{"id":144227,"date":"2023-10-04T06:01:27","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=144227"},"modified":"2023-10-04T07:42:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T13:42:53","slug":"a-male-american-kestrel-and-an-unfortunate-choice-of-perch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/04\/a-male-american-kestrel-and-an-unfortunate-choice-of-perch\/","title":{"rendered":"A Male American Kestrel And An Unfortunate Choice Of Perch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in August with little explanation I posted a single older photo of this male American Kestrel as he struggled to become comfortable on his spiky, spindly perch. Today, while I’m waiting for our recent inclement weather to clear so I can get back out in the field again (it’s been raining for days), I thought it would be fun to post an entire series of his struggles to remain on his poorly chosen perch. And to provide more information about what was going on.<\/p>\n

The photo I posted in August is similar to one of these seven photos (photo #5), but all of today’s images are new to Feathered Photography.<\/p>\n

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When he landed here he’d grasped a clump of the spindly twigs in his feet so that collectively they’d support his weight but several of them were preventing him from folding his wings comfortably against his body. For quite a while he seemed to accept that discomfort so I got lots of photos of him with one or both of his wings in awkward positions.<\/p>\n

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But when he moved slightly on his perch in order to grasp more of the twigs in his feet, his discomfort increased. Eventually it became too much for him.<\/p>\n

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So he tried to rearrange his feet to put his body at a different angle that would prevent the twigs from interfering with his folded wings.<\/p>\n

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But that only made things worse because now the twigs were interfering with both his wings and his tail.<\/p>\n

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Sticking both of his wings and his tail almost straight up kept them away from the annoying twigs but it certainly looked awkward and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

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Eventually he’d had enough aggravation. He raised his wings and…<\/p>\n

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took off away from me.<\/p>\n

So I didn’t get any quality takeoff shots but I’d certainly been entertained for a while.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Image techs for these photos are in the range of 1\/2000 – 1\/3200, f\/6.3 – 7.1, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Entertainment for the photographer at the expense of a hapless kestrel. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144230,"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":[340,334],"tags":[131,5626,7167,311],"class_list":["post-144227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-male-american-kestrel","tag-struggling-on-perch","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/american-keatrel-1544-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Bwf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144227","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=144227"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144284,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144227\/revisions\/144284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}