I photographed this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk yesterday morning near Farmington Bay as it prepared to eat a vole it had just caught.
Note: Fair warning – the second photo in this sequence is slightly graphic so sensitive folks may want to avoid scrolling further than the first image.
Any bird photographer knows that light and timing have a nasty habit of being uncooperative just when you need that cooperation most.
Very few Bald Eagles remain in Utah during summer so I almost never see them in that season except on my Montana camping trips.
In my experience there’s a huge range in the approachability of juvenile raptors, even among siblings. And overall, Swainson’s Hawks seem to be the most approachable of all. This variability was demonstrated during our trip to Montana’s Centennial Valley last week and once again it made me nervous for the safety of the bird.
On our recent Montana trip I spent two morning sessions with a cooperative Merlin at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the Centennial Valley.
Rough-legged Hawks are one of the salves that help me get through our cold, dreary winters. When they show up…
Ferruginous Hawks are noted for their long, tapered and pointed wings and I thought this image demonstrated that field mark well.
I spent yesterday morning cruising the back roads of Utah’s west desert with the primary goal of finding and photographing raptors.
For some, raptors and flowers may seem like an incongruous combination but I like the contradiction.
Two days ago this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk was hunting from a sign post and everything seemed to be calm – to the point that I was enjoying the sunflowers in the setting and the irony of the sign it was perched on. That tranquility didn’t last long…
In my experience Red-tailed Hawks in flight most often carry prey in their talons but this molting adult surprised me a little.
Typically I tend to not be a fan of flight shots where the bird is already past me but though this Swainson’s Hawk has already done so I keep coming back to the image for a combination of reasons.
This is the time of year that Swainson’s Hawks usually begin to converge on the Centennial Valley to feast on grasshoppers and believe me the area produces grasshoppers in abundance – probably more of them than I’ve ever seen elsewhere (and I grew up on a Montana farm where grasshoppers were unfortunately one of our most successful crops).
This image goes back into my archives about as far back as they go. It was taken on October 1, 2007 – just a few months after I became serious about my photography. I was still shooting with my first digital camera, the Canon Rebel XTi which I still have. It’s an entry-level camera and I still remember what the camera salesman said when I told him that I was planning on mounting that small camera onto a huge Canon 500 mm lens – “well, it will work but don’t you think it’ll look a little silly?”
On our recent camping/photo trip to southwest Montana I observed and photographed a Ferruginous Hawk behavior that has me baffled.
