{"id":70759,"date":"2019-04-08T05:58:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T11:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=70759"},"modified":"2019-04-08T06:10:42","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T12:10:42","slug":"red-tailed-hawks-mating-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/08\/red-tailed-hawks-mating-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawks Mating Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Makin’ babies. Or at least trying to.<\/p>\n

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Eight days ago I found the female rufous Red-tailed Hawk and her mate once again. This is the male with nesting material in his bill. I assumed he would deliver the stick to the nest but apparently he had other plans.<\/p>\n

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Instead he landed next to his mate on the side of a small mountain with the stick still in his bill. The behavior that followed made me wonder if the stick was intended as a nuptial gift.<\/p>\n

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After a few moments he dropped the stick (which is still falling near his feet) and took off…<\/p>\n

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toward his mate who is beginning to assume a mating posture.<\/p>\n

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The male landed on her upper back but…<\/p>\n

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both birds struggled to keep him up there and before the “cloacal kiss” could be completed…<\/p>\n

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he slipped off of her back to the ground.<\/p>\n

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I never could get good shots of the two of them together because he was largely hidden behind her.<\/p>\n

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Eventually the male took off and soon the female followed him. If this photo looks familiar it’s because I’ve posted it before.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t particularly close to these birds and most of the photos were taken with my teleconverter removed so the images have been cropped significantly. But I’m always happy to document raptor behavior, especially when it involves mating.<\/p>\n

Having this gorgeous rufous female as one of the participants was a welcome bonus.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Makin’ babies. Or at least trying to.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70763,"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":[334,391,450],"tags":[452,1016,231,4016,451,2081,311],"class_list":["post-70759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-mating","tag-nesting-material","tag-nuptial-gift","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rufous","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-8019-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-iph","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70759","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=70759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}