{"id":14309,"date":"2013-04-12T06:13:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T12:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14309"},"modified":"2013-04-12T06:13:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T12:13:03","slug":"prairie-falcon-a-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/12\/prairie-falcon-a-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Falcon – A Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this morning as\u00a0I was leaving Antelope Island after a morning of shooting I was, as always, watching for a Prairie Falcon along the causeway.\u00a0 Occasionally I’ve been lucky with that strategy but it doesn’t happen very often.\u00a0 One advantage I had is the fact that if there was one there it would likely be perched on the rocks next to the Great Salt Lake.\u00a0 With that dark blue background, the bright whites on the breast of the falcon are often easy to spot.\u00a0 And that’s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This falcon had likely been hunting ducks along the causeway (unsuccessfully, based on the non-bulging crop, though it does have blood on the bill)\u00a0and was taking a rest.\u00a0 The bird was cooperative and gave me 6 minutes while it was perched on this rock.\u00a0 I\u00a0was able to get many shots of it that I liked.<\/p>\n

But then I had a dilemma.\u00a0 Many of you know how much I like take-off shots.\u00a0 I was way too tight on the bird to avoid clipping body parts when it lifted off.\u00a0 When I took off my tc I was still too tight.\u00a0 I could back up and get further away from the bird but starting my engine might spook the bird when I wasn’t ready to take the shot.<\/p>\n

I had to make a quick decision and chose to stay put and get what I could when it launched.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This time I chose correctly.\u00a0 As larger falcons are prone to do, this bird raised its wings for several seconds prior to takeoff and even gave me some very nice poses with eye contact.\u00a0 I also like the slightly open bill with hints of blood at the tip.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But just prior to take-off I’ll admit that my heart sank a little because I knew I was too close to get the entire bird in the frame with its wings up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And that’s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

My only consolation was the fact that it took off slightly away from me and I didn’t get any eye contact anyway.\u00a0 If I had to choose I’d much prefer to get the\u00a0images with the slightly raised wings while still perched (up close with good detail)\u00a0over take-off\u00a0shots without\u00a0eye contact.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I\u00a0guess right in these situations…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 I’ve posted shots of this bird before but those presented here are new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this morning as I was leaving Antelope Island after a morning of shooting I was, as always, watching for a Prairie Falcon along the causeway. Occasionally I’ve been lucky with that strategy but it doesn’t happen very often. One advantage I had is the fact that if there was one there it would likely be perched on the rocks next to the Great Salt Lake. With that dark blue background, the bright whites on the breast of the falcon are often easy to spot. And that’s exactly what happened.<\/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":[6,334,371],"tags":[31,539,538,160,254,605],"class_list":["post-14309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-prairie-falcons","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-causeway","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-take-off"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3IN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309","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=14309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}