Last week, partially in an effort to get away from the aggravations of the blog hosting problems I’d been having, I decided to make the extra long drive to extreme northern Utah in a quest for Swainson’s Hawks. We found quite a few and a delightful bonus was a plethora of Ferruginous Hawks in the same area.
This is the last in my four part series on the color morphs of the Swainson’s Hawk. Today the focus is on the dark morph.
One of the most pleasant harbingers of winter for me is always the return of the Rough-legged Hawks. This species breeds in high subarctic and arctic regions so we don’t see them from about March through October but they usually winter around here in good numbers and I love to photograph this handsome buteo. There’s been a few “roughies” on Antelope Island for a couple of weeks now but this morning was the first time this year I’ve been able to get close enough for good photos. This bird chose to perch on the same dark rocks that I’ve been photographing Red-tailed Hawks on. 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in (same techs for all the images in this post) I wasn’t quite as close as I’d have liked to have been for perched shots so I waited for take-off. And waited. And waited. Almost went to sleep… Finally, a couple of men on horseback were riding the trail behind the rock in the background and I figured they’d spook the bird. They did. At least I didn’t miss the moment of take-off, which is so easy to do when you have to wait for it for so long. I got five sharp shots after take-off and something unusual happened with each of them. Normally, you’re lucky to get one image with the bird looking directly at you. Usually, they’re looking in the direction of flight but for some…
