Typically Northern Harriers in flight studiously avoid my vehicle but occasionally (very occasionally) one will continue to circle and come in quite close. On the rare occasion when this happens I always wonder why.
Yesterday morning a Rough-legged Hawk gave me a perspective on the alula that I had never seen (or at least noticed) previously. I was on the verge of deleting these images when at the last second something about the left wing caught my eye.
This female American Kestrel has been hanging around the same area of Farmington for almost two weeks now. Yesterday morning we found her near the end of one of her meals.
For me the background can sometimes be almost as important as the bird. In this case it’s probably because I identify so personally with what’s back there, even though it’s all out of focus. This place is where I cut my photographic teeth years ago.
During winter, photography in the valley of the Great Salt Lake can be difficult at best due to frequent inversions that trap fog and smog in the low-lying areas and that especially includes the marshes near the lake. These inversions often last for days or even weeks and the fog and smog get progressively worse each day. But the fortunate result for photographers is the thick hoarfrost that blankets everything in the vicinity of the lake if and when the fog burns off during the day.
I’ve only had two reasonably good chances at the dark morph of the Rough-legged Hawk and one of them was a highly unexpected encounter two weeks ago.
Two days ago this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk put on quite a show for me but for a variety of reasons I blew many of the chances I had with it.
Like some other buteos, depending on conditions the Rough-legged Hawk may hunt from the air using flapping/gliding flight or from an elevated perch but their tendency to hunt in flight goes up significantly with increasing wind speed. This makes sense because hovering in the wind requires less energy than flapping flight.
Eight days ago I photographed a Northern Harrier as it flew toward me at an angle and then banked away. The following day, because of time constraints and computer issues I posted only a single shot of the banking maneuver but now I wish I had posted the entire flight sequence of four images. With your indulgence for posting the same image twice I’ll do just that this morning.
Occasionally during take-off an American Kestrel will put on a show of its considerable acrobatic skills but it happens so fast with these little falcons that many of us don’t really appreciate the coordination and skill involved. Yesterday morning I got one shot that I think demonstrates it pretty well.
I hope you’ll forgive me back to back posts on the same species but there’s a shot that has eluded me for years and yesterday I finally got it.
Last winter Northern Harriers really struggled to survive here in northern Utah. For several months it was bitter cold with a thick layer of snow on the ground which made it close to impossible for our wintering raptors (including Barn Owls) to find and catch their typical prey – voles. So harriers were forced to look for other food sources, including small birds. Songbirds are relatively scarce here that time of year but this harrier got lucky.
Occasionally I run across a bird that just looks, well…. silly. This juvenile Red-tailed Hawk was one of them.
Yesterday morning I was able to get my first decent Rough-legged Hawk images of the season. It’s a good thing too because this was the only cooperative bird I found all morning.
