![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2912-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-2912-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI figured\u00a0things\u00a0might be about to get interesting\u00a0when the hawk honed in on something high above and watched it intensely. There were blackbirds and a kestrel in the area\u00a0so I thought one of them might buzz the hawk but for fear I’d miss the action\u00a0I didn’t dare take my eye away from the viewfinder. I’ve done that before and missed all the excitement in my photos and didn’t want to repeat those miserable performances so I primed my trigger finger and waited for something to happen.<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2917-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis next photo\u00a0speaks for itself – incoming!!!<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2919-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nIt was another juvenile Red-tail, coming in for the attack. I never could decide if the attack was serious or just play-fighting between two juvies, possibly even siblings. But either way….<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2920-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nit appeared to be plenty\u00a0serious to me. The perched bird jumped almost straight up to meet its attacker.<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2921-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nIn a case like this it doesn’t bother me much to clip or cut off wings as long as I get all the essentials. This close to the birds while shooting with a 500mm lens I was lucky to get most of both birds in the frame and get them sharp, especially considering the speed and unpredictability\u00a0of the action.<\/p>\n
\n- What I’m about to admit will likely\u00a0confirm your previous suspicions that I can be just a little bit weird. When I look at the\u00a0color patterns\u00a0beneath the\u00a0right wing of the bird on the left it makes me think of the coiling of a Nautilus shell. And it gets even worse.\u00a0\u00a0In the\u00a0patterns of the darker markings up top on that same wing\u00a0I see two things – the head of a raptor looking to our right (specifically another Red-tailed Hawk)\u00a0and a word spelled out that begins with a capital “C” but I’m still working on the rest of the letters. Does anyone out there have access to an avian Rosetta Stone? (or perhaps a Urim and Thummim if you have Mormon connections like I do…)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Ok, back to reality.<\/p>\n
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![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2923-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis is the last shot I got of the fracas before I lost focus when the birds separated.\u00a0 Notice how the left wing of the lower hawk intersects the right wing of the other bird.\u00a0I’m not sure but I believe the\u00a0intersection occurs right at the alula of the bird up top. I think it’s an interesting intermingling of wings, structures\u00a0and feathers.<\/p>\n
Immediately after this shot was taken the aggressor landed on the ground to the right of the sign post and the hawk that was originally perched on the sign\u00a0flew off to my left.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/red-tailed-hawk-2937b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-2937b-ron-dudley\\"")
1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis is the attacking hawk as it eventually took off amongst the sunflowers.<\/p>\n
I’ve only been able to photograph an attack like this\u00a0involving Red-tailed Hawks two or three times and I believe these were my best results. One of the distinct\u00a0memories I have of the experience is my pounding heart when it was all over and that memory has lasted for four years now.<\/p>\n
For me the memory is\u00a0as much fun as the photos. Well…. almost.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These are some of the most exciting raptor photos I’ve ever taken.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26305,"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":[334,394,450],"tags":[953,1405,452,140,757,4115,451,4116,1686,4117,311],"class_list":["post-61729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-alula","tag-attack","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-fighting","tag-juveniles","tag-nautilus","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rosetta-stone","tag-sunflowers","tag-urim-and-thummim","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2921-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-g3D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61729","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=61729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/red-tailed-hawk-2907b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-2907b-ron-dudley\\"")
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