{"id":85688,"date":"2020-05-29T05:23:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T11:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=85688"},"modified":"2020-05-29T06:28:27","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T12:28:27","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-takeoff-and-landing-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/29\/red-tailed-hawk-takeoff-and-landing-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk Takeoff And Landing Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I decided to renew my acquaintance with the pair of nesting Red-tailed Hawks I’ve been following for weeks now. The last time I’d visited them the female was incubating eggs in their nest on the side of a cliff in northern Utah.<\/p>\n

When I first arrived I was fearful the nest had failed because the adults were nowhere to be found and from my vantage point I couldn’t see any youngsters in the nest. Eventually I left the area but I just had to check on them again so I returned about a half hour later.<\/p>\n

Still no hawks.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, 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 just as I was about to leave the area in despair one of the adults finally showed up. I believe it was the male but I can’t be sure. He flew directly over the cliffside nest to make sure whatever was in there (eggs or hatchlings) was OK and then he started hunting for prey within a hundred yards or so from the nest which I thought was slightly unusual. In my experience nesting red-tails usually leave the area of the nest to hunt, possibly because prey close to the nest has already been depleted.<\/p>\n

His technique was to fly from rock to rock on the side of the steep hillside and hunt briefly from each perch before he flew to the next one, which is what he’s doing here.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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 fooled me when he launched from the rock because he took off at such a steep angle, almost straight up. I barely kept him in frame and after this shot I lost him in my viewfinder.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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 I was able to reacquire him just before he landed a little further up the steep hill. Because all of his other perches had been rocks I thought he was going to land on the lichen-covered rock in the background but instead he chose to land on this bush in front of it.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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 applied the air brakes at just the right time…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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

\u00a0and settled into the bush with a pose that I thought slightly resembled Winged Victory<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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

As he was approaching the bush I don’t believe he could see a single sturdy twig to land on through all those leaves so I suspect he held this pose as long as he did to give his feet enough time to find a twig or two sturdy enough to support his weight.<\/p>\n

I was proud of myself for managing to reacquire him in my viewfinder and get a series of landing shots where he was sharp, especially with the background so close.<\/p>\n

Landing shots are tough.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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 hunted from this perch for a short time before he took off and found another one further away. I never did see him catch any prey and eventually he flew off to hunt further away where I couldn’t see him so I left the area.<\/p>\n

When I returned to the nest a third time, perhaps another half hour later, one of the adults was in the nest feeding very young chicks (bobbleheads if you prefer). When they raised their wobbly heads to be fed was the first time I’d been able to see any evidence of life in the nest.<\/p>\n

Seeing chicks in the nest made the very long drive home much easier to endure.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Yesterday morning I decided to renew my acquaintance with the pair of nesting Red-tailed Hawks I’ve been following for weeks now.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85691,"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":[334,392,391,450],"tags":[5149,452,146,579,230,451,2738,311,5148],"class_list":["post-85688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-bobblehead","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-flight","tag-landing","tag-nesting","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2","tag-winged-victory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/red-tailed-hawk-3512-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mi4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85688","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=85688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}