{"id":87326,"date":"2020-07-13T06:23:29","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T12:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=87326"},"modified":"2020-07-13T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T17:59:09","slug":"recently-fledged-red-tailed-hawk-coming-at-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/13\/recently-fledged-red-tailed-hawk-coming-at-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Recently Fledged Red-tailed Hawk Coming At Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I reported the possible untimely demise of two Red-tailed Hawk fledglings<\/a><\/span><\/span> from what I called “nest B”. Yesterday I discovered that both siblings are doing just fine.<\/p>\n

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They were hanging out on the mountainside below and fairly close to their cliff nest. As they typically do at this age they preferred each other’s company which allowed me to get some photos that included them both, even though one was largely hidden.<\/p>\n

They were flying well but they still rely on the adults for food so they were sometimes calling loudly, apparently to be fed.<\/p>\n

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One of the parents was watching over the youngsters from much further away and high above them. This image is a very large crop and when I took the photo I didn’t even notice the Rock Wren (I believe) on the left scolding the adult hawk.<\/p>\n

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Here one of the youngsters has moved a few feet away from its sibling and is calling loudly, apparently for food. I removed my teleconverter so I’d have more room in the frame for two possible events – the other sibling joining this one and interacting with each other or this one taking off.<\/p>\n

It was the latter that eventually occurred.<\/p>\n

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My heart sank a little when it launched in my direction because when they fly toward the photographer their body provides a smaller profile for active focus points to stay locked onto. The result is often soft shots soon after takeoff.<\/p>\n

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But this time I had better luck.<\/p>\n

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As the bird veered slightly to my left I managed to stay locked on but the wings are soft. I’ll explain why in a minute.<\/p>\n

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I like diagonal compositions of birds in flight when the wingtips reach toward opposite corners of the frame. More often than not I clip at least one wing in this situation so it’s a damn good thing I removed my tc.<\/p>\n

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This is the last shot I managed to get before I started chopping off body parts.<\/p>\n

OK, what about those soft wingtips in photo #6? It isn’t a depth of field issue, it’s motion blur. Somehow I’d inadvertently changed my aperture from f\/6.3 to f\/9. I actually did it twice that morning and it wasn’t done purposely either time so I had no idea I was shooting at that setting. For shot #6 where the wings were moving rapidly my shutter speed had dropped down to 1\/1250 so they’re soft.<\/p>\n

But I’m not really complaining. Soft wings when much or all of the rest of the bird is sharp can actually be a positive because the softness implies motion which is appropriate for the wings of a bird in flight.<\/p>\n

Besides, after finding both siblings safe and sound I’m not in the mood to complain about much of anything. I thought there was a very good chance they were both dead.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Recently I reported the possible untimely demise of two Red-tailed Hawk fledglings from what I called “nest B”. Yesterday I discovered that both siblings are doing just fine.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87331,"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":[6,334,391,450],"tags":[5235,452,3394,2975,4476,757,451,1396,311],"class_list":["post-87326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-aperture-and-shutter-speed","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-diagonal-composition","tag-fledglings","tag-flight-series","tag-juveniles","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-siblings","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/red-tailed-hawk-0065-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mIu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87326","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=87326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}