{"id":87382,"date":"2020-07-14T06:23:35","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T12:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=87382"},"modified":"2020-07-14T06:38:03","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T12:38:03","slug":"fledgling-red-tailed-hawks-do-everything-with-gusto-but-rarely-with-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/14\/fledgling-red-tailed-hawks-do-everything-with-gusto-but-rarely-with-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Fledgling Red-tailed Hawks Do Everything With Gusto But Rarely With Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I reported on the status of the ‘nest B’ Red-tailed Hawk fledglings<\/a><\/span><\/span>. Today I’ll provide an update on the fledglings from nearby nest A.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The last time I visited nest A the nest was empty and I couldn’t find any of the chicks or adults nearby but two days ago I found this lone fledgling very close to the nest. Fairly soon after the eggs hatched I could see three tiny white bobbleheads in the nest but a few weeks later only two had survived.<\/p>\n

First some bad news. Soon after I took this photo I had a short visit with a woman along the dirt road who was monitoring raptor nests for RINS (Raptor Inventory Nest Survey)<\/a><\/span><\/span>. She told me that the second fledgling from this nest had died. I won’t go into the gory details but it was a natural death. She didn’t say how she knew this but since she works for RINS and is presumably a trained observer I believe it’s probably accurate information.<\/p>\n

But thankfully this last youngster seemed like ‘he’ was doing just fine. He’s a little younger than the two fledglings from nest B just up the road and here he was calling loudly, presumably for food to be delivered from one of his parents. I never saw either of his parents that morning but I didn’t spend much time in the vicinity of this nest.<\/p>\n

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At this age fledglings are still learning to do just about everything, including but not limited to the intricacies of takeoffs, landings and flight. When they attempt something fairly new to them they go at it enthusiastically, fearlessly and usually clumsily which can be quite amusing and even endearing for the human observer.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 278mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This fledgling’s takeoff was an example. He crouched down and opened his wings just prior to pushing off with his legs. So far pretty good technique, especially for such a young bird.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 278mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But his push-off angle to the vertical was very close to straight up rather than forward and up so his push-off provided little if any acceleration or momentum in the direction he meant to go (which obviously wasn’t straight up).<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 278mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

So immediately after takeoff he had no forward momentum to speak of to provide lift so the only lift available to him had to be provided by flapping. For a moment or two I thought he was going to fall right out of the sky. Because of his unexpected vertical takeoff this is the last shot I got without amputating body parts.<\/p>\n

I have to wonder if his awkwardness isn’t in some way responsible for his several lost or broken flight feathers.<\/p>\n

I adore those last two shots for his obvious enthusiasm and awkwardness at takeoff. In both photos those stiff vertical legs, and splayed feet in the second shot, tickle my funny bone.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – I have another photo taken that same morning of one of the youngsters from nest B that I wish I’d thought to include in yesterday’s post so I’m tacking it on to the end of today’s.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

While they’re in their nest red-tail chicks shoot their wastes over the edge of the nest for sanitary reasons. It’s an instinctive behavior and they put great effort into squirting it far enough without falling off the edge of the nest.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

That instinct remains with them after fledging. This young bird put all he had into shooting that nasty stuff far away. I don’t post poop shots often, in part because I think birds deserve their privacy and dignity at such moments but I enjoyed this one so much I decided to make an exception<\/em><\/p>\n

Falconers call this “slicing” and adult raptors do it too. When I was teaching I’d often have education raptors brought into class and they would reliably foul my blackboards (later my whiteboards) some distance behind them.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Thankfully I had classroom aides to clean it up…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Yesterday I reported on\u00a0the status of the ‘nest B’ Red-tailed Hawk Fledglings. Today I’ll provide an update on the fledglings from nearby nest A.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87386,"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":[452,1102,481,145,146,4771,5237,451,5236,5238,2738],"class_list":["post-87382","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-calling","tag-chick","tag-fledgling","tag-flight","tag-pooping","tag-rapttor-inventory-nest-survey","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rins","tag-slicing","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/red-tailed-hawk-0120-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mJo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87382","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=87382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}