These photos are intended as documentation of interesting behavior rather than as examples of technically excellent images. I was dealing with a less than ideal light angle so in some of them I don’t have a catch light in the eye and in others the hawk had his back to me. This series of twelve photos was taken five days ago in northern Utah.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4352-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4352-ron-dudley.\\"")
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Blog followers will likely recognize this first photo because I posted it three days ago. I’m using it again to provide continuity.<\/p>\n
I’d spent a long time with the mated pair of Red-tailed Hawks as they basked in the early morning sun near their nest. Here both birds are finally beginning to become active again. The larger female is stretching her left wing as the male begins to look for nesting material below him and on a rocky slope out of frame to the left.<\/p>\n
Eventually he spotted a twig on the rocky slope that was a potential candidate for suitable nesting material so he….<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4444-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4444-ron-dudley\\"")
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took off after it.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4454-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4454-ron-dudley\\"")
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But the dead stem of a bush was still rooted in the ground so it wasn’t about to submit easily (I’ve cropped this photo to include the hawk’s entire shadow – if felt like amputation to cut it off). He struggled and tugged in an effort to…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4455-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4455-ron-dudley.\\"")
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get it out of the ground. And then he struggled some more but that little stick wasn’t about to submit easily so eventually he…<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4475-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4475-ron-dudley\\"")
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just gave up. Here we can’t see the twig because his body is blocking it but…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4477-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4477-ron-dudley\\"")
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when he walked away from it the stick became visible.<\/p>\n
Now he had to look for something else.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4496-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4496-ron-dudley\\"")
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So he made a short flight to another part of the rocky slope and eyed this small but still green and growing sagebrush. Perhaps he thought that since it was still green it might be easier to break off a piece. That would be his only choice since it was still anchored to the ground and there weren’t any appropriate twigs or stems nearby that were unattached and available.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4516-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4516-ron-dudley.\\"")
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Once again it was very hard work and at first I thought he’d bitten off more than he could chew. He kept tugging away at the sagebrush using his wings to provide more pulling power but it was all in vain for long enough that I thought he’d have to abandon his efforts a second time.<\/p>\n
But he had a stubborn streak so he was tenacious for long enough to eventually…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4518-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4518-ron-dudley\\"")
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break off a piece of the sagebrush.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4528-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4528-ron-dudley\\"")
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Then with the sage in his beak he looked directly at the nest. I thought he’d…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4553-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4553-ron-dudley\\"")
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fly straight to it but instead he landed on top of a bush, using it as an intermediate stop before he took off again for the nest. He had his back to me when he landed in the bush so I’m not including any of those photos.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4566-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-4566-ron-dudley\\"")
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Here he’s on his way to the nest with the piece of sage still in his beak.<\/p>\n
When I look at their nest and see how many twigs and sticks it’s made of and think of how much work was required to construct it I become thoroughly exhausted by proxy.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hard work and a stubborn streak eventually paid off when the male of the pair went looking for suitable nest-building materials.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96354,"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":[452,5036,211,451,5674,311],"class_list":["post-96347","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-gathering-nesting-material","tag-male","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-sagebrush-as-nesting-material","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-4518-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-p3Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96347","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=96347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}