{"id":140994,"date":"2023-08-13T05:42:38","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T11:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=140994"},"modified":"2023-08-13T07:14:52","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T13:14:52","slug":"flame-skimmer-borrowing-a-hunting-technique-from-red-tailed-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/13\/flame-skimmer-borrowing-a-hunting-technique-from-red-tailed-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Flame Skimmer Borrowing A Hunting Technique From Red-tailed Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or maybe it was the other way around.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I was cleaning up in my kitchen when I noticed a very large, entirely orange dragonfly perched on my hummingbird feeder pole (my actual feeder was down for cleaning). So I grabbed my photo gear, sans tripod, and went out to try to photograph it. I knew that hand holding my huge, heavy lens would be problematic but I figured it would take me too long to get my tripod set up, so I decided to try to get sharp shots without it.<\/p>\n

Yep, I’m a glutton for punishment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a male flame skimmer (firecracker skimmer) and man, was he ever a handsome dude. If grumpy looking.<\/p>\n

With apologies to my good friend Kelli Frame, owner of our local Wild Birds Unlimited store, I didn’t buy my hummingbird feeder pole from her. Instead, I just used an old 8′ piece of rebar that I sharpened on one end and bent on the other, so it functions perfectly well. It was cheap and available.<\/p>\n

The dragonfly was using the pole as an elevated hunting perch and for the next 20 minutes or so he repeatedly took off from it to go after flying insect prey and then returned to it with the prey, or to try again. Over the years I’ve spent hundreds of hours watching Red-tailed Hawks hunting from elevated perches and returning to the same perch so this hunting technique felt very familiar to me, to the point that I kept thinking about red-tails while I was trying to photograph the dragonfly.<\/p>\n

Several of his prey items were so small I could barely see them through my lens but one time he caught a…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

bee of some kind and it didn’t take him long to chow it down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

I just assumed that he’d tear off chunks of the bee and swallow them individually, so I was surprised when he…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

swallowed it whole. How he got that big bee past his narrow neck I just don’t know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On one occasion, when I couldn’t tell if the dragonfly had prey or not, a very aggressive yellow jacket? repeatedly buzzed him. At one point it almost landed on one of his legs but the dragonfly seemed unfazed. It seemed to me that since he had no trouble with the bee, maybe the yellow jacket should have been much more careful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I think the flame skimmer looks pretty impressive against a black background with its dark orange wing veins showing so well. Despite the blown specular highlights on his abdomen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is why I was having so much trouble getting sharp shots. This photo was taken last evening but I was photographing the dragonfly that morning so in order to keep from shooting into the sun I had to stand on my deck and shoot over the top of my roses.<\/p>\n

Hand holding my big, heavy lens was just impossible so eventually I put the plastic chair you see in the upper background on top of a table and used the flimsy, wobbly chair to stabilize my lens. Or tried to…<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was a fun if frustrating experience. Many of my shots were soft and at my focal length up close I usually didn’t have enough depth of field but I enjoyed spreading my wings from birds to a large, colorful and mostly cooperative insect.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Or maybe it was the other way around. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140996,"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":[6,5251],"tags":[7063,7065,7061,7067,7060,7062,4628,311,6965,7064],"class_list":["post-140994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-dragonflies","tag-bee-prey","tag-firecracker-skimmer","tag-hunting-from-an-elevated-perch","tag-kelli-frame","tag-male-flame-skimmer-dragonfly","tag-rebar","tag-specular-highlights","tag-utah-2","tag-wild-birds-unlimited","tag-yellow-jacket"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/flame-skimmer-8715-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-AG6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140994","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=140994"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141065,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140994\/revisions\/141065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}