{"id":83517,"date":"2020-04-01T06:03:05","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T12:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=83517"},"modified":"2020-04-01T06:03:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T12:03:05","slug":"meet-the-mated-pair-of-red-tailed-hawks-together-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/01\/meet-the-mated-pair-of-red-tailed-hawks-together-this-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet The Mated Pair Of Red-tailed Hawks, Together This Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In two of my recent posts readers met the male and female individually but in this series we see them interacting as a pair, including mating. Some of these photos are of documentary quality only but as readers know I love documenting bird behaviors.<\/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

Early in the morning five days ago I photographed this mated pair of Red-tailed Hawks in the early stages of their nesting activities. The slightly larger female is on the left, the male on the right. While I was with them they spent their time hanging out together, refurbishing their nest and mating.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/9, 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

By the time I took this photo I had moved my pickup to a slightly different spot on the road below them so I’d have a better shooting angle for flight shots when they eventually took off in the direction I expected them to go. From this angle I never did get a catch light in the female’s eye.<\/p>\n

I read these respective postures differently. The female on the left looks like she’s content to stay on her perch for a while but the male is looking intently at the far distance as if he’s planning his next trip to look for nesting material. And that’s exactly what happened with both birds.<\/p>\n

She stayed put but the male took off to gather nesting material. Naturally I missed the photos of the male’s takeoff. Bird photographers have to pay attention or we miss the best action!<\/p>\n

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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>\n

The female barely budged on her rocky perch while she watched the male foraging for twigs and delivering one of them to the nest.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, 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

But suddenly from the posture of her head and her intent gaze I could tell she was now even more interested in “something” out there. I could only guess what it was. I wondered if she might be planning to take off and join her mate in gathering nesting material or if she was watching him flying in to join her again. I didn’t dare to take my eye off the viewfinder to find out for fear of missing something once again.<\/p>\n

As it turned out the male had l’amour<\/em> on his mind and I suspect she did too.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, 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

Suddenly the male appeared in the frame. I expected him to land next to her but he had something else in mind.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, 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

He attempted to land on top of her for mating purposes but her back was an unstable perch and they both struggled to get the job done. Here it looks like she’s done a face plant.<\/p>\n

I took 49 photos of them as they mated but they had their backs to me the entire time so all of them look similar to this one – just a jumble of legs, feathers and bungholes. Here we can actually see the cloacal opening of the female as they struggled to complete the “cloacal kiss”.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, 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

Almost immediately after mating the male flew off to work on the nest again. The female stayed put for a while before taking off to join him.<\/p>\n

My takeoff and flight shots of her can be seen here<\/span><\/span><\/a> if you have the interest and didn’t see them in my previous post.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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In two of my recent posts readers met the male and female individually but in this series we see them interacting as a pair, including mating..<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83523,"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":[334,391,450],"tags":[452,1019,477,988,1539,1016,451,311],"class_list":["post-83517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-cloaca","tag-cloacal-kiss","tag-male-and-female","tag-mated-pair","tag-mating","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4803-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lJ3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83517","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=83517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}