{"id":77903,"date":"2019-11-04T05:15:57","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T12:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=77903"},"modified":"2019-11-04T06:18:32","modified_gmt":"2019-11-04T13:18:32","slug":"ferruginous-hawk-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/04\/ferruginous-hawk-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferruginous Hawk Perched, Taking Off And In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three days ago in western Utah I spent some quality time with a cooperative immature Ferruginous Hawk. It had been a while.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

I found “her” on this weathered and frayed old fence post in warm light shortly after dawn. She didn’t stay on this perch long because another vehicle approached and then passed me from behind and scared her off. In fact I believe she had her eye on the fast approaching vehicle when this photo was taken.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

But she didn’t go far. She landed on another old juniper fence post in front of me and a little further away from the road.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

For a moment while she was here she appeared to be trying to throw a pellet (I don’t believe she was yawning) although she wasn’t successful. But this pose certainly illustrates the unusually large gape the species is known for. In a side view their extremely long gape extends all the way back to directly below the eye so their wide open mouth is huge.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

I caught her in the midst of a vigorous rouse (notice the length of the gape).<\/p>\n

After I took this shot I removed my teleconverter so I’d have more room in the frame if she took off.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not sure what she was doing here. Checking her toenails…?<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

She gave me no warning when she eventually decided to take off but thankfully I was prepared for it. At roughly 3.5 lbs Ferruginous Hawks are our largest and heaviest buteo so a successful launch often requires a deep crouch…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

and a push-off from those powerful legs and feet. This is the single photo I posted two days ago. Some folks call this takeoff posture a “wing fling”.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Immediately after launch.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

For this and the following photo I had to add canvas on the left for composition purposes. I don’t like to do that but… I did it anyway.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Thankfully she began to bank slightly in my direction soon after liftoff which gave me a nice angle on her in flight. More often than not they take off away from me but on this morning there was a cold breeze coming from the south (my left) so she took off in the fortuitous direction I anticipated. For obvious reasons larger raptors often take off into the wind.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In this photo she stands out well against the background mountains.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the last flight shot I’ll include because I was already beginning to lose sharp focus on the bird. I have several more photos of her in flight but they were just a little too soft to ever see the light of day.<\/p>\n

Finding this hawk was a real treat. For the last several years I’ve had very little luck with Ferruginous Hawks but the fact that she was an immature bird probably contributed to my success with her. Adults are typically less approachable.<\/p>\n

I looked for her in the same area the next morning but she was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: I don’t really know the sex of this hawk. When I posted that single photo two days ago I referred to the bird as “he” and this time I’m using “she” for the sake of equality. “They” as a gender-neutral pronoun just doesn’t work for me. Awkward and confusing I know…<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three days ago in western Utah I spent some quality time with a cooperative immature Ferruginous Hawk. It had been a while.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77910,"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":[334,377],"tags":[531,138,146,768,190,1501,4812,2738,2973,311,3373],"class_list":["post-77903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ferruginous-hawks","tag-buteo-regalis","tag-ferruginous-hawk","tag-flight","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-rousing","tag-size-of-gape","tag-takeoff","tag-throwing-a-pellet","tag-utah-2","tag-weight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/ferruginous-hawk-3635-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kgv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77903","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=77903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}