I found my FOY (first of year) Rough-legged Hawk yesterday morning but largely blew the photographic opportunity because of a rookie mistake in setting up my new 7D Mark ll.
This juvenile Swainson’s Hawk had no fear. I believe it thought of vehicles (and their contents) as no more threatening than the boulders or trees that are common in this area of the Centennial Valley.
I’m often surprised and impressed by the dexterity and athleticism of larger raptors as they take off through a maze of tree branches or other obstructions.
I love the coloration of this bird and always appreciate getting wispy clouds mixed with blue sky in the background.
I spent yesterday morning in the Wasatch Mountains looking for raptors and other birds. I had my best luck with Red-tailed Hawks.
This female Osprey seemed stiff and less confident of her agility immediately after being relieved from many hours of nesting duty.
My recent camping trip to the Mojave Desert of southwestern Utah was slow on birds but I didn’t come home “skunked” either.
I believe this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk was taken by surprise by what it found in its mouth.
In a recent post I documented “play” in Northern Harriers. Two days ago I photographed two of them playing – with each other and with “toys”.
Raptors sometimes pull some pretty crazy maneuvers during take-off (the last 9 images in this post are sequential with no images in the sequence left out).
Last month I posted a few images of this Merlin in the fog. For subtle reasons this may be my favorite from the entire session with the bird.
Occasionally soaring raptors fly in quite close to observers and I’m convinced that sometimes it’s simply a matter of curiosity.
Play has been well documented in some bird species and I believe I photographed that behavior in a Northern Harrier this week. This bird was too far away for quality images but I think the behavior is well documented in the photographs. I first spotted this hawk on an ugly metal fence post but as soon as I stopped my pickup to watch it through my lens the wary bird took off. Almost immediately it performed a spectacular and classic harrier mid-air maneuver by changing directions and pouncing on something in the grasses. I presumed it to be a vole. For about two minutes the bird continually struggled, wrestled and pounced on something I couldn’t see. The activity was quite frenetic and I took many photos of it. As I watched through my lens I wondered if the harrier was trying to avoid being bitten by a vole or even a larger rodent. Eventually the harrier took off with its “prey”, which turned out to be dried cow poop. Cow pies are common in this area because refuge managers run cattle there in the summer in an attempt to control invasive phragmites (personally I’m not a fan of cattle on public lands but that’s another story…). The harrier carried the cow pie only a few feet… before dropping it. Whether that was done deliberately or not I don’t know but I suspect that it was because in the image just before this one (just as the pie…
I realize that choosing a “best side” of this beautiful hawk might be a matter of opinion but for me this is it.
Sometimes when I’m photographing birds I find myself wondering “Why did that bird do that?”. Arriving at a reliable answer can be an exercise in frustration but often I can’t help myself, even when the behavior in question is a trivial one.
