{"id":113788,"date":"2022-07-06T04:18:06","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T10:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=113788"},"modified":"2022-07-06T04:32:34","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T10:32:34","slug":"american-kestrel-deciding-whether-to-enjoy-her-meal-or-flee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/06\/american-kestrel-deciding-whether-to-enjoy-her-meal-or-flee\/","title":{"rendered":"American Kestrel Deciding Whether To Enjoy Her Meal Or Flee"},"content":{"rendered":"

She ended up doing both.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

These are older photos of a female American Kestrel with a vole for breakfast. She was wary of me and at first I could tell she was seriously considering flying off with the rodent but eventually she settled down and began to work on her meal.<\/p>\n

Many of my photos of her are graphic so I’ve chosen to include this one, taken early in my session with her, where the vole isn’t yet so\u00a0 \u00a0 messy. There never was blood or guts to be seen but she expertly skinned a significant portion of the vole so there was a lot of red meat exposed.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

She calmly worked at skinning the vole for a while, taking a few small bites during the process, but eventually and for a reason I never understood she became nervous again. In this photo I just happened to click my shutter while she was in a pre-takeoff posture. A millisecond after this shot was taken, she took off to her right and away from me.<\/p>\n

I like her flared tail, raised wing and the vole fur in her beak.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: In a last-minute decision I decided to risk it and include one of the photos that documents her skinning process. As I said earlier, it isn’t gory but some would consider it graphic. If you don’t want to see it, there’s a simple solution – just don’t scroll any further. If you do scroll further, it’s a decision you’ve made.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Please, no complaints. You’ve been warned.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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She discarded much of the vole’s skin and fur but she flew off with what was left before starting to eat seriously.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

She ended up doing both. (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113790,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[340,334,2782,392],"tags":[28,131,1008,137,256,6426,311,315],"class_list":["post-113788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-american-kestrel","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-female","tag-prey","tag-skinning-prey","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/american-kestrel-9829-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-tBi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113788","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=113788"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113824,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113788\/revisions\/113824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}