As you view the images you’ll notice that my shooting angle on the hawk varied considerably. That’s because I moved my pickup several times and the hawk moved to different places on the fence rails too so sometimes I was shooting down on “him” and sometimes I wasn’t.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-7147-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-7147-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
The hawk was a juvenile and I’m convinced that was at least part of the reason “he” was so cooperative. But in the beginning I didn’t know he would stick around so I focused on getting some portraits with my big lens.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5731-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5731-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Then I switched to my smaller zoom lens to give me more room in the frame in case he took off. He didn’t but he compensated by entertaining me with his antics. Here he was beginning a complex stretching routine that eventually morphed into something else entirely. He began by stretching his left wing, left leg and tail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5743-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5743-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
As he stood on both feet again his wing stretch went from a downward stretch to a vertical one, first with one wing…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5751-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5751-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
and then with both. But with his head in this position and facing down…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5764-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5764-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
a piece of loose bark on the fence rail caught his attention. He grabbed it, manipulated it with his bill for a few seconds and then…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5778-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5778-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
deliberately dropped it over the edge and watched it fall to the ground.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5811-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5811-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n
But he still hadn’t stretched his right wing so that was next on his agenda.<\/p>\n
As raptors often do I thought he might take off after stretching but he was content to stay where he was for quite a while. But eventually he apparently grew weary of his view from this vantage point on the old fence rail so he…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5911-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5911-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
began to walk to the other end. Walking raptors tickle my funny bone because they do it so purposefully and deliberately with so much concentration.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5914-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5914-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
It’s as if their expression and walking style are saying “I’m going to accomplish this very difficult task come hell or high water”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5928-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5928-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
When he reached his goal near the end of the fence rail he settled in with a comfortable one-footed stance as he apparently enjoyed his new vantage point on the world.<\/p>\n
In the end I spent 24 minutes with this young bird before he flew off and I’m convinced that would never happen with an adult in a wild setting like this (as opposed to a “citified” bird more accustomed to humans and vehicles).<\/p>\n
A short while after I left this juvenile I encountered an adult Cooper’s Hawk perched in a tree about 100 yards away. Even at that great distance the adult simply would not tolerate my pickup so it spooked and flew off.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m on a roll. Sixteen minutes after I left the tamest Belted Kingfisher I’ve ever photographed (photos I posted yesterday) I found the tamest Cooper’s Hawk I’ve ever seen or photographed. Around here both species are notoriously difficult to approach, especially in a wild setting.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76563,"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":[334,380],"tags":[2323,95,190,511,311,1763],"class_list":["post-76554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-coopers-hawk-diurnal-raptors","tag-accipiter-cooperii","tag-coopers-hawk","tag-juvenile","tag-stretching","tag-utah-2","tag-walking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/coopers-hawk-5928-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-jUK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76554","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=76554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}