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<\/a><\/p>\n1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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“He” was one of two young siblings hanging around the entrance to a Wasatch Mountain canyon this past August 30th. He posed on the lichen-covered rocks for quite a while and then things got even more interesting when he…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0847-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0847-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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>\nbegan to preen his tail feathers. Sometimes he had his eye or nictitating membrane closed and part or all of his head was often hidden but I still like this peekaboo shot as he was pulling one of his tail feathers (which we can’t see) through his bill.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0893-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0893-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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>\nWhen he started working on his undertail coverts his head and eye were hidden from view less often.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0931-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0931-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, 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>\nWhen he was through with his tail he started on his wing primaries. These preening activities can require highly contorted body positions that I find interesting and often amusing. It took me a moment or two to figure out where that feather in his bill actually originated but it’s one of the primaries of his right wing.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0932-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0932-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/2500, f\/7.1, 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>\nThe differences between this photo and the previous one are subtle but they’re there, particularly in the angle of his head and the amount of bending of the feather he’s working on. Despite their similarities I like both photos so I’m including them both.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0954-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0954-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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>\nAt one point another bird flew past low overhead and this was his reaction. I’ll admit that I didn’t actually see the other bird because my eye was glued to my viewfinder but I’m almost positive it was his sibling because I’d seen a similar reaction earlier.<\/p>\n
He’s actually calling out (almost screaming) to the other bird and he…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0955-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0955-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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>\ncontinued to do so as it passed by overhead.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0956-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-0956-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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>\nHe kept calling out even after he took his eye off of the other bird. The siblings were often quite communicative.<\/p>\n
I took lots of photos of the siblings over several mornings but this was the best day I had with them. To be honest I mostly forgot about these and other photos of them until I began to cull my huge backlog of 99,483 images a few days ago and ran into them again.<\/p>\n
I’m making progress. I’ve freed up 217 gigabytes of disc space so it’s a pretty good start.<\/p>\n
Only 90,216 photos to go…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the more cooperative hawks I’ve photographed in what I think is an attractive natural setting.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81517,"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":[334,395,450],"tags":[452,1102,2548,255,451,1396,311],"class_list":["post-81489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-calling","tag-lichens","tag-preening","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-siblings","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0931-preview-image-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lcl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81489","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=81489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}