And finally the pellet has been expelled.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nAs luck would have it my buffer had filled up and I missed the shot of the pellet flying out.<\/p>\n
For these birds to go through such effort and apparent trauma to regurgitate the pellet must be an indication\u00a0of the great advantage to them of not having their digestive systems deal with all of that “roughage”.\u00a0 I also wonder if this behavior may\u00a0have been partially selected for as another weight saving device for flight, though I’ve been unable to verify that.\u00a0\u00a0Either way I think it’s a fascinating behavior.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Except for owls, all raptors have a crop for excess food storage.\u00a0 The parts of the prey that are indigestible are formed into a pellet in the gizzard and then regurgitated out of the mouth.\u00a0 These pellets contain hair, feathers, exoskeletons and sometimes (in the case of owls especially) the bones of their prey.\u00a0 I’ve noticed with many raptor species that expelling a pellet can be a difficult process, bordering on traumatic.\u00a0 Such was the case with this juvenile male Northern Harrier. I was watching this bird through my lens but not planning on getting any quality photos because the bird was strongly side-lit.\u00a0 \u00a0But when\u00a0he began trying to expel a pellet I\u00a0couldn’t resist\u00a0clicking away.\u00a0 Because of the side-lighting\u00a0and relatively soft focus the images are not of high quality but I thought the behavior was interesting enough\u00a0for a blog post anyway.\u00a0\u00a0All of the photos in this series are posted in the order that they were taken. \u00a0 \u00a0The beginning of the struggle to expel the pellet\u00a0 \u00a0 Here the harrier is shaking his head from side to side to try to dislodge the pellet \u00a0 But with the effort he begins to lose his balance on the perch\u00a0 \u00a0 And almost falls \u00a0over backward\u00a0 \u00a0 He begins to recover\u00a0 \u00a0 And then falls forward\u00a0 \u00a0 Begins to recover again\u00a0 \u00a0 Still recovering\u00a0 \u00a0 Recovered, but still with the pellet stuck in his mouth\u00a0 \u00a0 And finally the pellet has been expelled.\u00a0 As luck would have it my buffer had filled up and I missed…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[392,341],"tags":[86,128,171,234,242,245,260,265],"class_list":["post-1411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-expelling-pellet","tag-harrier","tag-northern-harrier","tag-owls-2","tag-pellet","tag-raptor","tag-regurgitate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"northern](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/northern-harrier-0680.jpg\" "\\"northern")
<\/p>\n![\"northern](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/northern-harrier-06811.jpg\" "\\"northern")
<\/p>\n![\"northern](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/northern-harrier-0683.jpg\" "\\"northern")
<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n