{"id":99234,"date":"2021-06-15T06:01:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=99234"},"modified":"2021-06-15T06:13:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:13:46","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-chicks-an-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/15\/red-tailed-hawk-chicks-an-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk Chicks – An Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good news. In fact I’d call it great news.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers will remember this photo of Red-tailed Hawk chicks in the nest I posted recently. It was taken 18 days ago, on May 28. There were four chicks in the nest, these three and the runt hidden behind them in the bowl of the nest.<\/p>\n

Two days ago I decided to check on their progress for the first time since this photo was taken. I was surprisingly tense and nervous when I got within a few miles of the nest location because many of these nests fail somewhere along the way. Storms blow nests out of their trees or cliffs, chicks starve for lack of available food, predators help themselves to defenseless young chicks while the adults are away – all manner of things can cause a nest to fail.<\/p>\n

As I got closer I kept telling myself to be satisfied if the nest were still active with two or three of the youngsters still alive. I had little hope for the runt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So you can imagine my relief when I pulled up on the cliffside nest only minutes after dawn and found all four chicks sunning themselves on the front of the nest.<\/p>\n

Yes, this soon after dawn the light was so warm the entire scene looked like it was on fire. As you’ll see in the photos below, the light quickly became much less warm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A few moments later three of the chicks even struck a formal pose for me. The fourth chick seemed grumpy and refused to cooperate. There’s always one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As the temperature warmed up the chicks began to spend more time hunkered down in the back of the nest. I was surprised that youngsters this large could completely disappear back there.<\/p>\n

This one came out to perform a wing stretch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A few minutes later a different chick spent some time flapping and exercising its wings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, this chick performed both – wing flapping and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

a leisurely wing stretch.<\/p>\n

Look closely, there’s someone else peering out at you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When it began to get hot all four chicks disappeared in the back of the nest and one of the adults, the female I believe, flew in to spread her wings over her offspring to keep them from heating up too much. Soon after this photo was taken I left the area.<\/p>\n

For me the long ride home was far less tense than the trip to the nest.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As always, these photos were taken ethically. Regular readers know the drill so I won’t go into detail.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Good news. In fact I’d call it great news.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99236,"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":[334,16,391,450],"tags":[452,740,228,451,5802,311,2761,809],"class_list":["post-99234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-chicks","tag-nest","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-runt","tag-utah-2","tag-wing-flapping","tag-wing-stretch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-1510-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pOy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99234","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=99234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}