{"id":78293,"date":"2019-11-14T04:36:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T11:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=78293"},"modified":"2019-11-14T05:57:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T12:57:57","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/14\/red-tailed-hawk-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk Perched, Taking Off And In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raptors have several behavioral quirks that bird photographers who lust after takeoff and flight shots should be very familiar with because they signal imminent takeoff. Yesterday morning near Farmington Bay WMA this immature Red-tailed Hawk knew all the choreographed moves and performed most of them on cue.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, 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 know, I know – yesterday I told you I seldom post photos of birds on utility poles so what do I post the very next day? Yup, a hawk on a pole. But bear with me, “he” won’t stay here for long.<\/p>\n

From the get-go he seemed a little nervous about me stopping my pickup on the side of the road even though I wasn’t particularly close and there’s quite a bit of traffic on that road. His alert posture suggested to me that he might be leaving soon so after a few photos I took off my teleconverter so I had a better chance of avoiding clipped or cut off body parts if he took off.<\/p>\n

With larger raptors, buteos in particular, there are four indicators of imminent takeoff that I always watch carefully for so I can prepare myself for launch: rousing, stretching, pooping and turning into even a slight breeze just prior to takeoff. They don’t always do any of them but they often do one or more of them. It’s enough of a reliable behavioral pattern to be extremely useful to the bird photographer with takeoff and flight shots in mind.<\/p>\n

This hawk performed three of the four just before he lifted off.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

He roused…<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

pooped,<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

and turned into the breeze. He never did stretch.\u00a0At this point I was almost certain takeoff was imminent so I was sure glad I’d removed my teleconverter.<\/p>\n

The next five shots are sequential without any skips.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

I love this takeoff posture. His posture also illustrates why it’s so damned easy to clip or cut off body parts when they take off, especially up top.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

In this photo and the previous one I had the bonus of direct eye contact.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

I believe this shot needs moderate clockwise rotation but I had to choose between the lesser of two evils – either leave the bird slightly tipped in flight or add canvas on the right for composition purposes to replace the canvas I’d lose if I rotated the image. I really don’t like to add canvas so I chose the first option.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

Wouldn’t you know it! In one of the best flight shots of the series I clipped three flight feathers on his right wing.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

This is the last flight shot I’ll include. The next two photos were also sharp with no body parts clipped or cut off but I wasn’t fond of his wing positions and he was far too close to the right edge of the frame.<\/p>\n

This hawk saved my day yesterday. I’ll probably delete every other photo I took that morning.<\/p>\n

Good bird!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Raptors have several behavioral quirks that bird photographers who lust after takeoff and flight shots should be very familiar with because they signal imminent takeoff. Yesterday morning near Farmington Bay WMA this immature Red-tailed Hawk knew all the choreographed moves and performed most of them on cue.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78298,"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":[6,334,2782,395,450],"tags":[50,452,1474,1008,146,768,190,1058,451,994,2738,311],"class_list":["post-78293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-miscellaneous","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-behavior","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-defecate","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-poop","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rouse","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-5708-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kmN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78293","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=78293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}