{"id":10233,"date":"2012-12-12T07:18:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T14:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=10233"},"modified":"2012-12-12T18:51:01","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T01:51:01","slug":"my-recent-encounters-with-the-female-prairie-falcon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/12\/my-recent-encounters-with-the-female-prairie-falcon\/","title":{"rendered":"My Recent Encounters With The Female Prairie Falcon"},"content":{"rendered":"

As regular readers of my blog know, I’ve had\u00a0four close-up encounters with this female Prairie Falcon on the Antelope Island causeway over the last couple of months.\u00a0 I couldn’t resist posting some images of her\u00a0in different poses that I haven’t\u00a0published here\u00a0previously.\u00a0 There is general agreement\u00a0among folks who are much more knowledgeable about falcons\u00a0than I am\u00a0that it was the same bird\u00a0in\u00a0all four cases.<\/p>\n

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\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/4.5, ISO 640, 500 f\/4,\u00a0 natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here she is on 10\/7\/12.\u00a0 I’ll never forget that morning because she let me get closer than I had ever been to a wild Prairie Falcon (even had to remove my tc).\u00a0 But there was a tradeoff (isn’t there always?) because the reason she felt so secure was that she was in deep shade, which isn’t the best situation for photography.\u00a0 Still, I’m happy to have the images of her that morning.<\/p>\n

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\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A little over a month later (11\/11\/12) she killed a Northern Shoveler in the water\u00a0about 50 yards out and waited for it to drift\u00a0to shore.\u00a0 Here she has just claimed her prize and seemed to raise her wings in celebration.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

She attempted to enjoy her meal on the shore edge but waves kept coming in and\u00a0sloshing the duck around so she decided to drag it further away from the water.\u00a0 Doing so took a lot of effort, which reinforced in my mind the reason why she waited for the duck to wash in instead of attempting to carry it to shore.\u00a0 I don’t\u00a0believe she could have lifted it out of the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Even though it’s a little graphic, I include this\u00a0photo\u00a0to demonstrate how much “de-feathering”\u00a0the bird must do in the process of eating a duck like this.\u00a0 The pile of feathers around the shoveler is pretty impressive and even more of them had been blown to the left and out of frame by the breeze.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Then, a little over two weeks later (11\/27\/12), I spotted her on some of the more colorful rocks along the causeway.\u00a0 She was actively hunting ducks and would perch for a while, then make a run on the ducks and then perch some more.\u00a0 She wasn’t successful in killing one while I was there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Most of the time she wouldn’t even look at me because she was so intent on scanning the water in front of\u00a0and behind her for ducks.\u00a0 Usually when I’m this close to a raptor they keep a pretty close eye on me but that morning she thought I was pretty boring.<\/p>\n

About 10 days later (12\/7\/12) this bird let me get so close that even without my tc attached and shooting vertically the images were just too tight (I’ve included none of those images here), but because of the angle of the road and vegetation I couldn’t get any further away and still see her clearly.\u00a0 That was one of those times I wished I was shooting with a zoom lens.\u00a0 I did have my 100-400 with me but she flew off just as I was switching over.\u00a0 Another example of “operator error” getting in the way of some nice images…<\/p>\n

I was on the island yesterday to point out the location of the female kestrel with jesses and anklets on her legs to a licensed trapper (I’ve posted an update on that situation in the comments section of my last post).\u00a0 The trapper spotted a Prairie Falcon along the causeway on a duck kill.\u00a0\u00a0That falcon was very likely this same\u00a0bird.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As regular readers of my blog know, I’ve had\u00a0four close-up encounters with this female Prairie Falcon on the Antelope Island causeway over the last couple of months.\u00a0 I couldn’t resist posting some images of her\u00a0in different poses that I haven’t\u00a0published here\u00a0previously.\u00a0 There is general agreement\u00a0among folks who are much more knowledgeable about falcons\u00a0than I am\u00a0that it was the same bird\u00a0in\u00a0all four cases.   \u00a01\/640, f\/4.5, ISO 640, 500 f\/4,\u00a0 natural light, not baited, set up or called in Here she is on 10\/7\/12.\u00a0 I’ll never forget that morning because she let me get closer than I had ever been to a wild Prairie Falcon (even had to remove my tc).\u00a0 But there was a tradeoff (isn’t there always?) because the reason she felt so secure was that she was in deep shade, which isn’t the best situation for photography.\u00a0 Still, I’m happy to have the images of her that morning.     \u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in A little over a month later (11\/11\/12) she killed a Northern Shoveler in the water\u00a0about 50 yards out and waited for it to drift\u00a0to shore.\u00a0 Here she has just claimed her prize and seemed to raise her wings in celebration.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in She attempted to enjoy her meal on the shore edge but waves kept coming in and\u00a0sloshing the duck around so she decided to drag it further away…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,371],"tags":[31,539,113,538,137,1050,584,254,256],"class_list":["post-10233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-prairie-falcons","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-causeway","tag-duck","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-female","tag-kill","tag-northern-shoveler","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-prey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2F3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}