![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-8987-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-8987-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nYesterday morning I found another pair of nest-building Red-tailed Hawks. Neither bird is a rufous color morph (like the female in the pair I’ve been photographing recently) but they’re still great photo subjects and I was able to document several interesting behaviors.<\/p>\n
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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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 I believe this is the male of the pair. All morning he was focused on carrying nesting material while his mate spent most of her time preening on a nearby rocky perch. I think he was trying to impress her with his industriousness.<\/p>\n I like this shot partly because it’s a little unusual. I typically don’t get a raptor with nesting material flying toward me with a cliff this close in the background because at this point they’re usually flying toward the nest with their back to me. And in this photo his flight angle put some light on his underside and that’s a plus. I wish his head was a little sharper but I think it’s acceptable.<\/p>\n This may look like a large and unwieldy piece of nesting material but for this bird it was chicken feed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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 Big hunks of “stuff” were his specialty. Here the stick (log?, pole?) he tackled was so long I couldn’t keep all of it in frame, in spite of trying to do so in quite a few photos as he flew toward the nest. This was as close to keeping the entire stick in the frame as I was able to manage.<\/p>\n I took almost 1500 photos of these birds yesterday and I’ve had very little time to review them but I should have more interesting behaviors to post over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n These birds obviously still aren’t incubating eggs and based on my observations of paired red-tails in other areas I’m convinced that they’re late this year compared to previous years. I suspect that may be due to our cold, wet spring.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note: I spent my entire time with these hawks inside my pickup alongside a road and never approached the nest. I watched their behavior carefully and if my presence had altered that behavior I’d have left the area immediately. These birds are obviously acclimated to vehicle traffic and I was photographing them from a distance at an effective focal range of 1120mm. These photos have been significantly cropped..\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday morning I found another pair of nest-building Red-tailed Hawks. Neither bird is a rufous color morph (like the female in the pair I’ve been photographing recently) but they’re still great photo subjects and I was able to document several interesting behaviors.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-9221-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-9221-ron-dudley\\"")
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