{"id":64334,"date":"2018-10-08T06:05:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T12:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=64334"},"modified":"2018-10-08T06:11:56","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T12:11:56","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-in-an-unusual-preening-pose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/08\/rough-legged-hawk-in-an-unusual-preening-pose\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk In An Unusual Preening Pose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The more I study this photo the more I get out of it. I&#8217;ve tried to interpret what I&#8217;m seeing as accurately as I can but I may or may not have it right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"64335\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/08\/rough-legged-hawk-in-an-unusual-preening-pose\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"720,900\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;10&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 40D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1227606212&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;400&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.00125&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"rough-legged hawk 9710 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley-240x300.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-64335 size-full\" title=\"rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley.jpg 720w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley-120x150.jpg 120w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley-400x500.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>1\/800, f\/10, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an older image that I never posted before because there&#8217;s no catch light in the eye and then I just forgot about it until last night when I stumbled across it again. But in a behavioral shot like this one\u00a0I now\u00a0believe a catch light isn&#8217;t essential, especially since we can see the light-colored right\u00a0eye of the juvenile.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;ve always loved this\u00a0pose because it&#8217;s unique\u00a0but I&#8217;d never studied\u00a0the image\u00a0before to figure out what&#8217;s actually going on. Obviously it&#8217;s preening one of\u00a0the flight feathers on its left wing. Hawks have ten primaries on each wing\u00a0and this bird appears to have P-1, the inner primary,\u00a0in its beak (I believe P-2 and P-3 are\u00a0mostly\u00a0hidden behind the other primaries). We can count at least seven of the other nine primaries by noticing their light-colored\u00a0terminal edges. P-1 has been bent upwards as the bird pulls its entire length through its beak in order to re-zip the hooks between the barbules and clean off any debris that may be present.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s something else that caught my eye &#8211; that group of white feathers\u00a0just to\u00a0the left of\u00a0the bottom of P-1. Roughie secondary feathers are dark dorsally and mostly white ventrally so those feathers must be the ventral surface of\u00a0some of the secondaries turned &#8216;upside-down&#8217; by the action of the hawk pulling on P-1. That&#8217;s something you don&#8217;t see every day and it demonstrates just how flexible feathers really are.<\/p>\n<p>At least it <em>appears<\/em> to me like that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going on but I&#8217;m far from an authority on raptor plumage so if I&#8217;ve misinterpreted anything here I hope falconers or other folks\u00a0&#8216;in the know&#8217; will set the record straight. I&#8217;ll admit to being slightly confused by at least one hopefully inconsequential detail so I&#8217;d appreciate confirmation or correction.\u00a0I&#8217;m not here as a know-it all, I&#8217;m here to learn too.<\/p>\n<p>I realize not everyone&#8217;s\u00a0as enamored\u00a0by avian minutia like this as I am so if I&#8217;ve bored you to tears I apologize. If nothing else I hope you can enjoy this beautiful raptor in an unusual pose.<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The more I study this photo the more I get out of it. I&#8217;ve tried to interpret what I&#8217;m seeing as accurately as I can but I may or may not have it right.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/08\/rough-legged-hawk-in-an-unusual-preening-pose\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64335,"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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[334,358],"tags":[534,190,4242,255,947,269,948],"class_list":["post-64334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-juvenile","tag-numbered-flight-featherxs","tag-preening","tag-primaries","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-secondaries"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/rough-legged-hawk-9710-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gJE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}