Tag: red tailed hawk

Just A Shot That I Like… #21 – Red-tailed Hawk In Dramatic Light

Strongly directional light can be a blessing or a curse and all too often it’s the latter.  It makes proper exposure a challenge because it’s very easy to blow the highlights and/or have shadows so deep that there’s no detail there at all.  But when things work out the effect can be appealing and dramatic.       1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This old cedar stump is a favorite perch of Red-tailed Hawks at the base of Utah’s Stansbury Mountains in the west desert.  It’s usually a frustrating situation for me though because I can’t access a proper position to get the sun behind me and for most of the day the sidelight is just too harsh for an exposure that works well.  But on this one morning the hawk was on the stump just as the sun came over the Oquirrh Mountains to the east so the light was soft and warm enough to make an exposure that I liked and I thought the shaded upper background worked well with the light on the bird’s head. Ron  Ron 

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Red-tailed Hawk with Long-billed Hawk Syndrome

This morning I found this Red-tailed Hawk on a telephone pole near Grantsville, Utah.  As soon as I looked at it through my lens I knew that something was wrong with the birds beak.    A bit of research almost immediately turned up the probable culprit – Long-billed Hawk Syndrome.  Birds with this condition have atypical uncontrolled growth of either or both upper and lower bills.  Birds affected often have secondary infections in their bills.  Since their bills are used for activities such as eating, preening, killing prey and feeding offspring the syndrome is extremely serious.  Most birds with this condition die of starvation.       The syndrome gets its name because most affected birds have been Red-tailed Hawks, though other species of raptors get the condition also, including Peregrine Falcons and Rough-legged Hawks.  The first case of LBH Syndrome was reported in Washington state in 1997 and reports have been increasing since.   This is what a normal Red-tailed Hawk’s bill looks like – quite a dramatic and obvious contrast to the diseased one.  The cause of this condition is unknown, though research is ongoing. A sad situation for this poor bird. More info here. Ron Addendum:  I posted one of these photos on a nature phography forum and a veterinarian with many years of experience with falconry birds has stated unequivocally that this hawks condition occurred because it was “kept jessed and tethered by someone who was totally ignorant of the necessity to keep the upper and lower bill trimmed to normal shape”.   Whatever the true cause of the deformity, it’s…

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Red-tailed Hawks of Utah’s West Desert

Red-tailed Hawks are common and widespread throughout most of North America but I typically find them to be wary and difficult subjects to approach and photograph.  However we did have some pretty good luck with them a couple of mornings this past week in western Utah.   Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, EV -0.67, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc We found them deep in a canyon of one of the many “island mountain ranges” of Utah’s west desert.   There were at least a half-dozen of them hanging out together, many of them juveniles.  The lighting at the bottom of the canyon in early morning was often filtered and spotty and the perches were usually dead trees with lots of branches going every which way so the backgrounds and settings were typically busy.  This is one of the cleaner shots I got of one on a perch in the canyon bottom.      Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640,EV -1.00, 500 f/4 This one chose a juniper perch which would provide a clean background for a takeoff shot so I tried to leave room in front of the bird just in case.  I was looking slightly down on the hawk when it launched and I liked the good look at the topside of the bird in this shot but do wish it had been looking more my way.  But then I probably wouldn’t have any light on the eye – sometimes you just can’t win…     Canon 7D, 1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 640  EV +0.33, 500 f/4 Shooting these hawks in flight was very frustrating!  Each morning they would pretty much…

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