folks up to date since\u00a0this one\u00a0may affect the style and the content of my blog\u00a0posts down the road.<\/p>\n

Early yesterday morning I decided I should have my physician look at the finger, partly because I was concerned that I should have a booster tetanus shot (which he\u00a0did give\u00a0me and I have a sore arm to prove it). I had never really seen much of the actual injury because when it happened it was bubbling so much blood I couldn’t get a good look and I had to quickly\u00a0bandage it just to get the bleeding stopped (which took over an hour).<\/p>\n

When I finally got a good look at it in\u00a0the\u00a0doctor’s office it was somewhat worse than I thought. When he saw it his words were “Wow, you really did a number on that finger” and he’s a veteran army doctor who served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan treating victims of IED’s so he’s “seen some stuff” (not that my injury even compares).<\/p>\n

The bandage he put on was too damned bulky for me to be able to type on my keyboard and I couldn’t put up with that so I replaced it with a “custom version” after I got home. While I had a good look at it\u00a0I wanted to document it with a few (crappy) cell phone photos and I’ve decided to include one of them below (after all, this is a “photo” blog…).<\/p>\n

So consider yourself forewarned. If graphic images\u00a0like this tend to upset you please don’t scroll any further. I’ll\u00a0leave some space before the photo shows up so you don’t have to see it if you prefer not to. Please, no complaints.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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So you can see why the doctor told me this would take a very long time to heal. All that tissue has to grow back and it will be sensitive as hell in the meantime (and it is). All this because of a careless and utterly stupid mistake.<\/p>\n

The wound edges aren’t really as white as they appear – that’s\u00a0partly a function of sun-glare\u00a0from the nearby window. We see some of the\u00a0same thing on the ends of the adjacent 2\u00a0fingers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ok, here’s what it all boils down to as it regards Feathered Photography. My improvised bandage allows me to type significantly better than I could with his “club finger” version but it’s still cumbersome and slow. I make many mistakes and at this point at least it’s somewhat painful\u00a0so we’ll see how it goes in the long run. It may or may not mean shorter blog posts for a while\u00a0with me doing less “rambling” (which some might think is a good thing anyway…).<\/p>\n

I very nearly didn’t include\u00a0this last photo because it’s so graphic. But in the end\u00a0I decided if there’s anything positive that could result from my accident it would be helping to prevent others from being as stupid and careless as I was and without the photo I don’t think the lesson would have been nearly\u00a0as effective.<\/p>\n

So please folks, do as I say and not as I do (did). Be very\u00a0careful with\u00a0knives. Always!<\/em><\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – It’s been suggested (more than once) that I invest in about a dozen pairs of those “safety scissors” little kids use in preschool and restrict myself to using them for the duration. Probably a good idea…<\/em><\/p>\n

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And some news not so good on the injured finger front.<\/p>\n

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