{"id":73675,"date":"2020-09-12T05:11:57","date_gmt":"2020-09-12T11:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=73675"},"modified":"2024-11-04T04:27:30","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T10:27:30","slug":"hawk-in-the-west-desert-perched-in-a-dead-juniper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2020\/09\/12\/hawk-in-the-west-desert-perched-in-a-dead-juniper\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawk In The West Desert Perched In A Dead Juniper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DesertDesert scenery and a hawk in a dead juniper \u2013 Nikon D500, f7.1, 1\/1250, ISO 500, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light, not baited
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/a> I shared here yesterday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But when I look at this photo it seems to me that everything is as it should be.<\/p>\n

Life is<\/em> good.<\/p>\n

Mia<\/p>\n

By the way, this hawk is most likely an immature Red-tailed Hawk<\/span><\/a> from what I could see in the full resolution file.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,449,358,26,1314],"tags":[2663,4170,2497,10422,4098,4109,4033,4169,2386,5777,751,3914,4104,153,4209,4018,4307],"class_list":["post-73675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian","category-red-tailed-hawks","category-tooele-county","category-utah","category-west-desert-utah","tag-birds-of-prey","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-buteos","tag-dead-tree","tag-desert","tag-grasses","tag-hawk","tag-hawks","tag-hawks-of-utah","tag-hill","tag-hillside","tag-juniper","tag-perched","tag-raptors","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-sky","tag-wildflowers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-in-a-distant-tree-mia-mcpherson-4581.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p11Mom-jaj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":94774,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2021\/09\/11\/adult-red-tailed-hawk-lifting-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":73675,"position":0},"title":"Adult Red-tailed Hawk Lifting Off","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"September 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"It didn't take long before the Red-tailed Hawk raised its wings to lift off from the juniper with a smoky blue sky in the background.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Adult Red-tailed Hawk after taking off from a juniper, West Desert, Tooele County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/red-tailed-hawk-adult-west-desert-mia-mcpherson-0646.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/red-tailed-hawk-adult-west-desert-mia-mcpherson-0646.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, 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