![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/red-tailed-hawk-8459-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPlus an impressive reptilian encounter in the same area.<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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<\/em><\/p>\n Yesterday morning I once again paid a visit to the female rufous Red-tailed Hawk and I\u00a0 consider this photo to be a small victory for me. For years I’ve struggled getting hawks sharp when they’re in flight with a background that’s very close behind them. In that situation autofocus tends to grab the background instead of the bird so the bird ends up being soft.<\/p>\n But yesterday I did better than usual on this shot. The bird’s face isn’t quite tack sharp but it’s close. Personally I don’t think these cliffs make a very good background aesthetically but for me the significance of the shot is that it demonstrates progress in my quest to improve my skills. At times in the past I’ve wondered if those skills were degenerating…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had a bit of a tension-filled experience with this hawk yesterday but that story hasn’t fully played out yet so I’ll have to wait until later to tell it but suffice it to say that while I was in the field with this bird I spent some time on the phone with good friend and blog follower April Olson. She happened to tell me that she’d recently seen this same hawk in the same area with a snake as prey (with her rufous color she’s very easy to distinguish from other red-tails).<\/p>\n Well, guess what I found just down the road after I left the hawk?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A beautiful and quite large Great Basin Gopher Snake sunning itself on the road. I estimated its length to be over 5′ and since 5.75′ is about as large as they get I consider it to be a big snake. It had shiny scales and clear eyes so I believe it had fairly recently shed its skin.<\/p>\n When I first drove up on the snake I feared it had already been flat-ironed by vehicles. I’m tired of seeing road kill on this road so after I passed it and wondered if it was still alive I turned around and came back to check it out. It was still very much alive and hadn’t yet been run over so I shooed it off the road and it disappeared into the grass.<\/p>\n I love gopher snakes and in the past it’s been my habit to pick them up and handle them briefly before releasing them. But they can be quite aggressive when handled and eventually I figured out that I was unnecessarily stressing them when I handled them for no particular reason other than my own satisfaction so I don’t do it anymore.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I was disappointed to see that the snake had a small injury on its side perhaps 6-8″ behind its head. The skin was apparently damaged and a group of scales were missing. Perhaps the injury occurred in a struggle with prey. Small mammals are their most common prey item and some of them can put up quite a struggle.<\/p>\n But the snake seemed healthy and active despite its injury and I was happy to see it disappear into the grass.<\/p>\n Raptor food, ya know… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plus an impressive reptilian encounter in the same area.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/gopher-snake-8993-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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