{"id":84294,"date":"2020-04-23T06:15:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T12:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=84294"},"modified":"2020-04-23T06:48:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T12:48:38","slug":"mating-red-tailed-hawks-the-rest-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/23\/mating-red-tailed-hawks-the-rest-of-the-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Mating Red-tailed Hawks – The Rest Of The Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I documented the prenuptial flight of the male Red-tailed Hawk<\/a><\/span><\/span> that I photographed two days ago in northern Utah. Today that story is continued with their mating.<\/p>\n

All photos are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

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This is the last photo in yesterday’s post. It’s a little confusing because it suggests that the male flew directly to the female and mounted her for mating. That’s not quite what happened.<\/p>\n

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Instead he veered off slightly to his left at the last second and landed on the side of the cliff very close to her on the spot that I’ve marked with the red arrow.<\/p>\n

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But he only stayed there for a couple of seconds (for good reason, notice her solicitation posture.) I didn’t even have time to recompose to include both birds without cutting off any body parts before he…<\/p>\n

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attempted to land on her back for mating purposes.<\/p>\n

But his approach was from the wrong direction for matching up “plumbing parts” for mating so he had to attempt to turn around on her back, which he did clumsily. Here his right foot is clawing at the top of her head as he tries to complete a 180 on her back.<\/p>\n

She was very patient with him.<\/p>\n

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Eight frames in the burst later he’d finally made some progress but then he made the mistake of…<\/p>\n

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placing his left foot too far forward on her back which meant his center of gravity was now in front of her center of gravity so he almost…<\/p>\n

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slipped off of the front of her back.<\/p>\n

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Then it appeared to me that he tried to grasp her neck feathers in his beak in an attempt to keep from falling off.<\/p>\n