![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-6899-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-6899-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nPlus a little excitement with a young cow struggling to give birth.<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Yesterday morning I found the female rufous Red-tailed Hawk once again. I never did get very close to her so these photos have been moderately cropped but she made up for it with some interesting behaviors.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n After not doing much of anything for a while she broke out into this wing stretch. She then began a more dramatic downward stretch of her right wing but she was looking away from me for the entire time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n Then she pooped (I’m not quite sure why this shot is softer than the others}. As they often do I expected her to take off after defecating but she had other plans.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n Suddenly she began to retch so it was obvious that she was trying to regurgitate a pellet. She retched for quite a while in multiple sessions before…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n the pellet finally began to emerge.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n Here it’s bouncing down the side of the rock.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n It continued to tumble down the rock and<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n eventually fell over the edge and disappeared.<\/p>\n I’ve been lucky enough to document pellet casting in a variety of raptor species over the years but I’ve only rarely been able to do it with Red-tailed Hawks so I was happy to get this series. The fact that the bird involved was this stunning rufous female was a bonus.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I was leaving the area 27 minutes later we came across a young cow who was trying desperately to become a mama for the very first time. I took a few photos for documentary purposes but she was very strongly backlit so I had to process the hell out of the images to make them even moderately acceptable. But I think they’re good enough to be useful to readers in understanding the situation.<\/p>\n It was heart-wrenching to watch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The young cow was really struggling to give birth to her calf. The face and two front feet of the calf had emerged but she didn’t seem to be making any progress and I had no idea how long she’d been in this condition. She tried to stand up twice, as she’s doing here, but each time she collapsed before getting on her feet.<\/p>\n She was exhausted and very possibly in dire straits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n She appeared to be getting nowhere which made me wonder how long she’d been in this condition. I’ve seen cows and sheep die attempting to give birth so I had thoughts of attempting to pull the calf out myself but in the end I didn’t because it wasn’t my cow and I didn’t want to make any mistakes with someone else’s property.<\/p>\n So I drove down the road to the nearest ranch house perhaps five miles away and knocked on the door. A very pleasant young woman answered, the wife of the rancher. I explained the situation and she used her phone to call her husband who was out working somewhere on the ranch. He suggested that we return to the cow to confirm that she was in trouble so the rancher’s wife and her very young baby joined Mia and me in my pickup and we went back to the cow.<\/p>\n When we got there to our great relief we found the cow and her newborn calf and both seemed to be doing just fine. I didn’t take any photos because they were mostly hidden in the sagebrush. It was a false alarm but I didn’t want to take any chances because I’ve seen some terrible things when livestock have problems giving birth. In a previous year in this same area we found a sheep with a long-dead lamb hanging out of her. The lamb was decomposing and you could smell it from a great distance. No critter deserves such a fate.<\/p>\n Another upside is that we were able to meet and have a nice visit with the rancher’s wife and her very young baby boy. Mikala was very friendly and a joy to talk to and her young son Sage seemed to be the perfect baby. Both Mia and I thoroughly enjoyed making their acquaintance, false alarm or not.<\/p>\n We just never know what experiences we might have on our bird photography trips.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plus a little excitement with a young cow struggling to give birth.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-6921-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-6921-ron-dudley\\"")
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