{"id":80694,"date":"2020-01-16T05:46:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T12:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=80694"},"modified":"2020-01-16T06:52:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T13:52:20","slug":"northern-harrier-takeoff-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/16\/northern-harrier-takeoff-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harrier Takeoff Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally I try to avoid posting photos of the same species to my blog on consecutive days but this series, taken yesterday morning at Farmington Bay WMA, called for an exception.<\/p>\n

The following four photos are consecutive shots in a burst without any skips.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, 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

While perched the hawk was just a little too far away for quality photos so all I could hope for was takeoff and flight shots. Thankfully the bird cooperated.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, 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

I love this takeoff posture with direct eye contact thrown in as a bonus.<\/p>\n

I’m always amazed at the incredible coordination of various body parts required during takeoff. Here she has already pushed off with her legs and both of her wings and her tail are in perfect position to perform their function of providing additional lift. Both wings have been elevated for their first downbeat and the unfanned tail has been raised for the same purpose. The downstroke of the wings will provide most of the lift off of the perch but the tail in this raised position will be instantly fanned out and brought down quickly to provide additional lift. Many of us don’t think of the tail “flapping” to provide lift during takeoff but it does, especially with larger raptors.<\/p>\n

In addition her intention is to begin turning my way during takeoff thus the asymmetrical position of her wings at this point in the process.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, 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

When combined with the momentum provided by the push-off with her legs the downbeat of both wings and her now flared tail popped her light body a foot off the perch in a single downstroke.<\/p>\n

A pretty impressive maneuver if you ask me.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, 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

I was bummed to have clipped a wing in the next shot in the series. I’m including it because I like how her body has been thrown to our right as it hangs from her wings during the sharp turn. After this shot she completed the 180\u00b0 turn and flew off to our left but I lost focus on her because it’s so difficult for me to follow a bird in flight while shooting from my pickup window at that angle behind me.<\/p>\n

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In the comments to yesterday’s post blog follower Steven Holt discussed the unusually light wing loading of Northern Harriers (“wing loading = the total weight of the bird divided by the surface area of its wings”). Please go back and look at the second photo again and notice all the surface area in that incredibly long and wide left wing.<\/p>\n

The light wing loading of harriers helps to explain this quick and “easy” liftoff and the ability of harriers to fly at unusually slow speeds while they “harry” potential prey directly beneath them.<\/p>\n

As Steven mentioned in his comment yesterday, harriers are “mostly feathers and air”.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: For the sake of comparison – Red-tailed Hawks have a wingspan of 49″ while the wingspan of Northern Harriers is 43″. However, red-tails are more than 2 1\/2 times heavier<\/strong> than harriers (1080g versus 420g). Statistics from Sibley. <\/em><\/p>\n

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

Normally I try to avoid posting photos of the same species to my blog on consecutive days but this series, taken yesterday morning at Farmington Bay WMA, called for an exception. The following four photos are consecutive shots in a burst without any skips.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80696,"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":[334,2782,341],"tags":[86,1008,4913,234,4912,311,4914],"class_list":["post-80694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-how-do-birds-take-off","tag-northern-harrier","tag-takeoff-dynamics","tag-utah-2","tag-wing-loading-definition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/northern-harrier-8089-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kZw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80694","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=80694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}