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<\/p>\nOn those occasions when I see injured birds surviving and even thriving it makes my day.<\/p>\n
Recently my good friend Billy Fenimore, Director of the Farmington Wildlife Center, told me about a Red-tailed Hawk with an injured leg that has been successfully hunting for voles near the Wildlife Center. He said the hawk uses only one leg and foot to capture the voles and it had been doing so for some time.<\/p>\n
Two days ago I photographed what is apparently the same immature hawk hunting from a kestrel box on the refuge. Documenting ‘her’ active lifestyle despite her injury was a ‘feel good’ experience for me and I accomplished a difficult photographic feat with her to boot.<\/p>\n
Photographing landing birds is hard, much more difficult than photographing them taking off. In the past I’ve considered myself lucky to get a single sharp and unclipped photo of a bird, any bird, during its landing approach. But with this hawk I managed to get five sequential photos of her as she approached the nest box and touched down. Not all of them are great shots but they do show the flight dynamics of landing, as modified to compensate for her injury, and I consider it an accomplishment to get that many sequential approach shots.<\/p>\n
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Here she’s returning to her nest box hunting platform after an unsuccessful attempt to snag a vole she’d spotted nearby. The injured leg is her left one. I looked carefully at other photos of her and see no obvious injury on her foot or tarsi (lower leg) so perhaps the actual injury is on her upper leg.<\/p>\n
That aggravating vertical and out of focus white line between the hawk and the nest box is a utility pole in the far background. I try to not let it bother me because this series is more about behavior and flight dynamics than it is about aesthetics.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n She doesn’t land or stand on the injured left leg. Here we already see a disparity between how she uses and doesn’t use her legs just prior to landing – she’s in the process of bringing her right foot forward to land on it exclusively while she keeps the injured leg back and mostly out of the way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is my favorite shot of the landing process. I like her flight posture relative to her soon-to-be perch and it documents clearly the unusual asymmetrical position of her feet and legs as she tries to protect her injured left leg just prior to landing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n You won’t often see me post photos where we can’t even see the head of the bird but this one clearly shows her efforts to use her ‘air brakes’ to slow her speed and soften the landing and the unusual asymmetrical position of her feet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n She sticks the landing but only with one foot. The injured leg is behind the ‘pantaloons’ of her right leg, revealing only some of the talons on that foot.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n She lands very gingerly to protect the injured leg and uses her wings extensively to stabilize herself before folding them into a resting position. Here we see the foot on her injured left leg being held protectively out of he way behind the nest box. While she’s perched she stands only, or at least mostly, on her right leg.<\/p>\n While I was with her I saw her unsuccessfully go after prey several times but I’m convinced she isn’t going hungry. In some of my photos I could see that her crop was far from empty and there’s fresh vole guts on top of the nest box, some of them still bloody and fresh. This nest box is one of her habitual hunting perches. And Billy says she’s a skilled and successful hunter even with her injury so I’m not particularly concerned about her.<\/p>\n Although I certainly wish she didn’t have the injury. Unless her leg heals quickly, and it might, she’ll be at a distinct disadvantage this winter. But I still have what I think are reasonable hopes for her long term survival, even though it could easily go either way.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/red-tailed-hawk-3600-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-3600-ron-dudley\\"")
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