{"id":147873,"date":"2023-12-06T06:16:12","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T13:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=147873"},"modified":"2023-12-06T08:46:29","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:46:29","slug":"prairie-falcon-becoming-progressively-more-tolerant-of-my-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/06\/prairie-falcon-becoming-progressively-more-tolerant-of-my-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Falcon Becoming Progressively More Tolerant Of My Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I rarely photograph raptors on utility poles anymore but I’ll always make an exception for Prairie Falcons. Especially when they allow me to observe some of their behaviors up close.<\/p>\n

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About five weeks ago I found a single adult Prairie Falcon on one of my trips to the west desert. Prairie Falcons are known for being difficult to approach and this one was spookier than most. ‘She’ simply refused to allow me any closer than several hundred yards.<\/p>\n

Since that first encounter with her I’ve found her along the same line of utility poles four more times on different trips to the area. Each time she’s become more approachable, allowing me to get progressively closer to her for longer periods of time.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning she allowed the closest approach yet. At first she was a little wary of me but she didn’t take off for a long time so I had plenty of opportunity to just enjoy being with her.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When she eventually did take off it was an extremely quick and kind of quirky maneuver, which in my experience is fairly typical of Prairie Falcon launches. By “quirky”, I’m referring to the fact that she “flapped” her flared tail downward before<\/span> she’d even left her perch, instead of while she was leaving it. But I appreciated the good look the unusual takeoff posture gave me of more of her plumage.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

She didn’t go far, only to one of the insulators on the next utility pole down the line and this time she was incredibly relaxed in my presence. Whenever I’m close to a raptor that pulls one of their feet up into their belly plumage, it’s a reliable indicator of their lack of nervousness.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the first time I can recall ever capturing a Prairie Falcon defecating. I hope that the almost pure white color of her ‘poop’, meaning that it’s composed almost entirely of white uric acid (a metabolic waste) with very little darker digestive waste mixed in, isn’t an indicator that she’s having difficulty finding enough to eat.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking that’s probably not the case, since she’s been hanging around the same area for so long. If she wasn’t finding enough prey (mostly songbirds and rodents), she’d go elsewhere.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When she took off a while later I got…<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

three shots of the process but she turned her head away from me and…<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

the last shot was headless (except for the shadow of her head on her left wing). I still appreciate the good look at the plumage patterns of her right wing and I don’t recall ever seeing a view of a falcon’s partially deployed alula<\/a><\/span><\/span> from this angle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’ll admit it. As time goes by and she becomes progressively more comfortable in my presence, the anthropomorphist in me is beginning to think of her as a dear old friend. Even though I realize that it’s much more likely that she’s just becoming more tolerant of vehicles on the road.<\/p>\n

I hope she sticks around all winter.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I rarely photograph raptors on utility poles anymore but I’ll always make an exception for Prairie Falcons. Especially when they allow me to observe some of their behaviors up close. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147877,"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":[334,371],"tags":[953,935,5742,538,146,7240,4771,254,2738,1059,311,533],"class_list":["post-147873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-prairie-falcons","tag-alula","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-defecating","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-flight","tag-metabolic-wastes","tag-pooping","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-takeoff","tag-uric-acid","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/prairie-falcon-7845-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Ct3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147873","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=147873"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147950,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147873\/revisions\/147950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}