Diurnal Raptors – Page 88 – Feathered Photography

Prairie Falcon – A Nemesis Resolved

Every avian photographer has their “nemesis birds” – a species or two that the gods of photography have foiled any and every attempt at getting quality images of. For me the Prairie Falcon has been at or near the top of that list. I particularly love to photograph raptors but locating and then getting close to this falcon in good light has eluded me for five years now. But two days ago I resolved that dilemma! 1/4000, f/5.6, ISO 640, 1.4 tc We first spotted this bird coming towards us along the Antelope Island causeway just as the sun peeked over the Wasatch. It soon landed on this stump and in good light but I wasn’t quite as close to the bird as I’d like to have been. Soon it lifted off and hunted the causeway going west, causing quite a ruckus among the gulls, shorebirds and ducks as it approached them. It was fairly easy to track the falcon by watching for groups of panicked birds taking to the air. 1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1.4 tc Next it landed on this interesting rock and I was able to get a little closer. The background is a little funky with the harsh color transition between water and rocky shoreline passing through the bird but I liked the perch and the good look at the entire bird, including tail. I suspect that this falcon has learned the fine art of thievery. Earlier this week we observed a Prairie Falcon along the causeway chase off a Peregrine Falcon from its Ruddy Duck…

Rough-legged Hawks Return To Utah

For the last couple of years I’ve had very little luck locating Rough-legged Hawks (roughies) here in northern Utah, which frustrates me because I think they’re among the most handsome and photogenic of all the raptors and I love to photograph them. These birds breed in the high arctic so they aren’t here at all during the summer. Most of them winter in the “lower 48” but they are highly nomadic and their numbers in a particular area fluctuate according to the availability of their rodent prey. This year I’m greatly encouraged because in the last ten days or so I’ve seen many of these striking hawks. 1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This one was atop a perch that is photographically challenging – a Tintic Quartzite boulder on the north end of Antelope Island. These rocks often blow out the whites on the sun side, especially if the bird on them is dark. I’ve deleted many a shot of a raven on one of these boulders. 1/3200, f/5.6, ISO 800, f/4, 1.4 tc This morning I had a wonderful (though sometimes frustrating) time with the roughies on the island. The highlight of the morning came when I was trying to sneak up on a kestrel perched in a rabbit brush. As I did so I noticed a gull flying right toward the kestrel but I quickly ignored it and concentrated on the kestrel. Then, at the last second, something in my mind said “hey, that was no gull” just as the bird swooped low…

Ferruginous Hawks of Utah’s West Desert

The Ferruginous Hawk is a strikingly handsome raptor with its stocky build, white underparts and rufous coloration. It is the largest North American hawk and has several distinctive features including the fact that its legs are feathered all the way down to the feet. The Rough-legged Hawk is the only other hawk on this continent to share this trait. I’ve had a devil of a time getting many photos of this species that I like. For me they’ve been difficult to find in the first place and then there’s the issue of getting near enough to them for quality images as they generally don’t allow a close approach. My best luck with the species has been in the foothills of Utah’s west desert mountain ranges. 1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I found this bird earlier this week and spent quite a while “sneaking” up on it very slowly in my pickup. I ended up getting reasonably close before it flew off. The hawk is relaxed enough with me in its presence to perform a nice wing stretch. 1/1000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc These birds tend to hunt high off the ground and no matter how slowly I try to approach them while they’re in the air they usually maintain a minimum distance from my truck that is too far away for good photographs. Very occasionally however one will apparently become curious about me and fly in close – always with its eye on me and not on any potential prey on the ground. …

Just a Shot That I Like…#2 – American Kestrel In Dramatic Light

Directional, moody lighting is an acquired taste for some – at least it was for me when I first starting photographing birds. Now I’m a fervent convert to the genre, especially when I can get a pleasing setting that I like to go along with it. 1/640, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc On this cold February morning of this year I’d been out shooting Northern Harriers but tremendous winds came up so I decided to call it a day. On the way out of the refuge I noticed this male American Kestrel higher up in a tree and decided to pull up and see what might happen, since he wasn’t in a good position for photography at first. Soon, in an obvious attempt to get out of the howling wind, he flew down and landed on this stump almost at ground level. The problem was that he was in deep shade. But because of the wind blowing all the tree branches around, occasionally some side light would strike him. I took a few shots without high hopes of getting anything I liked. I was pleasantly surprised with a few of the images when I looked at them and this is one of them. I quite like the setting and light in this shot. The detail is very good, especially at a larger size because I was very close to the bird. Some may think the brightness of the grass stems on the left are less than ideal but personally I’m fine with them. I was pleased that f/8 gave…

Red-tailed Hawk with Long-billed Hawk Syndrome

This morning I found this Red-tailed Hawk on a telephone pole near Grantsville, Utah. As soon as I looked at it through my lens I knew that something was wrong with the birds beak. A bit of research almost immediately turned up the probable culprit – Long-billed Hawk Syndrome. Birds with this condition have atypical uncontrolled growth of either or both upper and lower bills. Birds affected often have secondary infections in their bills. Since their bills are used for activities such as eating, preening, killing prey and feeding offspring the syndrome is extremely serious. Most birds with this condition die of starvation. The syndrome gets its name because most affected birds have been Red-tailed Hawks, though other species of raptors get the condition also, including Peregrine Falcons and Rough-legged Hawks. The first case of LBH Syndrome was reported in Washington state in 1997 and reports have been increasing since. This is what a normal Red-tailed Hawk’s bill looks like – quite a dramatic and obvious contrast to the diseased one. The cause of this condition is unknown, though research is ongoing. A sad situation for this poor bird. More info here. Ron Addendum: I posted one of these photos on a nature phography forum and a veterinarian with many years of experience with falconry birds has stated unequivocally that this hawks condition occurred because it was “kept jessed and tethered by someone who was totally ignorant of the necessity to keep the upper and lower bill trimmed to normal shape”. Whatever the true cause of the deformity, it’s…

Strange Encounter with a Northern Harrier and a Junco

For me, life just doesn’t get much better than when I’m watching interesting or unusual bird behaviors up close. I was photographing this male Northern Harrier out my pickup window while it was perched on the clump of snow-bent vegetation you see in the image below when I heard a soft scratching sound coming from the front of my truck. I quickly glanced to my right and noticed that a Dark-eyed Junco had landed square in the middle of the hood of the truck. I thought that was unusual of course but I was more interested in the harrier so I quickly turned back to watching him through my viewfinder and it immediately became apparent that the harrier was now fixated on that junco. 1/3200, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I’ve spent hundreds of hours watching and photographing harriers and it’s virtually unheard of for one to take off in my direction when I’m this close to the bird. Usually the direction of take off is away from me or if I’m lucky it might be either to my left or right. But this one had apparently decided that it wanted junco for lunch and when it launched it immediately turned slightly and headed straight toward the junco on my truck hood. 1/3200, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc If you look carefully at the harriers eyes in all four shots you’ll notice that he isn’t really focused on me – instead he’s looking slightly to my right, directly at the junco on the hood of the…

Bald Eagle Nictitating Membrane

The nictitating membrane (nictitan) is a membrane or “third eyelid” found in some vertebrates that can be drawn across the eye for protection and to moisten and lubricate the surface of the eye. It is either translucent or semi-transparent so the animal maintains sight while it covers the eye. Birds, sharks and some reptiles have a fully functional nictitating membrane while in most mammals there is only a small vestigial remnant in the corner of the eye. However camels, polar bears, seals, aardvarks, marsupials and monotremes do have fully functional membranes. 1/2000, f/8. ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This nearly adult (head not yet completely white) Bald Eagle is neither tame or captive. But for several days in 2009, beginning on a bitterly cold Christmas morning, this adult adopted a favorite perch (a relatively short pole) that looked out over a pond with fish in it. The pole was so close to the road that I sometimes had to take off my teleconverter to get the entire bird in the frame. It warmed my heart that the eagle was so comfortable with me this close and that was a very good thing because Mia and I almost froze to death over the many hours of photographing this magnificent bird. This is the normal appearance of the Bald Eagle’s eye. In adult birds, eye color is typically some shade of yellow with a distinctly visible pupil (though juvenile birds have much darker eyes). 1/2000, f/8. ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc But every few seconds the bird swipes the nictitating membrane across the…

American Kestrel, Preening and Stretching

This slightly wet and bedraggled (but still handsome) male kestrel was quite wary of me as I approached him on his favorite perch. 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 500, EV +0.67 American Kestrels are notoriously difficult to get close to and several times he nearly flew off as I slowly worked myself within good shooting distance. But it had been a cold morning and these birds are more “sticky” in the chill so he allowed me a relatively close approach. 1/1000, f/7.1, ISO 640, EV +0.33 Soon after he became comfortable in my presence the warming sun came out (as you can tell by the difference in background in the first two images) and he began to preen. I got many interesting images of him working on his tail feathers but this one shows the eye best. For protection of their eyes they typically close them as they run a feather through their beak. 1/1000, f/8, ISO 640, EV +0.33 And then he began a long, slow stretch – first by fanning his tail… 1/1000, f/8, ISO 640, EV +0.33 and then stretching out his left wing downward. As you can see, they often stretch all three “limbs” at the same time – tail, wing and leg. 1/1000, f/8, ISO 640, EV +0.33 When it was over he fluffed up his feathers and held this position, with one foot up, for quite a while to enjoy the warmth of the sun. I have many photos of perched kestrels but I don’t often get…

A License to Bird

To be perfectly honest I’ve always been slightly disdainful of personalized (vanity) license plates, at least for me. I generally prefer relative anonymity, partly because my natural inclination is to avoid bringing attention to myself (so why am I blogging?…) Not to say that I don’t enjoy reading them on other vehicles while driving and I often have fun with the challenge of trying to figure out what some of them really mean. Since I spend a lot of time photographing birds I occasionally run across “birder plates” at some of the refuges and marshes I frequent. So recently, after the purchase of a new pickup, I decided to break out of my mold and join the crowd. For me, “HARRIER” was almost a foregone conclusion if it was still available, and it was. Many of the better images in my avian collection are of the Northern Harrier, which most folks refer to simply as “harrier”. Whenever I’m forced to choose a favorite avian subject (a choice I don’t like to make) I typically choose this species. They’re magnificent aerial athletes, beautiful, extremely challenging photographic subjects and they carry that “raptor mystique”. Canon 7D, 1/3200, f/7.1, ISO 500, EV -0.33, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc After waiting over 6 weeks to have them delivered (come on Utah, get on the stick!) they finally arrived a few days ago. Today was my first day photographing birds since I got them and I thought it fitting that I was able to get this shot of a juvenile male harrier taking off from a sagebrush out on Antelope…

Red-tailed Hawks of Utah’s West Desert

Red-tailed Hawks are common and widespread throughout most of North America but I typically find them to be wary and difficult subjects to approach and photograph. However we did have some pretty good luck with them a couple of mornings this past week in western Utah. Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, EV -0.67, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc We found them deep in a canyon of one of the many “island mountain ranges” of Utah’s west desert. There were at least a half-dozen of them hanging out together, many of them juveniles. The lighting at the bottom of the canyon in early morning was often filtered and spotty and the perches were usually dead trees with lots of branches going every which way so the backgrounds and settings were typically busy. This is one of the cleaner shots I got of one on a perch in the canyon bottom. Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640,EV -1.00, 500 f/4 This one chose a juniper perch which would provide a clean background for a takeoff shot so I tried to leave room in front of the bird just in case. I was looking slightly down on the hawk when it launched and I liked the good look at the topside of the bird in this shot but do wish it had been looking more my way. But then I probably wouldn’t have any light on the eye – sometimes you just can’t win… Canon 7D, 1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 640 EV +0.33, 500 f/4 Shooting these hawks in flight was very frustrating! Each morning they would pretty much…

Raptors Mobbing Raptors

Mobbing is an antipredator behavior where animals mob a predator by cooperatively attacking or harassing it. This behavior is especially common in birds during nesting and rearing of young. Typically, it will be a flock of passerines like Red-winged Blackbirds mobbing a raptor or perhaps a magpie or any other bird they consider to be a threat to their nest or young. In mid-June of this year while Mia and I were on another one of our camping/photo forays to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge we witnessed a somewhat unusual display of mobbing – raptors mobbing raptors. We had just returned to our camping trailer when Mia noticed this sub-adult Bald Eagle resting on a muskrat mound almost a quarter-mile away across Lower Red Rock Lake – too far away for quality photos (we had marginal light too) but we simply can’t resist training our lenses on a situation like this just to see if something interesting might happen. And this time it did. Canon 7D, 1/800, f/6.3, ISO 500 ev +1.33, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc The eagle seemed to be minding its own business and just hanging out for a while on the mound. Canon 7D, 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 500 ev +1.33, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc But soon a Short-eared Owl (a male I believe) appeared on the scene and he was not happy with the presence of the eagle. My presumption is that the owl had a nest in the area and it felt the eagle threatened the nest or young. Canon 7D, 1/1000, f/6.3, ISO 800 ev +1.00,…

Northern Harrier Male in Flight

Just a single image of a male Northern Harrier in flight but this shot means a lot to me. Canon 7D, 1/6400, f/5.6, ISO 640, EV – 0.o, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I have many nice harrier images taken during winter around the marshes of the Great Salt Lake but for me this species has been a nemesis bird during spring and summer. Most of our harriers migrate north in early spring and those that stick around become very difficult to approach. For three summers now I’ve been trying mightily to get a decent flight shot of a harrier to no avail. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done some crazy driving (I’m usually shooting from my truck) trying to intersect the flight path of one of these birds only to have it veer off before it got close. As Mia often says – these birds like to “yank my chains”. Then, about three weeks ago, this male apparently forgot to “yank” and flew relatively close to me. I rattled off a burst and got this one image that I like. My techs for the image weren’t ideal but it still worked out and I’m delighted. I guess it doesn’t take much to satisfy this bird photographer sometimes… This post will be a bit of an experiment. I’ll be out of town for a couple of days so I’m preparing the post now and will test the delayed posting feature of WordPress. Hope it works. Ron

Bald Eagles at Farmington Bay

I paid another visit to Farmington yesterday and while I got some nice shots of a few other species I was reminded of the Bald Eagles that were winter residents out there just a few short months ago. I miss them. So when it turned overcast this morning and I couldn’t go out photographing birds I decided to revisit some of the eagle images I got at Farmington three months ago. Canon 7D, 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This carp may have been an easy catch for the eagle because the water was quite shallow and the fish was likely stunned (though it did appear to still be alive) by the rotenone used to control these fish at the refuge. Canon 7D, 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Both of these images of the eagle with the fish were difficult exposures with the white head facing toward the sun but I liked the action and the good look at the carp. Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This is one of my better exposures on both the white head and the very dark body and wing plumage in the species. Early morning light certainly helped with that exposure. Canon 7D, 1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I like the unusual head turn from this juvenile bird and the Wasatch Mountain background. Canon 7D, 1/4000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc (wish I’d had lower ISO in this image…

American Kestrels – What They’ll Eat and What They Won’t.

I’ve always found it fascinating to watch these little falcons eat. A gruesome experience to be sure but so much more interesting than observing a raptor such as an owl who simply swallows its prey whole. And if you watch carefully there’s a whole lot more going on during the process than first meets the eye. Kestrels can be pretty picky eaters. I’ve documented in another post on this blog that they often refuse to eat the intestinal tract of their prey and deliberately discard it. Kestrels, like other raptors, eject pellets of indigestible materials like fur, feathers, chitin and bone. All food that is swallowed first goes to the crop. From there the usable food continues on to the stomach but the indigestibles stay in the crop, are formed into a pellet and regurgitated roughly 23 hours (in the case of kestrels) after the meal was consumed. Canon 7D, 1/800, f/7.1, ISO 640, 500mm f/4, 1.4 tc The kestrels I’ve watched eating voles and mice typically eat the brain, decapitate the rodent, then go for the soft internal protein rich muscles and other organs (discarding the intestines). Since kestrels tear their prey into bite-sized pieces they can pick and choose what they actually swallow. Canon 7D, 1/400, f/8, ISO 640, 500mm f/4, 1.4 tc Pellet expulsion can be difficult and traumatic as I’ve documented elsewhere on this blog with Northern Harriers and I suspect that’s one of the reasons that kestrels try to avoid swallowing as much fur as possible. When opening up the body cavity they often get a beak-full of…

Northern Harrier with Nesting Material

I’ve been photographing Northern Harriers in northern Utah for five years now and until earlier this week I’d only seen this species carrying nesting material once before and wasn’t able to photograph it. Harriers are very common here during winter but most of them head north for the breeding season and those that stay usually build their nests in inaccessible areas of the marsh, so it’s rare for me to see any nesting activities. Canon 7D, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, 1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400 Two days ago Mia and I were photographing birds at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. We were about to call it a day because it was late in the morning and light was no longer optimal when we spotted this harrier flying at a distance. We figured it would veer off before it got close, as they always seem to do out there, but this one kept coming toward us. We were watching it through our lenses and soon noticed that it had nesting material in its beak. Canon 7D, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, 1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400 By chance we happened to be at a place on the dirt road that was within 100′ or so of the nest of this bird. It decided to ignore us and come in to complete its delivery. Canon 7D, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, 1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400 The nest is apparently in this bed of last year’s dead Phragmites. The dark spots you see in the last three images of this…

Category: Diurnal Raptors