{"id":90030,"date":"2020-10-03T05:54:20","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T11:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=90030"},"modified":"2020-10-03T07:10:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T13:10:09","slug":"rufous-red-tailed-hawk-an-unconventional-and-unpredictable-takeoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/03\/rufous-red-tailed-hawk-an-unconventional-and-unpredictable-takeoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Rufous Red-tailed Hawk – An Unconventional And Unpredictable Takeoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

In birds behavioral tendencies can often be predicted with reasonable accuracy but individuals sometimes fake me right out of my shoes.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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

Eleven days ago this adult rufous Red-tailed Hawk was perched in a dead tree in the west desert. The bird looks like a female to me so I’ll refer to her as such.<\/p>\n

I liked the setting but she was a little too far away for quality photos while she was perched and she had her back to me anyway. I was at a good distance from her for takeoff and flight shots but if she did take off I’d have bet my shutter finger that she’d launch in the direction she’s facing. Typically raptors don’t take off in the direction of a potential threat such as me inside my pickup.<\/p>\n

I had very little hope of getting any photos I’d like so I was about to stow my gear and leave the area when…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

she pooped.<\/p>\n

More often than not when perched raptors defecate it’s a sign of imminent takeoff but she was still facing mostly away from me so for all practical purposes nothing had changed. Whether the bird is perched or in flight I simply don’t need any more butt shots.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

Even when she turned broadside to me for a moment I still figured she’d take off toward the mountain in the background. After all, she likely wouldn’t take off to my right because of all the branches in her way and I’d already discarded the possibility that she’d launch in my direction. Besides the potential threat I posed there were also more branches between me and the bird (some of which can’t be seen here) to make it far less likely that she’d come my way.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

But she had other plans. She began to raise her wings and…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

then sort of toppled over on her perch as part of her effort to avoid the branch in front of her as she came my way.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

In perhaps the most dramatic photo of the series I clipped a wing because of her almost vertical wing orientation.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

The timing of her wing beats allowed her to avoid all the branches on her right with her right wing and then…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

she was gone. I didn’t get any spectacularly good shots but she gave me more experience with how to deal with situations like this, which I appreciate.<\/p>\n

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I realize that all this minutia may be more than many of my readers care much about – you may just want to see the photos and have little interest in the process of getting them.<\/p>\n

But as the photographer I have to think about stuff like this and sometimes it works its way into my blog posts.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: After I posted Mia reminded me that a woman riding an ATV probably influenced this bird’s direction of takeoff.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

In birds behavioral tendencies can often be predicted with reasonable accuracy but individuals sometimes fake me right out of my shoes.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90034,"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":[6,334,395,450],"tags":[452,1474,146,4771,5378,451,2081,2738],"class_list":["post-90030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-defecate","tag-flight","tag-pooping","tag-predicting-behavior","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rufous","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-8133-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nq6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90030","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=90030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}