{"id":120601,"date":"2022-10-01T05:05:27","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T11:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=120601"},"modified":"2022-10-01T06:20:40","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T12:20:40","slug":"a-digestive-surprise-for-a-juvenile-swainsons-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/01\/a-digestive-surprise-for-a-juvenile-swainsons-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Digestive Surprise For A Juvenile Swainson’s Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m tired of talking and thinking about my recent back surgery but if I’m going to post at all during my recovery I feel an obligation to occasionally provide my readers a very brief update. Suffice it to say that so far my recovery has been a bit of roller coaster but overall I’m still feeling optimistic about it going well and eventually getting at least some improvement from my original symptoms. Maybe I have already.<\/em><\/p>\n

And I will say this – good neighbors, all close friends, have been incredibly helpful. By this evening I’ll have been out of the hospital for three days and I won’t have had to cook a single time because they’ve been providing food, good food, for which I’m very grateful.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the positive signs is that I sometimes feel well enough to want to post to my blog, even though it’ll be a while before I can go out shooting again, so that means posting older photos or rerunning older posts, or both. Most of today’s post, first published in 2014, is a rerun of one of my favorites because I found the behavior to be so unusual, if a little unsettling for some. For this version I’ve changed the title, edited the text and tweaked the formatting.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I believe this Swainson’s Hawk was taken by surprise by what it found in its mouth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed the beautiful juvenile in early September in Montana’s Centennial Valley. Here the bird has just completed landing on the fencepost, has barely folded its wings and is about to stand erect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

At that point I made the unfortunate decision to remove my 1.4 teleconverter (tc) so I would be less likely to clip or cut off any body parts when it took off again. If I hadn’t done so I’d have had better detail in the images that follow.<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 Photographers may be interested in comparing these first two images to get a sense of the difference (in magnification) made by the teleconverter. I used the tc on the first image but not on the second. Both images have been cropped by the same amount (50% of the original image) and my shooting angle and distance to the subject are the same in both shots. You may also notice an increase in the ‘creaminess” of the backgound bokeh in the first image, as compared to the second, due to the first image having less depth of field.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, back to the point of this post…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Eight frames later the hawk suddenly opened its mouth in what I assumed would be the retching behavior that often precedes the casting of a pellet (you can see the entire process of pellet casting by a Swainson’s Hawk here<\/a><\/span> if you’re interested).<\/p>\n

But this\u00a0time both the bird and I were in for a surprise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The hawk reached up to its mouth with its left foot and pulled this<\/em> out!\u00a0 I can only assume it’s the small intestine of rodent prey that had been in its crop.\u00a0 One\u00a0part of the intestine (or whatever it is) was looped between two of its toes and the bird struggled with\u00a0it by pulling down, hard, with its left foot until…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0one of the two strands broke. Then it pulled some more until…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0the other strand broke and snapped back into the face of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

At that point the hawk swallowed the whole shootin’ match. Again.<\/p>\n

If my assumption is correct that the food item was mammalian (or at least vertebrate) intestine then I’m slightly surprised because I’d been watching this bird for days and all I’d seen it eat was grasshoppers – although I know they also consume rodents and other prey, especially during the breeding season.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, only 6 minutes earlier I had photographed one of the parents of the youngster as it struggled with and eventually ate this small snake. As to why the juvenile pulled the intestine(?) out of its crop, well… I’m stumped. Perhaps some of my readers (falconers or rehabbers perhaps) can provide some insight. It’s definitely something that I had never seen before. And haven’t since.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I believe this Swainson’s Hawk was taken by surprise by what it found in its mouth. (8 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27344,"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":[5,6,334,392,1493,360,645],"tags":[59,647,555,6561,6559,190,220,2020,6560,6562,646],"class_list":["post-120601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-bokeh","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-centennial-valley","tag-diet-of-swainsons-hawks","tag-effect-of-teleconverter-on-photos","tag-juvenile","tag-montana-2","tag-pellet-casting","tag-regurgitation-of-food","tag-snake-prey","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/swainsons-hawk-3520-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-vnb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120601","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=120601"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120669,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120601\/revisions\/120669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}