Swainson’s Hawk – Contrasting Top And Bottom Views In Flight
This bird was one of the early migrants into Utah in the first week of April this year. Swainson’s Hawks winter in South America, which means they funnel through narrow Central America as they migrate each way. To give you an idea of how many birds that involves, 845,000 of them have been counted as they passed over Veracruz, Mexico in a single autumn. Incredible! 1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in I found this bird in a remote area of Box Elder County, hunting from power poles. One of the reasons I like this image is because it’s fairly unusual for me to get a raptor in full flight (instead of just after taking off, note the position of the feet) when it’s not soaring or gliding with its wings in a horizontal position. I’m always interested when I can get images that contrast the ventral and dorsal colors and plumage patterns of the same species in flight. Swainson’s Hawks are quite dark dorsally. 1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in But when you can get good light in the ventral view, the contrast is striking. Even though these two images were taken 34 minutes apart, I’m relatively certain that it’s the same bird in both shots. This hawk was coming to land on a power pole and even though the flight position screams for a perch in front of the bird, I took the liberty of cloning out the ugly pole…
Snow Geese On The Causeway
For the last few days there have been two Snow Geese along the causeway to Antelope Island – an adult and a juvenile. This species nests on the arctic tundra and is in the midst of migration to more hospitable climes for the winter. Parents stay with their young through the first winter and families generally don’t break up until they reach their breeding grounds the following spring. 1/500, f/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light When we relocated these two birds yesterday morning (we’d also seen them two days before) the sun had not yet cleared the elevated causeway road so the birds were still in shade. I include this image so adult and juvenile can be compared and so that you can see the dramatic changes that occur when the warm, early morning light advances on the birds. 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light Here, the light has just reached the head and neck of the adult. 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light A few seconds later it has advanced to the feet but not to the ground. It was interesting to watch the light move down the bird. 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light I didn’t get a lot of action out of either bird – this yawn from the juvenile… 1/1000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light and a wing and foot stretch was about the only “excitement”…
American Kestrel In Flight
Anyone who follows my blog knows that I love to photograph raptors and flight shots are perhaps my favorite genre. But I’ve found getting acceptable flight shots of the American Kestrel to be nigh on to impossible (unless they’re hovering). The smaller the bird, the more difficult it is to get in flight, for a variety of reasons, and kestrels are perhaps our smallest raptor. The best chance is to catch them just after take-off. Most raptors give some indication of imminent take-off (body posture, defecation etc) so you often know when it’s coming, but kestrels generally don’t. They launch so incredibly fast, and in unpredictable directions, that luck will always play a large role in getting the shot. Then, throw into the mix the fact that their speed requires very high shutter speeds and the result is a very formidable photographic quarry. 1/3200, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in Two days ago I was able to get this shot of a female kestrel taking off from a metal post. I like the wing position, light and especially the acrobatic position of the legs and feet. I had the shutter speed to get the bird sharp but f/5.6 didn’t give me enough depth of field to prevent blur in the right wing. But I think a little wing blur in a shot like this still works pretty well. Ron
An Amazingly Resilient One-legged Ibis
Last week I came across this one-legged White-faced Ibis at Farmingtom Bay. Normally, these birds feed by slowly wading through the water and locating their invertebrate prey by tactile probing of the muddy substrate. Their long, recurved and extremely sensitive bill is an ideal tool for this purpose. But this bird, of course, is unable to wade. So it would stand in one spot for a few seconds while feeding and then jump to the next spot with great effort. The problem it had with this method was maintaining balance as it was landing in the new spot, since it couldn’t put down the missing leg for support. So, as it landed it would use that long bill as a sort of substitute for the missing leg and foot, thus gaining an additional balancing and support point in the mud. Here it has just regained balance and is closing its wings and pulling its long bill off of the mud. Perhaps what the bird was doing can be better visualised from this one photo, where you can tell from the turbulence around the right leg that the ibis has just landed in this spot a split second before and that it is using its long bill to brace itself in order to regain balance. And here I caught the ibis just as it was “landing” on a new feeding spot – the water is actually fairly deep here. I hope this post isn’t seen as much…
An Incredible Experience With A Prairie Falcon And A Hapless Duck
This morning on Antelope Island was a photographic bust – heavy snow coming down most of the time and no light to speak of. So finally, after several hours of hoping the clouds would clear, we put our tails between our legs and headed for home. Talk about perfect timing! We’d traversed about half the causeway when the clouds parted, light blossomed and a serendipitous adult Prairie Falcon appeared, hunting for ducks. The falcon ambushed this male Northern Shoveler just as I was getting my pickup in position, so I missed that shot but this one was taken within a second or two of the strike. The duck is bleeding heavily. It struggled for a minute or so, and then died in the water. After the attack, the falcon would perch along the causeway for a short period, then take off and fly over the duck. This was done repeatedly. With my 500mm plus tc I could never get both the duck and the falcon in the image – this is as close as I came. 1/1600, f/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Here, the falcon is perched to watch the duck out on the water. 1/2500, f/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in I had a difficult time locking focus on the falcon as it buzzed the duck because the textured water background was so close to the bird. I kept getting sharp shots of…
Prairie Falcon In Flight, With Prey
This image may look familiar to some viewers because I’ve previously posted another photo of this bird with a different wing position. I only got those two sharp shots of the falcon and I’d never processed this image before because the bird was too tight in the frame. I’d actually forgotten about this photo until recently when I decided it was worth making the effort to add some canvas to improve the composition. 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in I found this juvenile feeding on its duck kill along the Antelope Island causeway last winter on a dark and blustery late morning. Two ravens began to harass the falcon with the apparent intention of stealing the duck so the rightful owner of the prey took off with the prize in tow. Within seconds, an adult Bald Eagle moved in and forced the falcon to drop the duck. One thing I find interesting about this image is the angle of the bird to the horizon – it looks like it’s flying downward, but in reality it’s actually gaining altitude. Normally, with the bird at this flight attitude, I’d rotate counterclockwise a little to make the flight angle more realistic looking, but since the horizon is in the background it’s obvious that the shot doesn’t need rotation since the horizon is level. The reason for the angled flight attack is the load that the falcon is hauling while it’s trying to gain altitude. The lower background is the dark, stormy and…
The Return Of The Rough-legged Hawks
One of the most pleasant harbingers of winter for me is always the return of the Rough-legged Hawks. This species breeds in high subarctic and arctic regions so we don’t see them from about March through October but they usually winter around here in good numbers and I love to photograph this handsome buteo. There’s been a few “roughies” on Antelope Island for a couple of weeks now but this morning was the first time this year I’ve been able to get close enough for good photos. This bird chose to perch on the same dark rocks that I’ve been photographing Red-tailed Hawks on. 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in (same techs for all the images in this post) I wasn’t quite as close as I’d have liked to have been for perched shots so I waited for take-off. And waited. And waited. Almost went to sleep… Finally, a couple of men on horseback were riding the trail behind the rock in the background and I figured they’d spook the bird. They did. At least I didn’t miss the moment of take-off, which is so easy to do when you have to wait for it for so long. I got five sharp shots after take-off and something unusual happened with each of them. Normally, you’re lucky to get one image with the bird looking directly at you. Usually, they’re looking in the direction of flight but for some…
Western Grebe Chick Reacts To Food
I’ve always enjoyed spending time with Western Grebes but until this past summer I’ve had very little success in photographing parents back-brooding their chicks. In June at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge my luck with this behavior changed and I was able to get quite a few nice images of the chicks on the backs of the parents over many days. Here, two chicks wait patiently on the back of one of the parents while the other one attempts to catch fish for breakfast. The fishing parent would feed small fish to both chicks and to the brooding parent. The chicks watch attentively for the adult to emerge from the nearby water with something to eat. I was always torn about what to photograph – the parent with the fish or the reactions of the chicks to approaching food. In this case I chose the latter. Here, the chick on the right has just spotted its parent come up out of the water from behind with a small fish and is beginning to react. Usually, both chicks were hungry and competed for the food but this time the youngster on the left was full and not interested in anything to eat. But the chick on the right didn’t know that and went into full competetive begging mode. I always enjoyed watching these reactions to food. Ron
American Kestrel Eating “Grit”
I don’t have any beautiful photos today but I do have some interesting behavior. Yesterday morning, I came across this female American Kestrel sitting in the middle of a large, isolated, gravel parking lot/camping area on Antelope Island. I thought it was an unusual resting place for a kestrel and as I approached her in my pickup I was even more intrigued when she didn’t immediately fly off, as this species typically does. She repeatedly took a couple of wingbeats and flew a few feet, but never far. She was, for some reason, reluctant to leave and at first I couldn’t figure out why. I was eventually able to work my way close enough to her to see that she was swallowing small stones from the gravel parking lot. This was a behavior that I’d never seen before in a raptor, though I’ve often seen it in other birds. As a biologist, I’m aware of the general function of the gizzard in birds – that seed eating birds swallow “grit” to act as teeth (birds have no true teeth, presumably a weight saving adaptation for flight) within the grinding gizzard so they can physically break down their hard food and prepare it for chemical digestion. And it had been my understanding that raptors don’t consume grit because they don’t eat seeds. The flesh they consume is easily digested and doesn’t need to be physically broken down first. So why is this little falcon swallowing small stones? I decided to ask Mark Runnels, an extremely knowledgeable master falconer from Oklahoma and…
Delivering Food For A Family Of Short-eared Owls
I try not to play favorites when it comes to bird subjects for my photography but Short-eared Owls would have to be near the top of any such list I might make. I’ve had some luck with them here in Utah but my favorite area to photograph them is in southwest Montana. This series is from the summer of 2010 in Beaverhead County. I spent several days watching and photographing a male owl hunt voles and then bring them in for his family (female and two chicks) at the nest at the base of a sagebrush. I thought it might be interesting for some to see a full series of shots (of those I kept) as the male approached the nest with a vole. 1/1600, f/6.3, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light Like me, this male was a creature of habit. I would watch him hunting far off in the distance and when he was successful he would always repeat the same pattern. He would bring the vole in to the vicinity of the nest and then land on one of two favorite perches for a short time before delivering the vole to his family. This small sagebrush was one of those favorite perches – the other was a metal post. Here, he is in the process of landing and you can see the dark vole in his left foot. He always carried the vole to the perch in his left foot (as I’ve documented here) and always transferred…