Ferruginous Hawk horizontal take off
Yesterday while out in the west desert of Utah I spotted a Ferruginous Hawk on a power pole next to the road and I felt excited because I haven’t seen many Ferruginous Hawks of late. Any day I see a Ferruginous Hawk is a good day.
The road is a busy one with gravel trucks zooming past at regular intervals so many of the raptors that perch on these poles are acclimated to traffic and will often allow a close approach by using a vehicle as a mobile blind. I don’t really like taking images of birds on power poles though because of the multitude of wires and insulators found on them so quite often I just hope to get flight images after the birds have left the pole and gotten past the wires into the clear sky, some times that works out and I get great flight shots of my subject and some times it doesn’t and only get the best shots of my subject when there are plenty of wires in the frame which I find distracting and I don’t normally keep or edit those files or post them in my galleries or here on my blog.
But of course there are exceptions.
I have to say that when I viewed this image on my monitor of the Ferruginous Hawk taking off from the power pole yesterday that I laughed out loud. I don’t believe I have ever seen a hawk of any kind take off on such a perfect horizontal plane with its feet still on the perch. It looks like this hawk is diving into the sky. Maybe it just doesn’t take much to entertain me or perhaps I really needed to laugh.
Life can be amusing.
Mia
Click here to see more of my Ferruginous Hawk photos plus facts and information about this species.
So funny! Reminds me of a cartoon!
Love it.
That is an amazing photograph. The hood ornament comment struck me as well. How much fun! Thank you Mia.
Looks like Superman…
It looks like it might have been very windy! Excellent timing!
great one- perfect model for a hood-ornament (old schooler) : )
The hawk’s position above the horizontal power pole top piece reminds me of a ski jumper! Nice capture, Mia – thanks for sharing!
It doesn’t take much to entertain me either. I, too, laughed out loud at this image. Stunning!