{"id":99712,"date":"2021-06-28T05:41:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T11:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=99712"},"modified":"2021-06-28T12:26:15","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T18:26:15","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-running-the-gauntlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/28\/red-tailed-hawk-running-the-gauntlet\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk Running The Gauntlet"},"content":{"rendered":"

More evidence that raptors can be incredibly agile and quick when they need to be.<\/p>\n

It’s been a while since I’ve rerun a favorite older post and I think this one deserves a second look. Another version of the same post was published seven years ago but for this version I’ve changed the title, cleaned up the formatting and made many changes to the text in an effort to make it more readable and descriptively accurate.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

In early October of 2014 I found this adult Red-tailed Hawk perched in an old snag in the mountains of Utah’s west desert. “She” had her back to me, the light was contrasty and she was side lit so at first I was more interested in watching her through my lens than I was in taking photos.<\/p>\n

The following nine photos are sequential in a burst without any skips. The burst rate of my old Canon 7D camera is 8 frames\/sec so the entire sequence took 1.125 seconds.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

But when she unexpectedly began to take off my photographer’s instincts took over and I fired off a quick burst of nine shots, even though I fully expected her to take off away from me.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

\u00a0Instead she raised her wings while…<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

jumping into the air, twisting her body to her left while still airborne and apparently attempting to land on a different fork of the same branch that was in front of her. I like this one-footed landing posture.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

She appeared to sort of dance around on the branch for a moment as if…<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

she couldn’t decide if this perch was acceptable. Or not.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

My guess is that she was either looking around for another option for a perch or this branch she was on was an intermediate stop in her planned route to negotiate all the branches and twigs that were obstacles in her way as she left the tree. Whatever her original intention might have been she ended up leaving the tree.<\/p>\n

At this point I can’t resist asking readers to attempt to predict which pathway she actually traveled as she left the tree. Please look at this image and take a wild guess.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

This is the same image as the previous one. Believe it or not she will appear go “through” the triangular-shaped space marked by the red “x”. But before she got there she had another problem to deal with. The branch marked with a red arrow was directly in her path to that triangular space.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

She leaned far to her right in order to avoid the far end of the branch that had been her perch and reached for the branch that was in her way with her right foot.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

\u00a0She grasped the branch that was in her way and…<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

broke it off and pushed it out of the way so it was no longer an obstacle.<\/p>\n

And she actually seemed to go through that triangle that appeared to be too small for her body, whether her wings were folded or not. It appears to be a closed triangle but in reality it isn’t. She had a little more room than it looks like she did but it was still an incredibly agile and almost unbelievable maneuver.\u00a0Keep in mind that all this occurred in barely over one second.<\/p>\n

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I have to wonder what motivated her to run the gauntlet of branches and twigs instead of taking off away from me where there were no obstacles. Maybe she was after prey or perhaps she was just practicing complicated maneuvers for the next time she needed to be good at them. Or maybe, just maybe, she did it because she could, for the fun of it. If I could fly I might be tempted myself, for that very reason.<\/p>\n

After all, on my 5th birthday my parents gave me a Mighty Mouse costume as a birthday present so thinking I might be able to fly I jumped off our pumphouse roof in Montana, red cape and all.<\/p>\n

It didn’t end well.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n