Hawk In The West Desert Perched In A Dead Juniper

Desert scenery and a hawk in a dead juniper – Nikon D500, f7.1, 1/1250, ISO 500, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light, not baited

There are times when I take long distance documentary photos of birds so that I can quiz myself later on their identification when I am at home and can view the images on a larger screen. Most of the time the quality of those images isn’t great and the subjects can be a bit blurry because of heat waves rising from the ground but I’ve found that even those poor quality photos can help advance my identification skills so I take them when I can.

Once in a while I actually like those photos even though my avian subject is small in the frame and that is what happened with this image taken two days ago about two hours before I photographed the Desert Tarantula I shared here yesterday.

I don’t usually share photos where the main subject is facing away from me but I liked the alert pose of this raptor as it perched in the dead but distant juniper tree. I also like how sharp the bird and the tree were combined with the desert scenery.

When I first arrived in Utah more than eleven years ago this juniper was alive and I saw quite a few raptors perching in it including Red-tailed, Rough-legged and Swainson’s Hawks and Peregrine Falcons too.

I don’t know why the juniper died but I do know they can live as long as 650 years and that the dead trunk and branches can remain just like they are seen in this photo for decades.

There have been times when I have wished that this juniper was a bit closer to the road when I have seen raptors perched on it so that I could take high quality images of them.

But when I look at this photo it seems to me that everything is as it should be.

Life is good.

Mia

By the way, this hawk is most likely an immature Red-tailed Hawk from what I could see in the full resolution file.