![\"rough](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/rough-legged-hawk-3385-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nand then pounce on potential prey again.<\/p>\n
I photographed this unusual hunting\u00a0behavior of\u00a0the bird for 21 minutes but that first vole is the only one I saw it catch.<\/p>\n
One possible explanation:\u00a0 research suggests that Rough-legged\u00a0Hawks may be able to visually detect vole urine and\u00a0feces and then\u00a0preferentially hunt in\u00a0areas of high prey abundance.\u00a0 When researchers spread straw that had been soaked with vole urine and feces\u00a0these hawks hunted significantly more in areas where the straw had been spread than they did in control areas.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps this hunting technique gave the bird a better closeup\u00a0look as it (possibly) searched for urine and feces evidence of its prey than it would get from a much higher and more typical\u00a0vantage point for the species.<\/p>\n
Whatever the reason for the behavior it surely was\u00a0an interesting 21 minutes for me.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve spent many hours watching Rough-legged Hawks hunt.\u00a0 Nearly always they hunt from the air or from elevated perches\u00a0but several years ago\u00a0this bird showed me a technique I had never seen before and haven’t since. All of these images are presented in the order they were taken. Techs for these shots were: 1\/2000 – 1\/3200, f\/8. ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in I found the hawk on the ground and as I approached it in my pickup it didn’t fly off as I expected it would.\u00a0 Here it’s looking at me but most of the time it was scanning the grasses in the vicinity – obviously hunting for voles from the ground. It would lift off but only fly a few feet before it landed again. In this first lift-off it had vegetation in its talons.\u00a0 I’ve seen them do this before – it’s almost like they’re reluctant to let go of the plant material after they’ve missed the prey. The hawk landed again… And intensely\u00a0scanned the surrounding area for prey. Then another take-off… and it flew within inches of the ground… before it pounced on a vole and swallowed it. Then it continued to hunt in the same manner. Another take-off… and another.\u00a0 There’s blood on the right\u00a0foot from the last vole. The hawk repeatedly did the same thing – take…<\/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":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":[334,392,358],"tags":[534,146,178,1315,269,605,315,1317,1316],"class_list":["post-13195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-flight","tag-hunting","tag-hunting-technique","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-take-off","tag-vole","tag-vole-feces","tag-vole-urine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3qP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13195","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=13195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"rough](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/rough-legged-hawk-3293-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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