This pretty little female kestrel enjoyed a vole breakfast yesterday morning along the causeway to Antelope Island. I’ll spare you most of the gory details but raptor feeding behavior is one of the many behaviors that I find interesting.
It’s barely the New Year but I’m already weary of snow and cold so there’s a change of pace this morning provided by a Short-eared Owl, flowers and the color green.
Several readers have said recently that they’d like to see occasional images from my archives. These American Kestrel photos are my attempt to deliver on that request.
Don’t worry, there’s nothing gory in this short “before and after the meal” series. And I’ve also included a bit of a raptor biology lesson.
I got relatively close to two kestrels, a male and a female, both with prey, within four minutes. Miracles do happen…
Things got a little frenzied when one of the adult Swainson’s Hawks would bring a vole in to feed their juvenile offspring.
Loggerhead Shrikes are often called “butcher birds” and this one demonstrated for me how that moniker was earned.
I’ve been watching a mated pair of Swainson’s Hawks near Monida, Montana all summer and for several reasons I believe their first nesting may have failed and they started over.
For the past three days I’ve been able to observe a variety of different types of prey exchanges between adult and juvenile Swainson’s Hawks.
Last week I photographed Brewer’s Blackbirds as they relentlessly mobbed a family of Red-tailed Hawks on a nest in Montana.
I don’t photograph raptors on the nest very often but for me this situation was a worthy exception.
This male Short-eared Owl was as set in his ways as I am and that’s saying something.
